The Modern Griselda

coming. She recollected the time when every thing she wore was becoming in somebody's eyes--but that time, alas! was completely past; and she only wished that she could forget that it had ever been.

"To have been happy, is additional misery."

This misery may appear comic to some people, but it certainly was not so to our heroine's unfortunate husband. It was in vain, that in mitigation of his offence he pleaded total want of knowledge in the arcana of the toilette--absolute inferiority of taste--and a willing submission to the decrees of fashion.

This submission was called indifference--this calmness construed into contempt. He stood convicted of having said, that the lady's dress was unbecoming--she was certain that he thought more than he said, and that every thing about her was grown disagreeable to him.

It was in vain he represented, that his affection had not been created, and could not be annihilated, by such trifles; that it rested on the solid basis of esteem.

Esteem