the general subject of their satire. We should not prove the justice of their ridicule by our own indiscretions. But the traitor is within us. If we guard against ourselves, we may bid defiance to all the arts of man.

You know that my great objection to Mr Greville is for his immoralities. A man of free principles, shewn by practices as free, can hardly make a tender husband, were a woman able to get over considerations that she ought not to get over. Who shall trust for the performance of the second duties, the man who avowedly despises his first? Mr Greville had a good education; he must have taken pains to render vain the pious precepts of his worthy father; and still more to make a jest of them.

The

Three of his women we have heard of, besides her whom he brought with him from Wales. You know he has only affected to appear decent since he has cast his eyes upon me. man, my dear, must be an abandoned man, and must have a very hard heart, who can pass from woman to woman, without any remorse for a former, whom, as may be supposed, he has by the most solemn vows seduced. And whose leavings is it, my dear, that a virtuous woman takes, who marries a profligate?

Is it not reported that his Welshwoman, to whom, at parting, he gave not sufficient for a twelvemonth's scanty subsistence, is now upon the town? Vile man! he thinks it to his credit, I have heard, to own it a seduction, and that she was not a vicious creature till he made her so.

One only merit has Mr Greville to plead in this black transaction; it is, that he has, by his whole conduct in it, added a warning to our sex. And shall I, despising the warning, marry a man, who, specious as he is in his temper, and lively in his conversation, has shewn so bad a nature?

His fortune, as you say, is great. The more inexcusable, therefore, is he for his niggardliness to his Welshwoman. On his fortune he presumes; it will procure him a too easy forgiveness from others of our sex ; but fortune with; out merit will never do with me, were the man a prince.

You say, that if a woman resolves not to marry till she finds herself addressed by a man of strict virtue, she must be for ever single. If this be true, what wicked creatures are men! What a dreadful abuse of passions, given them for the noblest purposes, are they guilty of!

I have a very high notion of the marriage state. I remember what my uncle once averred; that a woman out of wedlock is half useless to the end of her being. How, indeed, do the duties of a good wife, of a good mother, and a worthy matron, well performed, dignify a woman! Let my aunt Selby's example, in her enlarged sphere, set against that of any single woman of like years, moving in her narrow circle, testify

the truth of the observation. My grandfather used to say, that families are little communities; that there are but few solid friendships out of them; and that they help to make up worthily, and to secure the great community, of which they are so many miniatures.

But yet it is my opinion, and I hope that I never by my practice shall discredit it, that a woman, who, with her eyes open, marries a profligate man, had, generally, much better remain single all her life; since it is very likely, that by such a step she defeats, as to herself, all the good ends of society. What a dreadful, what a presumptuous risk, runs she, who marries a wicked man, even hoping to reclaim him, when she cannot be sure of keeping her own principles !

"Be not deceived; evil communication corrupts good manners;" is a caution truly apostolical.

The text you mention of the unbelieving husband being converted by the believing wife, respects, as I take it, the first ages of Christianity; and is an instruction to the converted wife to let her unconverted husband see in her behaviour to him, "while he beheld her chaste conversation coupled with fear," the efficacy upon her own heart of the excellent doctrines she had embraced. It could not have in view the woman who, being single, chose a pagan husband in hopes of converting him. Nor can it give encouragement for a woman of virtue and religion to marry a profligate in hopes of reclaiming him.— "Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled ?"

As to Mr Fenwick, I am far from having a better opinion of him than I have of Mr Greville. You know what is whispered of him. He has more decency, however; he avows not free principles, as the other does. But you must have observed how much he seems to enjoy the mad talk and free sentiments of the other; and that other always brightens up, and rises in his freedoms and impiety, on Mr Fenwick's sly applauses and encouraging countenance. In a word, Mr Fenwick, not having the same lively things, nor so lively an air to carry them off, as Mr Greville has, though he would be thought not to want sense, takes pains to shew that he has as corrupt a heart. If I thought anger would not give him consequence, I should hardly forbear to shew myself displeased, when he points, by a leering eye, and by a broad smile, the free jest of the other, to the person present whom he thinks most apt to blush, as if for fear it should be lost; and still more, when on the mantling cheek's shewing the sensibility of the person so insulted, he breaks out into a loud laugh, that she may not be able to recover herself.

Surely these men must think us women egregious hypocrites; they must believe that we only affect modesty, and in our hearts approve of their freedom; for, can it be supposed, that such as call themselves gentlemen, and who have had

the education and opportunities that these two have had, would give themselves liberties of speech on purpose to affront us?

I hope I shall find the London gentlemen more polite than these our neighbours of the fox-chase; and yet hitherto I have seen no great cause to prefer them to the others. But about the court, and at the fashionable public places, I expect wonders. Pray Heaven, I may not be disappointed!

