Ar the outset, let us boldly confess that, for the present, at any rate, we don't intend to display anything else than a little subtlety in avoiding the main issues of the great Marriage Question. We shall not say one word now of the objects, rewards, forfeitures, of marriage; of hasty marriages, or of marriage as the result "of a long engagement;" of marriages for love, money, or any other consideration. No; we are inflexible-we won't look at matrimony other than from one point of view at present. We refuse to speak our thoughts, on this occasion, with as much firmness as we should refuse, being no way skilled in dental surgery, to extract one of our reader's teeth.

But when we have to tell how Master Richard Gibson, dwarf, painter in oils and water-colour, Page of the Back Stairs to Charles I.—and, we might have been tempted to add, tiny plaything generally with the full-blown beauties who graced the King's court, and sat for their portraits to Sir Peter Lely, like his contemporary, puny, irascible, ugly, homicidal little Jeffery Hudson-only truth compels us to say that he was not at all this manner of little man, but, on the contrary, a miniature version of a graceful, accomplished, well-bred English painter;-when we have to narrate how this compendious artist was wedded to his no less compendious bride, we cannot help admitting just so much of the philosophy of matrimony as relates to choice in marriage into this sketch.

Fate, destiny, chance, it would appear, then, direct our choice in marriage; but sometimes, as in the case of the maiden who "was married one morning as she went into the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit," the bride must be selected because of some peculiar fitness which induces the husband to make his "choice in marriage" after the most expeditious fashion. When we make known our discovery as to the reason why Master Richard Gibson decided to wed Mistress Anne Shepherd, our insight into the harmony and fitness of things matrimonial

will be admitted instantly. Master Richard Gibson was three feet ten inches high; Mistress Anne Shepherd was just two inches short of four feet! We expect our readers to accord us the full measure of applause due to such penetration of intellect !

History-apparently considering she has done enough, for so small a subject, in informing us that, on the day when Master Richard Gibson led Mistress Anne Shepherd to the altar, the King of England and his Queen Henrietta honoured the wedding with their presence, and that Charles I. himself gave away the bride -refuses to gratify our curiosity as to the antecedents of the bridegroom, except to a very limited extent. She has very little to say about him indeed. As for the bride, she only takes notice of the little lady while under the shadow of royalty, at the altar; and, so far as we have been able to learn, never directly speaks of her afterwards. A poet was, however, ready to immortalize the pair. Waller sang on their marriage-day

"Design, or chance, makes others wive;
But Nature did this match contrive;
Eve might as well have Adam fled,
As she denied her little bed

To him, for whom Heaven seemed to frame,
And measure out, this only dame.

Thrice happy is that humble pair,
Beneath the level of all care!

Over whose heads those arrows fly,
Of sad distrust and jealousy;

Secured in as high extreme,

As if the world held none but them.

To him the fairest nymphs do show,
Like moving mountains topp'd with snow;
And every man a Polypheme,
Does to his Galatea seem;

None may presume her faith to prove;
He proffers death that proffers love.

Ah! Chloris! that kind Nature thus
From all the world had severed us;
Creating for ourselves us two,
As Love has me for only you!"

In his youth, Gibson was page to "a lady living at Mortlake." A clever, discriminating, worthy lady she was, however; for she discovered traits in the tiny youth's character which made him worth a better fate than that which awaited him as a toy and butt for fashionable ladies' and gallants' wit. This nameless, excellent woman placed Gibson under Francis de Cleyn to learn drawing. He rapidly displayed great talent, and in a few years he copied many of Sir P. Lely's portraits with so much success as to gain him a place near the Sovereign. Charles I. fostered painting and the arts if he erred in other respects; and when he gave the post of Page of the Back Stairs to Gibson, we may be sure that the little man's talent attached a dignity to him which effectually protected him from the courtiers' ridicule. The King himself so highly appreciated his excellence as a painter, that he desired Vanderdoort, the keeper of the pictures, to lay up carefully a small water-colour subject, "The Parable of the Lost Sheep," by him. So completely did Vanderdoort carry out his Sovereign's commands, that when the King asked for the picture, the keeper could not find it, and hanged himself in despair. After his death, however, his executors found and restored it.

