reclining on the couch as she had left her, looking like one asleep she applied the antidotes she had procured, but they seemed unavailing; laying her hand upon her cheek, she found it cold-the hand of Death had been upon her! I was immediately sent for, and when I arrived she was lying on the couch, as she often did, apparently asleep; her features were as lovely as ever, and the same beautiful countenance was before me. But her mind was free, and she was an angel. Is not death better than life? and heaven a glorious prize, only to be gained by relinquishing earth ? MAY. Welcome, welcome, month of May, To thy sweet refreshing showers; Unfolding nature's richest charms- Welcome, welcome, month of May, Welcome, welcome, month of May, Roses bloom without a thorn; New York, May 1, 1831. S. G. E. THE CALENDAR. MAY. This month, dedicated to love and flowers, derived its name from Maius, which it was called by Romulus, out of respect to the senators and nobles of his city, who were named Majores; though some will have it to have been thus christened from Maia, the mother of Mercury, to whom was offered sacrifice on the first day of it. The month of May has ever been esteemed favorable to love; and yet the ancients, as well as many of the moderns, look upon it as an unhappy month for marriage. The original reason may perhaps be referred to the gloomy festivals of the Lemures, which were held in this month. These solemnities continued three days and three nights, during which the temples of the gods were closed and marriages prohibited; they were instituted by Romulus to appease the manes of his brother Remus. The ancients supposed that the souls, after death, wandered all over the world and disturbed the peace of its inhabitants. Whence the Romans had the superstition to celebrate festivals in their honor. (Translated from the Spanish of Cadalso.*) CARTAS MARRUCCAS, OR MOORISH LETTERS. LETTER LXXV. From a learned Moor, resident in Spain, to his friend in Africa. FORCED MARRIAGES. On entering my house last night, I came across a letter, of which I send you a copy. It is from a Christian lady with whom I am very little acquainted. Its contents will strike you as very strange, as follows: "I have just completed my twenty first year, and have buried my last husband, the sixth which I have had in so many * Don Joseph Cadalso was born in the city of Cadiz, the 8th of October, 1741, and killed in the siege of Gibraltar, February 27-8, 1782, leaving behind a name unsullied for honor, bravery, and devotedness to literature. The manner in which these letters are conducted is the same as Goldsmith's citizen of the world. They are professedly written by a Moor resident in Spain to a friend of his in Africa, (Morocco.) Under this fictitious dress, Cadalso takes the opportunity to lash the vices and follies of his country, and vindicate her name where she has been traduced by foreigners, in a good natured, often ironical and playful mode. marriages in the space of a very few years. The first was a stripling, little older than myself, of fine presence, good hereditary estate, noble birth, but wretched health. He had lived so much in his few years, that when the knot was tied, he was already a corpse. Many splendid dresses for the occasion were even to be commenced, when I had to put on mourning. The second was an old man, who had ever been a confirmed old bachelor: but inheriting by deaths and law suits, a magnificent and noble fortune, his lawyer advised him to get married; his physician might have been of a different opinion. He died soon after, calling me his dear child; and I affirm that such he had ever treated me from the first day to the last. The third was a captain of a company of grenadiers, more of a man, to appearance, than all his company put together. The wedding was honored by the presence of the aristocracy of Barcelona: but being offended with his friend in the pit of the Opera, they went out to take the air together on the esplanade, and his companion returned alone leaving my husband behind. The fourth was a man of wealth and honor, robust and young, but such a gambler by profession that he spent the marriage-night out at a game of basset. This first night gave me no bad picture of all the rest, so that I always regarded him as a guest in my house, rather than my better half. He paid me in the same coin, and died soon after from a blow which he received from his friend, who threw a candlestick at his head for the mistake, I know not what, of placing at the right a card which ought to have been at the left. Notwithstanding all this, he was the most amusing husband I ever had, at least by his conversation, which was lively and always of a joking style. The fifth, who called me his own, was of such a narrow understanding, that he talked to me of nothing but a cousin of his whom he loved dearly. The cousin died of the small-pox a few days after my marriage, and my husband followed soon after. My sixth and last spouse was a philosopher. These men are not wont to be very good articles for husbands. My bad luck would have it, that on the night of the wedding