nd the
wishes of lovers long delayed. The Princess Mary, however, considered
this latter action highly improper.

John Oporinus (Herbst), the Basle printer (1507-68), had a varied
experience; taking four widows to wife. At the age of 20 he
married--almost, it seems, out of a sense of duty--the widow of his
teacher, Xylotectus of Lucerne; an elderly lady who persecuted him
sorely, and once in a passion threw dirty water over him. After eight
years, two of which he had spent roving through Germany with
Paracelsus, she died, leaving her property to relations. Oporinus'
next widow had three children, girls, who grew up to share their
mother's expensive tastes. For nearly thirty years their extravagance
vexed him, though his wife had tact enough to keep from open quarrels.
Then one day he returned from the Frankfort fair to find her dead of
the plague. The same visitation, 1564, by carrying off first John
Herwagen the younger and then Ulrich Iselin, Professor of Law at
Basle, made two more widows, successively to bear Oporinus' name.
Herwagen's widow, Elizabeth Holzach, was a sweet woman, but died in
the fourth month of her new marriage, 17 July 1565. Iselin's was
Faustina, daughter of Boniface Amerbach, born in 1530. To her seven
children by Iselin, she added one for Oporinus, Emmanuel, born 25 Jan.
1568; but the father of 60 did not live six months to have pleasure in
his firstborn.

With such frequent changes the marriage-tie cannot have given the same
personal attachment that is possible at the present day: indeed such
unions can scarcely have seemed more lasting than the temporary
associations of friends. One need only recall the bargainings that
occur in the Paston Letters to realize that there was not much romance
about their marriages, at any rate beforehand. Thus wrote Sir John
Paston in 1473 of a suitor for his sister Anne: 'As for Yelverton, he
said but late that he would have her if she had her money; and else
not.'

Thomas More is rightly regarded as a man in whom the spirit burned
brighter and clearer than in most of his contemporaries; and yet his
matrimonial relations savour more of convenience or even of business
than of affection. For his first wife, we are told--and there is no
reason to doubt the story--, his fancy had lighted on an Essex girl,
the daughter of a country-gentleman; but on visiting her at home he
found that she had an elder sister not yet married. Feeling that to
have her younger siste