How, my Charlotte! Slake you no difference between being every-thing and nothing?

Were it not, my dear ladies, proceeded he, for male protectors, to what insults, to what outrages, would not your sex be subject? Pardon me, my dear, if I strengthen my argument by your excel-encics, bowing to his Harriet. Is net the dear creature our good Mrs. Shirley’s own daughter? AU the feminine graces are hers. She is, in my notion* what all women should be But wants she not a protector? Even a dream, a reverie

O Sir, spare me, spare me! sweetly blushing, said the lovely Harriet. I own I should have made a very silly, a very pusillanimous man! It is not long since, you know, Lady G. that I brought this very argument in favour of

Hush, Harriet! You will give up the female cause.

That is not fair, Charlotte, rejoined my brother; you should not intercept the convictions of an inge-nuous mind But I tmll spare my Harriet, if she will endeavour, for her own sake, to let nothing disturb her for the future but realities, and not any of those long, if they are inevitable ones.

But pray, Sir, said I, proceed in your argument, if you have any more to say.

O Charlotte! I have enough to say, to silence all your opposition, were I to give this subject its due weight. But we are only, for pleasantry-sake, skim-ming over the surface of the argument. Weaker powers are given generally for weaker purposes, in the ixconomy of Providence. I, however, disap-prove not of our venerable Mrs. Shirley’s observa — tion; That we are apt to consider the sex too much as a species apart: yet it is my opinion, that both God and nature have designed a very apparent dif-ference in the minds of both, as well as in the pecu — liar beauties of their persons. Were it not so, their offices would be confounded, and the women would not perhaps so readily submit to those domestic ones in which it is their province to shine, and the men would be allotted the distaff, or the needle; and you yourselves, ladies, would be the first to despise such. I would only contend, that we men should have power and right given us to protect and serve your sex; that we should purchase and build for them; travel and toil for them; run through, at the call of Providence, or of our king and country, dangers and difficulties; and, at last, lay all our trophies, ail our acquirements, at your feet; enough rewarded in the consciousness of duty done, and your favourable acceptance.

We were all of us again his humble servants. It was in vain to argue the tyranny of some husbands, when he could turn upon us the follies of some wives; and that wives and daughters were never more faulty, more undomestic, than at present; and when we were before a judge, who, though he could not be absolutely unpolite, would not flatter us, nor spare our foibles.