there should appear a comet, or something like a comet. If any phenomena of this kind has ever been a bad augery, none was ever more so than this. My beloved calculated, that sleeping with his wife would be a periodical affair in every twentyfour hours; but that if the comet turned, so much time would be taken up in the turning, that he should not be able to observe it, and thus he gave up the one for the other, and sallied out to the plain to take his astronomical observations. The night was cold, and enough so to give him a pain in his side, which was the cause of his death. All this I might have remedied, if I had married once to my taste, instead of subjecting it six times to that of a father, who thought the will of a daughter was an affair which ought not to enter into account in a marriage contract. The person who paid his addresses to me is a young gentleman, who methinks is fully equal to me in every estimable quality, and who has pressed his suit with redoubled earnestness each time I became a widow. But in obedience to his parents he had to marry likewise against his inclination, on the same day I was wedded to my astronomer. I shall be much indebted to Senor Gazel, would he inform me what is the usage or custom prevalent in his country, in this business of marrying off the daughters of a family; because although I have heard of many things wherein the Mahometan laws are not quite so favorable as are ours, I find no difference between being the slave of a husband or of a father, and particularly when from the circumstance of being the slave of a father there results the having a husband, as in the present case." LETTER LXXVI. From the same to the same. COQUETRY. Infinite are the caprices of the ton. One of those now ex isting is, ladies who do not know me except by name, and that too by having heard it, or by having been introduced, are writing me letters! Ever since that billet was published, which the first wrote me and which I sent you, many have been placed in the same situation. I will transmit to you in like manner all which I deem worthy of crossing the sea, to divert a wise African with the extravagances of Europe, and without loss of mail this copy shall go by the next post. Lay aside for a little while, my venerable Ben-Beley the serious aspect of your age and character. I have heard you a thousand times say, that a little while spent in pastime is wont to leave the mind more composed to devote itself again to sublime speculations. I recollect having seen you sporting with a bird in a cage, or a flower in the garden: at no time did you appear to me more of a philosopher. A great man never is greater than when he descends to the level of inferior minds; besides, this unbending allows him to ascend again to the high elevation to which the ray of the sublime essence which animates us, is capable of exalting him. Thus the letter reads: "Senor Moor:-the French ladies have a certain diversion which they call coquetry, and is a deceit constantly practised upon all who are presented to them. The coquette enjoys herself highly, because she has at her disposal every young gentleman of any merit, and the will of self-love is much flattered by such incense. But as the French take up and throw away with sufficient levity some things, and among these love is included, the consequences of a thousand coquetries end in the discomfiture of the suitor, whereupon he reflects but for a moment, and then immediately goes with his censer to another altar. The Spaniards are more formal in this business of falling in love; and as all that ancient apparatus of gallantry, obstacles to be overcome, difficulties to be anticipated, servants to be bribed; as all this, I repeat, is vanished, they begin to be consumed the instant they fall in love with a coquet; and the affair is wont to rest here, until, long after the joke which they have played upon him is known, the lover dies, turns crazy, or at least, resolves to absent himself in despair. I am one of the most celebrated in this profession; and I cannot but recollect with peculiar satisfaction the victims who have sacrificed themselves in my temple and for my worship. If among the Moors they give us one day a similar despotism (which will be the moment those severe laws of the seraglios are annulled,) and if the Moorish ladies desire to admit some of their Spanish sisters professors of this new science, to this day unknown in Africa, I promise that in consequence of my lectures and those of half a dozen of my friends, there shall issue forth in a short time a sufficient number of disciples to pay back upon the Mussulman, in a few weeks, all the tyranny which they have exercised upon us, from Mahomet himself to the present day. Since the dominion of my sex over the other increases in proportion to the heat of the climate, as has been put to the proof in the short distance from the passage of the Pyrenees, the coquettes of Morocco ought to expect to realize a despotism, such as the human imagination in its boldest flights has hardly yet conceived, over every one in the northern provinces of that empire." N. L. |