before their eyes, between morning and night! Don't
tell us that the human female never longs for other pastime than

"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

True, ladies sighed not then for periodicals--but there, in the depths
of their ignorance, lay their utter wretchedness. What! keep pickling
and preserving during the whole mortal life of an immortal being! Except
when at jelly, everlastingly at jam! The soul sickens at the monotonous
sweetness of such a wersh existence. True that many sat all life-long at
needlework; but is not that a very sew-sew sort of life? Then oh! the
miserable males! We speak of times after the invention, it is true, of
printing--but who read what were called books then? Books! no more like
our periodicals, than dry, rotten, worm-eaten, fungous logs are like
green living leafy trees, laden with dews, bees, and birds, in the
musical sunshine. What could males do then but yawn, sleep, snore,
guzzle, guttle, and drink till they grew dead and got buried?
Fox-hunting won't always do--and often it is not to be had; who can be
happy with his gun through good report and bad report in an a' day's
rain? Small amusement in fishing in muddy water; palls upon the sense
quarrelling with neighbours on points of etiquette and the disputed
property of hedgerow trees; a fever in the family ceases to raise the
pulse of any inmate, except the patient; death itself is no relief to
the dulness; a funeral is little better; the yawn of the grave seems a
sort of unhallowed mockery; the scutcheon hung out on the front of the
old dismal hall, is like a sign on a deserted Spittal; along with sables
is worn a suitable stupidity by all the sad survivors.--And such, before
the era of Periodicals, such was the life in--merry England. Oh!
dear!--oh! dear me!

We shall not enter into any historical details--for this is not a
Monologue for the Quarterly--but we simply assert, that in the times we
allude to (don't mention dates) there was little or no reading in
England. There was neither the Reading Fly nor the Reading Public. What
could this be owing to, but the non-existence of Periodicals? What
elderly-young lady could be expected to turn from house affairs, for
example, to Spenser's Fairy Queen? It is a long, long, long poem, that
Fairy Queen of Spenser's; nobody, of course, ever dreamt of getting
through it; but though you may have given up all hope of getting through
a poem or a wood, you expect to be able