What can you mean, my dear, by exulting so much over your aunt, for living to an advanced age, a single woman? However ineffectual, let me add to my former expostulatory thidings on this subject: Would you have one think you are overjoyed, that you have so soon put it out of any one’s power to reproach you on the like account? If so, you ought to be more thankful than you seem to be, to Lord G. who has extended his generosity to you, and kept you from the odium. Upon my word, my dear Lady G. I think it looks like a want of decency in women to cast reflections on others of their sex, possibly for their prudence and virtue. Do you consider how you exalt, byyourludicrous freedoms, the men whom sometimes you affect to despise? No wonder if they ridicule old maids. It is their interest to do so. Lords of the creation, sometimes you deridingiy call the insulters; lords of the creation, indeed you make them! And pray, do you think, that the same weakness which made your aunt Graudison tell her dreams, in the joy of her heart, as an old maid, might not have made her guilty of the same foible, had she been an old wife? Joy is the parent of many a silly thing. Don’t you own, that the arrival of your brother, which made your aunt break out into dream-telling, made you break into laughter (even in a letter) of which you were ashamed to tell the cause? Wives, my dear, should not fall into th<e mistakes, for which they would make maids the subject of their ridicule. You know butter; and therefore should be above joining the foolish multitude, in a general cry to hunt down an unjuitunatc class of people (as you reckon them) of your own sex. Your aunt Grandison’s dreams, let me add, were more innocent, than your waking mirth You must excuse me I could say a great deal more upon the subject; but if I have not said enough to make you sorry for your fault, a great deal more would be ineffectual So much therefore for this subject.

Poor dear Emily! I wonder not at the effect the arrival, and first sight, of her guardian, had upon her tender heart.

But how wickedly do you treat your lord! Fie upon you, Charlotte! And fie upon you again, for writing what I cannot for your credit-sake read out to my friends. I wish, my dear, I could bring you to think, that there cannot be wit without justice; nor humour without decorum: my lord has some few foibles: but shall a wife be the first to discover them, and expose him for them? Cannot you cure him of them, without treating him with a ridicule which borders upon contempt? O my dear, you shew us much greater foibles in yourself, than my lord ever yet had when you make so bad an use of talents that were given you for better purposes. One word only more on this subject You cannot make me smile, my dear, when you are thus unsea-sonable in your mirth. Henceforth, then, remem — ber, that your excursiveuess (ailow me the word, I had a harsher in my head) upon old maids, and your lord, can only please yourself; and I will not accept of your compliment, because I will not be a partaker in your fault; as I should be, if I could countenance your levity.