young and gay; but if we consider seriously, we shall find that it is virtue, good sense, sweetness of disposition, and complaisance, of which the girdle of Cytheria should be com posed. The finest face in the world, without them, will not long maintain its empire over the heart of a man of understanding, as the poet truly says,

"Beauty soon grows familiar to the eye;

"Virtue alone has charms that never die."

Do not think, however, that I am glad to find you are more on a level, than before this accident, with the greatest part of our sex: I confess the beauties of the person greatly set off and render those of the mind conspicuous, and for this reason should lament extremely any defect in the one, if I were not certain that you had enough of the other to engross the whole attention of as many as know you; and that they may every day increase in the lustre of true diguity, is the sincere wish of, my dear Ophelia, Yours sincerely.

Madam,

LETTER XXXII.

From a Lady, lately brought to bed.

I HAVE now the pleasure of informing you, that we have another person added to our family; you I am sure will be glad to find that I am able to tell you so. happily brought to bed three weeks ago.

I was

O my friend! how delightfully does the mind glow with gratitude, thus rising from the struggles of convulsive pangs, from the languor of expiring life! The dear helpless infant too, the subject of our future care and joy! with what new, what tender sensations do we view the little gift of nature confided to our protection! Methought a beam of heavenly comfort shot through my soul! Ease, joy,-transporting joy, and mingled fondness, all delight, ecstacy and love! My heart o'erflowed at once with gratitude and the softest maternal affection. Though I am as well as can be expected, my head is still very weak; indeed my eyes fail me, and I am forced to conclude.

Your most affectionate humble servant.

LETTER XXXIII.

From a Lady to her Husband, who was jealous of her,

My dear Husband,

you

MRS. W——————, who kindly wrote to you by my desire, has done me the friendship and justice to send me your letter, and directed me to make an apology to you in her behalf for the step she has taken: but I am so terrified, so amazed at the contents, that I know not what I do.-Speak to you I cannot, but I can tell the truth in writing; and the truth, my dear, is this: I never swerved from my duty to you, in any respect; I never had a thought to your disadvantage, nor ever did any thing with design to make you uneasy. If my gay deportment displeased you, or any part of my conduct gave you pain, you should have told me so-indeed should and have prevented me from going on in a daily course of disobliging you. Had you given me the least hint of your uneasiness, (and sure it would have come better from you, and with less pain to me, than from any other) I should have immediately changed my conduct; for a more restrained behaviour will be as easy to me as this. I can judge what you feel, from the pain any apprehension of this kind would have given me; and I am truly unhappy in having been the cause of making you so. I don't blame you, my dear, for this groundless suspicion, (though it reflects upon my character) because I believe it proceeds from the affection you bear me; but lest any mutual friends, who are often mutual enemies, should have done me this kindness, I beg for your sake, as well as my own, that my conduct may be brought to strict and severe scrutiny; and that you will do me the justice and kindness, to write down every thing that you have heard or seen amiss in me, that I may have an opportunity of clearing up every doubt that may be fixed in your mind; for till that is done it will be impossible for us to be perfectly happy. I am, and ever shall be, Your faithful and affectionate wife.

Sir,

LETTER XXXIV.

Advising a Friend against going to law.

I AM sorry to hear that the difference between you and Mr. Archer is at last likely to be brought to a law suit

I wish you would take it into your serious consideration before you proceed, because it will hardly he in your power to end it when you please. For you immediately put the matter out of your own hands, into the hands of those whose interest it is to protract the suit from term to term, and who will as absolutely prescribe to you in it, as your physician in a dangerous illness.

The law, my good friend, I look upon, more than any one thing, as the proper punishment of an over hasty and per verse spirit, and it is a punishment that follows an act of a man's own seeking and choosing. You will not consent per haps now to submit the matter in dispute to reference; but let me tell you, that after you have expended large sums of money, and squandered away a deal of time in attendance on your lawyers, and preparations for hearing, one term after another, you will probably be of another mind, and be glad seven years hence to leave it to that arbitration which you now refuse. He is happy who is wise by other men's misfor tunes, says the common adage; and why, when you have heard from all your acquaintance, who have tried the expe riment, what a grievous thing the law is, will you, notwith standing, pay for that wisdom which you may have at the cost of others?

The representation that was once hung up as a sign in the rolls of liberty, on one side, a man all in rags, wringing his hands, with a label, importing that he had lost his suit; and on the other, a man that had not a rag left, but stark naked, capering and triumphing, that he had carried his cause, was a fine emblem of going to law, and the infatuating madness of a litigious spirit.

