Well, hut how do you, my love? For Heaven’s sake, he well. Could I make you speak out, could I make you complain, I should have some hope of you: but so sorrowful when alone, as we plainly see, yet aiming to be so cheerful in company O my dear! you must be gluttonous of grief in your soli-tary hours. But what though the man be Sir Charles Grandison; Is not the woman Harriet Byron?

Lady L. tells me, that Olivia behaved like a distracted woman, when she took leave of her on her setting out to return to Italy. She sometimes wept, sometimes raved, and threatened. Wretched woman! Surely she will not attempt the life of the man she so ungovernably loves! Our case, Harriet, is not so hard as hers: but she will sooner get over her talk-ative, than you will your silent love. When a per — son can rave, the passion is not dangerous. If the head be safe, pride and supposed slight will in time harden the heart of such a one; and her love will be swallowed up by resentment.

You complimented me on my civility to my good man, all the time we were with you. Indeed 1 was very civil to him. It is now become a habit, and I verily think that it looks well in man and wife to behave prettily to each other before company. I now-and-then, however, sit down with a full design to make him look about him; but he is so obliging, that I am constrained, against my intention, to let the fit go oft”, without making him wry serious.

Am I conceited, Harriet? Which of the two silly folks, do you think, has most (Not wit Wit is a foolish thing, but) understanding? 1 think the woman has it, all to nothing. Now don’t mortify me. If you pretend to dmibt, I will be sure. Upon my word, my dear, I am an excellent creature, su think-N ing, so assured, to behave so obligingly as I do to Lord G. Never, unless a woman has as much pru-dence as your Charlotte, let her wed a man who has less understanding than herself. But women marry not so much now for love, or fitness of tempers, as for the liberty of gadding abroad with less censure, and less controul And yet, now I think of it, we need only to take a survey of the flocks of single women which crowd to Ranelagh and Vauxhall markets, dressed out to be cheapened, not purchased, to be convinced that the maids are as much above ‘either shame or controul, as the wives. But were not fathers desirous to get the drugs off their hands (to express myself in young Danby’s saucy stile) these freedoms would not be permitted. As for mothers, many of them are for escorting their daugh-ters to public places, because they themselves like racketing., But how, Charlotte methinks you ask, do these reflections on your own sex square with what you said above of the preference of women to men? How! I’ll tell you. The men who frequent those places are still more silly than we. Is it their inter-est to join in this almost universal dissipation? And would the women crowd to market, if there were not men?