by reflection, your lewd and vicious men believe they have learned by experience. They have seen the poor husband fo misled by tricks and artifices, and in the midst of his inquiries so loft and bewildered in a crooked intrigue, that they still fufpect an under-plot in every female action; and especially where they fee any resemblance in the behaviour of two perfons, are apt to fancy it proceeds from the fame design in both. These men therefore bear hard upon the suspected perfon, purfue her close through all her turnings and windings, and are too well acquainted with the chace, to be flung off by any false steps or doubles. Befides their acquaintance and conversation has lain wholly among the vicious part of womankind, and therefore it is no wonder they cenfure all alike, and look upon the whole fex as a species of impoftors. But if, notwithstanding their private experience, they can get over these prejudices, and entertain a favourable opinion of fome women; yet their own loofe defires will stir up new fufpicions from another fide, and make them believe all men subject to the fame inclinations with themselves.

Whether these or other motives are most predominant, we learn from the modern histories of America, as well as from our own experience in this part of the world, that jealousy is no northern paffion, but rages most in those nations that lie nearest the influence of the fun. It is a misfortune for a woman to be born beneath the tropics; for there lie the hottest regions of jealoufy, which as you come northward cools all along with the climate, till you scarce meet with any thing like it in the polar circle. Our own nation is very temperately fituated in this respect; and if we meet with fome very few difordered with the violence of this paffion, they are not the proper growth of our country, but are many degrees nearer the fun in their constitutions than in their climate.

After this frightful account of jealousy, and the persons who are most subject to it, it will be but fair to shew by what means the paffion may be best allayed, and those who are possessed with it, fet at ease. Other faults indeed are not under the wife's jurisdiction, and should, if poffible, escape her observation; but jealousy calls upon her particularly for its cure, and deferves all her art and application in the attempt. Befides, she has this for her encouragement, that her endeavours will be always pleasing, and that she will still find the affection of her husband rifing towards her in proportion as his doubts and fufpicions vanish ; for, as we have feen all along, there is so great a mixture of love in jealousy as is well worth the feparation. But this shall be the subject of another paper.

SPECTATOR, Vol. III. No. 170.

Having in my yesterday's paper discovered the nature of jealoufy, and pointed out the perfons who are most subject to it, I must here apply myself to my fair correspondents, who defire to live well with a jealous husband, and to ease his mind of its unjust suspicions.

The first rule I shall propose to be observed is, that you never feem to diflike in another what the jealous man is himself guilty of, or to admire any thing in which he himself does not excel. A jealous man is very quick in his applications, he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a satire on himself out of a panegyrie on another. He does not trouble himself to confider the person, but to direct the character, and is secretly pleased or confounded as he finds more or less of himself in it. The commendation of any thing in another stirs up his jealoufy, as it shews you have a value for others besides himself; but the commendation of that, which he himself wants, inflames him more, as it shews that in some respects you prefer others before him. Jealousy is admirably described in this view by Horace in his Ode to Lydia:

Quum tu, Lydia, Telephi

Cervicem rajeam, et cerea Telephi

Laudas brachia, ve meum

Fervens difficili bile tumet jecur :

Tunc nec mens mihi, nec color

VOL. II.

Certa fede manet; humor et in genas

S

Furtim labitur, arguens

Quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus.

Od. 13. 1. 1.

When Telephus his youthful charms,
His rosy neck and winding arms,
With endless rapture you recite,
And in the pleasing name delight;
My heart, inflam'd by jealous heats,
With numberless resentments beats;
From my pale cheek the colour flies,
And all the man within me dies :
By turns my hidden grief appears,
In rifing fighs and falling tears,
That shew too well the warm defires,
The filent, flow, consuming fires,
Which on my inmost vitals prey,
And melt my very foul away.

The jealous man is not indeed angry if you dislike another; but if you find those faults which are to be found in his own character, you discover not only your diflike of another, but of himself. In short, he is so defirous of engrossing all your love, that he is grieved at the want of any charm, which he believes has power to raise it; and if he finds by your cenfures on others, that he is not so agreeable in your opinion as he might be, he naturally concludes you could love Chim better if he had other qualifications, and that by confcquence your affection does not rise so high as he thinks it ought. If therefore his temper be grave or fullen, you must not be too much pleased with a jest, or transported with any thing that is gay and diverting. If his beauty be none of the best, you must be a profeffed admirer of prudence, or any other quality he is master of, or at least vain enough to think he is.

In the next place, you must be sure to be free and open in your conversation with him, and to let in light upon your actions, to unravel all your designs, and discover every fecret, however trifling or indifferent. A jealous husband has a particular averfion to winks and whispers, and if he does not fee to the bottom of every thing, will be sure to go beyond it in his fears and in his fufpicions. He will always expect to be your chief confidante, and where he finds himself kept our of a fecret, will believe there is more in it than there should be. And here it is of great concern, that you preferve the character of your fincerity uniform and of a piece; for if he once finds a false glofs put upon any fingle action, he quickly suspects all the reft; his working imagination immediately takes a false hint, and runs off with it into several remote confequences, till he has proved very ingenious in working out his own mifery.

If both these methods fail, the best way will be to let him fee you are much cast down and afflicted for the ill opinion he entertains of you, and the disquietude he himself fuffers for your fake. There are ma-ny who take a kind of barbarous pleasure in the jealoufy of those who love them, and infult over an aching heart, and triumph in their charms which are able: to excite fo much uneasiness.

Ardeat ipfa licet, tormentis gaudit amantis.

Juv. Sat. 6. v. 208.

Tho' equal pains her peace of mind destroy,
A lover's torments give her spiteful joy.

But these often carry the humour so far, till their af-fected coldness and indifference quite kills all the fondness of a lover, and are then fure to meet in their turn with all the contempt and scorn that is due to fo infolent a behaviour. On the contrary, it is very probable a melancholy, dejected carriage, the usual effects of injured innocence, may soften the jealous husband into pity, make him sensible of the wrong he does you, and work out of his mind all those fears and fufpicions that make you both unhappy. At least it will have this good effect, that he will keep his jealousy to himself, and repine in private, either because he is sensible it isa weakness, and therefore hide it from your knowledge, or because he will be apt to fear fome ill.

1

effect it may produce, in cooling your love tewards him, or diverting it to another.

There is still another secret that can never fail, if you can once get it believed, and which is often practised by women of greater cunning than virtue: This is to change fides for a while with the jealous man, and to turn his own paffion upon himself; to take fome occafion of growing jealous of him, and to follow the example he himself hath fet you. This counterfeited jealousy will bring him a great deal of pleafure, if he thinks it real; for he knows experimentally how much love goes along with this passion, and will befides feel fomething like the fatisfaction of a revenge, in feeing you undergo all his own tortures. But this, indeed, is an artifice so difficult, and at the fame time fo difingenuens, that it ought never to be put in practice, but by such as have skill enough to cover the deceit, and innocence to render it excufable.

I shall conclude this essay with the story of Herod and Mariamne, as I have collected it out of Jofephus; which may ferve almost as an example to whatever can be faid on this subject.

Mariamne had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth, could give a woman, and Hered all the love that fuch charms are able to raise in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of this his fondness for Mariamne, he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Antony, who immediately fummoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was there laid to his charge. Herod attributed the fummons to Antony's defire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death, if any fuch violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured, with all his art and Thetoric, to fet out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconfiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind