Your ladyship confines your enquiries to her per-son, you tell me: and you own, that women are much more solicitous about the beauties of that, than of the mind. Perhaps it may be so; and that their envy is much sooner excited by the one than the other. But who, madam, can describe the per-son of Miss Harriet Byron, and her person only; animated as every feature is by a mind that bespeaks all human excellence, and dignifies her in every air, in every look, in every motion?

No man living has a greater passion for beauty than I have. Till I knew Miss Byron, I was one of those who regarded nothing else in the sex. Indeed, I considered all intellectual attainments as either useless or impertinent in women. Your ladyship knows what were my free notions on this head, and has rebuked me for them. A wise, a learned lady, I considered as a very unnatural character. I wanted women to be all love, and nothing else. A very little prudence allowed I to enter into their composition; just enough to distinguish the man of sense from the fool; and that for my own sake. You know I have vanit}^ madam: but lovely as Miss Byron’s person is, I defy the greatest sensualist on earth not to admire her mind more than her person. What a triumph would the devil have, as I have often thought, when I have stood contemplating her per-fections, especially at church, were he able to raise up a man that could lower this angel into woman? — Pardon me! — Your ladyship knows my mad way of saying every thing that rises to my thoughts.

Sweetness of temper must make plain features glow: what an effect must it then have upon fine ones? Never was there a sweeter-tempered woman. Indeed from sixteen to twenty, all the sex (kept in humour by their hopes, and by their attractions) are said to be good-tempered; but she is remarka-bly so. She is just turned of twenty, but looks not more than seventeen. Her beauty hardly yet in its full blow, will last longer, I imagine, than in an ear-lier blossom. Yet the prudence visible in her whole aspect, gave her a distinction, even at twelve, that promised what she would be at a riper age.

Yet with all this reigning good-nature visible in her face and manner, there is such a native dignity in all she says, in all she does (though mingled with a frankness that shews her mind’s superiority to the minds of almost all other women) that it damps and suppresses, in the most audacious, all imaginations of bold familiarity.

I know not, by my soul, how she does this nei-ther: yet so it is. She jests; she raillies: but I cannot railly her again. Love, it is said, dignifies the adored object. Perhaps it is that which awes me.