Your faithful

LUCY.

Letter XLIII.

Lady G. To Lady Grandison-V.

Tlnir;day, April 12. I A>r very well Wliat’s the matter with the wo-men! I uv7/ write! Fifteen days controul and caudle Why surely!

Thev are impertinent, my dear; and would take mv pen and ink from me! ‘i’hey want uie to appear to be more weak and tender than I am. “Custoai.” Hang custom! I am above it.

You do v.el!, Harriet, to throw upon mc your self-condemning task. rioweonseiou^ youare, wlicnycu tell mc, before you know my opinion of the contents of Lucy’s let-ter, that you will not subscribe implicitly to my de termination! But [ will not spare you. In my con demnation o^ ihem, vndiiiijour oivn, thus directed:

TO MISS LUCY SELBY, AND THE REST OF THE GIRLS AT SELBV-HOCSE,

Greeting,

You appeal to Harriet, and revoke your appeal: you appeal to me, and withdraw it in the same letter A parcel of chits! You know not what you would have; what you vvould be; and hardly what you are: you can have the sauciness in more places than one, to reflect upon me your judge. But are you not convinced by the solid arguments of Mrs. Shirley? and her Mrs. Eggleton? If you are not, what strange creatures are girls from sixteen to twenty-two! Don’t boys read romances as vvcll as girls? Yet, in these latter days, do the glaring absurdities influence them so much in love-matters, or last so long? Foolish things! would you give tiie preference against your-selves to the other sex?

Harriet, I think, was a romantic girl, when she made her declarations of one man only, or no one, for a husband. I did let her know my mind at the time by hints: but had my brother actually married Clementina: not only I, but her grandmother Shirley, and aunt Selby, and uncle too (odd soul as he is in some things) would have spoken out in favour of the young Earl of D. And had it not been with success, after a proper time had passed, I, for my part, would have set her down as a very silly girl; inferior, in this respect, to you, Lucy, and to twenty more 1 could name: for how {cw of us are there, who have their first loves? And indeed how few flrst loves are fit to

SIR CIIAIILES GRANDISON. 22^ be encouraged? You know my thoughts, Lucy, of a beginning love, in a young bosom* A very, very silly and childish aftair, believe me.

Let me enumerate a few cliances that may render the success of a first love impracticable.