Thank Miss Orme, in my name, for the kind wishes she sends me. Tell her, that her doubts of my affection for her are not just; and that I do really and indeed love her. Nor should she want the most explicit declarations of my love, were I no more afraid of her in the character of a sister to a truly respectable man, than doubtful of her in that of a friend to me; in which latter light, I even joy to consider her. But she is a little naughty, tell her, because she is always leading to one subject. And yet, how can I be angry with her for it, if her good opinion of me induces her to think it in my power to make the brother happy, whom she so dearly and so deservedly loves? I cannot but esteem her for the part she takes.-And this it is that makes me afraid of the artlessly-artful Miss Orme.

It would look as if I thought my duty, and love, and respects, were questionable, if in every letter I repeated them to my equally honoured and beloved benefactors, friends, and favourers. Suppose them, therefore, always included in my subscription to you, my Lucy, when I tell you that I am, and will be,

Your ever-affectionate
HARRIET BYRON.

LETTER VII.

MR SELBY TO MISS BYRON.

Selby-House, Jan. 30. WELL! and now there wants but a London lover or two to enter upon the stage, and VanityFair will be proclaimed and directly opened. Greville everywhere magnifying you, in order to justify his flame for you; Fenwick exalting you above all women; Orme adoring you, and by his humble silence saying more than any of them; proposals, besides, from this man; letters from that! What scenes of flattery and nonsense have I been witness to for these past three years and a half, that young Mr Elford began the dance! Single! Well may you have remained single till this your twentieth year, when you have such choice of admirers, that you don't know which to have. So in a mercer's shop, the tradesman has fine time with you women; when variety of his rich wares distract you; and fifty to one at last, but, as well in men as in silks, you choose the worst, especially if the best is offer

ed at first, and refused. For women know better how to be sorry, than to amend.

"It is true," say you, "that we young women are apt to be pleased with admiration-" Oho! Are you so? And so I have gained one point with you at last, have I?

"But I have always endeavoured,” (and I, Harriet, wish you had succeeded in your endeavours), " to keep down any foolish pride."— Then you own that pride you have?-Another point gained! Conscience, honest conscience, will now-and-then make you women speak out. But, now I think of it, here is vanity in the very humility. Well, say you endeavoured, when female pride, like love, though hid under a barrel, will flame out at the bung.

Well, said I, to your aunt Selby, to your grandmamma, and to your cousin Lucy, when we all met to sit in judgment upon your letters, now I hope you'll never dispute with me more on this flagrant love of admiration, which I have so often observed swallows up the hearts and souls of you all; since your Harriet is not exempt from it; and since, with all her speciousness, with all her prudence, with all her caution, she (taken with a qualm of conscience) owns

it.

But, no, truly! all is right that you say; all is right that you do!-Your very confessions are brought as so many demonstrations of your diffidence, of your ingenuousness, and I cannot tell what.

Why, I must own, that no father ever loved his daughter as I love my niece; but yet, girl, your faults, your vanities, I do not love. It is my glory, that I think myself able to judge of my friends as they deserve; not as being my friends. Why, the best beloved of my heart, your aunt herself—you know, I value her now more, now less, as she deserves. But with all those I have named, and with all your relations, indeed, their Harriet cannot be in fault. And why? Because you are related to them; and because they attribute to themselves some merit from the relation they stand in to you. Supererogatorians all of them, (I will make words whenever I please,) with their attributions to you; and because you are of their sex, forsooth, and because I accuse you in a point in which you are all concerned, and so make a common cause of it.

Here one exalts you for your good sense; because you have a knack, by help of a happy memory, of making everything you read, and everything that is told you, that you like, your own, (your grandfather's precepts particularly); and because, I think, you pass upon us as your own what you have borrowed, if not stolen.

Another praises you for your good-nature.— The deuce is in it, if a girl who has crowds of admirers after her, and a new lover wherever she shews her bewitching face, who is blessed

with health and spirits, and has everybody for her friend, let her deserve it or not, can be illnatured. Who can such a one have to quarrel with, trow?

Another extols you for your cheerful wit, even when displayed, bold girl as you are, upon your uncle; in which, indeed, you are upheld by the wife of my bosom, whenever I take upon me to tell you what ye all, even the best of ye, are.

Yet sometimes they praise your modesty; and why your modesty? Because you have a skin in a manner transparent; and because you can blush-I was going to say, whenever you please. At other times, they will find out, that you have features equally delicate and regular; when I think, and I have examined them jointly and separately, that all your takingness is owing to that open and cheerful countenance, which gives them a gloss, (or what shall I call it?) that we men are apt to be pleased with at first sight-a gloss that takes one, as it were, by surprise. But give me the beauty that grows upon us every time we see it; that leaves room for something to be found out to its advantage, as we are more and more acquainted with it.