Sir P. Lely, Vandyke, and Dobson painted Gibson and his wife. Of Gibson's own artistic efforts, it may be said that he worked best in water-colour, and through his long life painted people of a very different stamp. He copied Queen Henrietta's portrait by Vandyke; Cromwell he painted several times. The Gibsons had a large family-nine in all, five of whom lived to maturity, every one of them being, unlike their parents, of the ordinary height of mankind. Gibson died in his seventy-fifth year, but his wife reached the age of eighty-nine.

せ

1

MAY, BEAUTIFUL MAY!
"Rosy-footed May," as it
has been poetically called, is
one of the most charming, if

not the most charming, months in

the year. On this account, we have chosen

to usher in with its buds and blossoms, its haw-
thorn-flowers, its scents and sunshine, our NEW

SERIES of the ENGLISHWOMAN'S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE. In
this delightful month

"One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms"

adorns our meadows, hedges, orchards, and gardens, and gives promise of the rich harvest of various fruits and flowers which we may hope to enjoy in the coming seasons of Nature's luxuriance. Indeed, we take May, on the present occasion, to be figuratively prophetic of the "shower of mingled blossoms" with which we trust the literature of our own pages will "blush" every month in the year, even although "gloomy December" may touch, with withering hand, all things else beside.

May, lovely May! we hail thee, with all thy blessed bounteousness, and regard thee as a frontier province standing between spring and summer, and participating in the beauties, the sweets, the riches of both. Thou art the fifth month of the year, and, some say, receivedst thy name from the Roman Romulus, out of respect to his nobles and senators, who were called majores. Others, however, affirm that thou wert designated after Maia, the mother of Mercury, and the brightest of the Pleiades. It mattereth little, however, after whom thou wert called, as, without dispute, thou art the Goddess of Spring, and must, according to Peacham, be drawn with a "sweet and amiable countenance, clad in a robe of white and green, and embroidered with daffodils, hawthorns, and blue-bottles." But we must reluctantly bid thee adieu, to speak of the customs which "merry England" has, from time immemorial, celebrated on thy opening day.

In England, the First of May has, in rural districts especially, been always held as a day or festivity. May-poles of great height, and profusely adorned with garlands, were wont to be generally-we had almost said universally-erected in honour of that day; and round them the peasantry would dance and make merry for hours together. Even in London this was the case.

"Amidst the area wide they took their stand,

Where the tall May-pole once o'erlooked the Strand."

This was a little way to the east of Somerset House. These were the light-hearted, hilarious, and sociable times, when even the priests joined with the people, and went in procession, on the May morning, to some adjoining wood, where the much-prized pole was cut down and borne

triumphantly into the city. Not only the priests and the people, however, but the Kings and Queens of England, threw aside their cares on May-day, and entered into the innocent enjoyments of rustic life. Did not Henry VIII. ride a-maying from Greenwich to Shooter's Hill, with his Queen Catharine, accompanied by many lords and ladies? But every man, according to old John Stowe, would "walk into the sweet meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of birds praising God in their kind." As the birds in their way, so the poets in theirs. They, too, have poured forth their songs in prayerful gratitude for the month of May, and have, at the same time, rejoiced in the goodness of that All-Creative Being who, on the wide field of Nature, has spread around them the countless delights of

Listen to their songs.

Spring.

"Beauteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire."

FAIR pledges of a fruitful tree,
Why do ye fall so fast?
Your date is not so past

But you may stay yet here awhile,
To blush and gently smile,
And go at last.
What! were ye born to be
An hour or half's delight,
And so to bid good-night?
'Tis pity Nature brought ye forth
Merely to show your worth,
And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we
May read how soon things have
Their end, though ne'er so brave;

Song to May.

MAY! Queen of Blossoms,

And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music

Shall we charin the hours?
Wilt thou have pipe and reed,
Blown in the open mead,
Or to the lute give heed
In the green bowers?
Thou hast no need of us,
Or pipe or wire,
That hast the golden bee
Ripened with fire;

And many thousands more
Songsters that thee adore,
Filling earth's grassy floor
With new desire.

Thou hast thy mighty herds,
Tame and free livers;
Doubt not, thy music too,
In the deep rivers;
And the whole plumy flight,
Warbling the day and night,
Up at the gates of light,
See, the lark quivers.
When, with the jacinth,

Coy fountains are tressed,
And for the mournful bird
Green woods are dressed,
That did for Tereus pine;
Then shall our songs be thine,
To whom our hearts incline:
May, be thou blessed!

LORD THURLOW, 1732-1826.