How excellent to this purpose is the advice of our blessed Saviour, rather than seek this redress against any who would even take one's coat, to give him his cloak also! For besides the Christian doctrine inculcated by this precept, it will be found, as the law is managed, and the uncertainty that at tends even the best grounded litigations, that such a pacific spirit may be deemed the only way to preserve the rest of one's garments, and prevent one's being stript to the skin. Moreover, what wise man would rush upon a proceeding, where the principal men of the profession (though the oath they take, if serjeants, obliges them not to sign a sham plea, nor plead in a cause against their own opinion) are not ashamed, under the specious but scandalous notion, of doing the best they can for their client, to undertake, for the sake of a

paltry fee, to whiten over the blackest cause, and to defeat the justest? Where your property may depend altogether upon the impudence of an eloquent pleader, asserting any thing, a perjured evidence swearing whatever will do for his suborner's purpose? Where the tricks and mistakes of prac tisers, and want of trifling forms, may nonsuit you? Where deaths of persons made parties to the suit, may cause all to begin again? What wise man I say, would subject himself to these vexations and common incidents in the law, if he could any way avoid it; together with the intolerable expenses and attendance consequent on a law suit; besides the fears, the cares, the anxieties, that revolve with every term, and engross all a man's thoughts? Where legal proofs must be given to the plainest facts; that a living man is living, and identically himself, and that a dead man is dead and buried by certificate; where evidence is brought at a great expense to hands and seals affixed to deeds and receipts, that never were before questioned; till a cause shall be split into several under ones; these tried term by term; and years elapse before the main point comes to be argued, though originally there was but one single point, as you apprehended, in the question. As to the law part, only observe the process: First comes the declaration; 2dly, a plea; 3dly, a demurrer to the plea; 4thly, a joinder in demurrer; 5thly, a rejoinder; 6thly, a surrejoinder; which sometimes is conclusive, sometimes to begin all over again. Then may succeed trials on the law part, and trials upon the equity part; oftentimes new trials, or rehearings; and these followed by writs of errour.

Then you may be plunged into the bottomless gulf of chancery, where you begin with bills and answers, containing hundreds of sheets at exorbitant prices, fifteen lines in a sheet, and six words in a line (and a stamp to every sheet), barefacedly so contrived to pick your pocket: Then follow all the train of examinations, interrogatories, exceptions, bills amended, references for scandal and impertinence, new allegations, new interrogatories, new exceptions, on pretence of insufficient answers, replies, rejoinders and surre joinders; till at last, when you have danced through this blessed round of preparation, the hearing before the master of the rolls comes next: appeals follow from his honour to the chancellor, then from the chancellor to the house of lords, and sometimes the parties are sent down from thence for a new trial in the courts below. What wise man, per

mit me to repeat it, would enter himself into this confound ing circle of the law?

I hope, dear Sir, you will think of this matter most deliberately, before you proceed in your present angry purpose; and if you shall judge it proper to take my advice and avoid a law suit, I am sure you will have reason to thank me for it, and for the zeal wherewith I am,

Your sincere friend and servant.

LETTER XXXV.

To a Young Gentleman, on his entering into the world, with directions how to conduct himself.

My dear Friend,

YOUR apprenticeship is nearly out, and you are soon to set up for yourself; that approaching moment is a critical one for you, and an anxious one for me. A tradesman, who would succeed in his way, must begin by establishing a character of integrity and good manners; without the former, nobody will go to his shop at all; without the latter, nobody will go there twice. This rule does not exclude the fair arts of trade. He may sell his goods at the best price he can, within certain bounds. He may avail himself of the humour, the whims, and the fantastical notions of his customers; but what he warrants to be good, must be really so; what he seriously asserts must be true, or his first fraudulent-practices will soon end in a bankruptcy. It is the same in higher life, and in the great business of the world. A man who does not solidly establish, and really deserve a character of truth, probity, good manners, and good morals, at his first setting out in the world, may impose, and shine like a meteor for a very short time, but will soon vanish, and be extinguished with contempt. People easily pardon in young men, the common irregularities of the senses; but they do not forgive the least vice of the heart. The heart never grows better by age: I fear worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older. But should a bad young heart, accompa nied with a good head (which by the way is very seldom the case) really reform in a more advanced age, from a consci ousness of its folly, as well as of its guilt; such a conversion would only be thought prudential and political, but never sincere. I hope in God, and I verily believe, that you