"Your correcting uncle," you call me. And so I will be. But what hope have I of your amendment, when every living soul, man, woman, and child, that knows you, puffs you up? There goes Mr Selby, I have heard strangers say-And who is Mr Selby? another stranger has asked-Why, Mr Selby is uncle to the celebrated Miss Byron.-Yet I, who have lived fifty years in this county, should think I might be known on my own account; and not as the uncle of a girl of twenty.

"Am I not a saucy creature?" in another place you ask. And you answer, "I know I am.” am glad you do. Now may I call you so by your own authority, I hope. But, with your aunt, it is only the effect of your agreeable vivacity. What abominable partiality! E'en do what you will, Harriet, you'll never be in fault. I could almost wish-but I won't tell you what I wish neither. But something must betide you that you little think of, depend upon that. All your days cannot be halcyon ones. I would give a thousand pounds with all my soul, to see you heartily in love; ay, up to the very ears, and unable to help yourself! You are not thirty yet, child; and, indeed, you seem to think the time of danger is not over. I am glad of your consciousness, my dear. Shall I tell Greville of your doubts, and of your difficulties, Harriet? As to the ten coming years, I mean? And shall I tell him of your prayer to pass them safely?-But is not this wish of yours, that ten years of bloom were over-past, and that you were arrived at the thirtieth year of your age, a very singular one? -A flight! A mere flight! Ask ninety-nine of your sex out of a hundred, if they would adopt it.

In another letter you ask Lucy, " If Mr Greville has not said, that flattery is dearer to a woman than her food?" Well, niece, and what would you be at? Is it not so ?-I do aver that Mr Greville is a sensible man, and makes good observations.

"Men's chief strength," you say, "lies in the weakness of women.' Why, so it does. Where else should it lie? And this from their immeasurable love of admiration and flattery, as here you seem to acknowledge of your own accord, though it has been so often perversely disputed with me. Give you women but rope enough, you'll do your own business.

However, in many places you have pleased me; but nowhere more than when you recollect my averment, (without contradicting it, which is a rarity!) "that a woman out of wedlock is half useless to the end of her being."Good girl! That was an assertion of mine, and I will abide by it. Lucy simpered when we came to this place, and looked at me. She expected, I saw, my notice upon it; so did your aunt; but the confession was so frank, that I was generous, and only said,-True as the gospel.

I have written a long letter; yet have not said one quarter of what I intended to say when I began. You will allow, that you have given your correcting uncle ample subject. But you fare something the better for saying, "you unbespeak not your monitor."

You own, that you have some vanity. Be more free in your acknowledgments of this nature, (you may; for are you not a woman?) and you'll fare something the better for your ingenuousness; and the rather, as your acknowledgment will help me up with your aunt and Lucy, and your grandmamma, in an argument I will not give up.

I have had fresh applications made to me but I will not say from whom; since we have agreed long ago, not to prescribe to so discreet a girl, as, in the main, we all think you, in the articles of love and marriage.

With all your faults, I must love you. I am half ashamed to say how much I miss you already. We are all naturally cheerful folks; yet, I don't know how it is, your absence has made a strange chasm at our table. Let us hear from you every post; that will be something. Your doting aunt tells the hours on the day she expects a letter. Your grandmother is at present with us, and in heart, I am sure, regrets your absence; but, as your tenderness to her has kept you from going to London for so many years, she thinks she ought to be easy. Her example goes a great way with us all, you know; and particularly with

Your truly affectionate
(Though correcting) Uncle,
GEO. SELBY.

LETTER VIII.

MISS BYRON TO MISS SELBY.

Tuesday, Jan. 31.

I AM already, my dear Lucy, quite contrary o my own expectation, enabled to obey the third general injunction laid upon me, at parting, by you, and all my dear friends; since a gentleman, not inconsiderable in his family or fortune, has already beheld your Harriet with partiality. Not to heighten your impatience by unnecessary parade, his name is Fowler. He is a young gentleman of a handsome independent fortune, and still larger expectations from a Welsh uncle now in town, Sir Rowland Meredith, knighted in his sheriffalty, on occasion of an address which he brought up to the king from his county.

Sir Rowland, it seems, requires from his nephew, on pain of forfeiting his favour for ever, that he marry not without his approbation; which, he declares, he never will give, except the woman be of a good family; has a gentlewoman's fortune; has had the benefit of a religious education; which he considers as the best security that can be given for her good behaviour as a wife, and as a mother; so forward does the good knight look! Her character unsullied; acquainted with the theory of the domestic duties, and not ashamed, occasionally, to enter into the direction of the practice. Her fortune, however, as his nephew will have a good one, he declares to be the least thing he stands upon; only that he would have her possessed of from six to ten thousand pounds, that it may not appear to be a match of mere love, and as if his nephew were taken in, as he calls it, rather by the eyes than the understanding. Where a woman can have such a fortune given her by her family, though no greater, it will be an earnest, he says, that the family she is of have worth, as he calls it, and want not to owe obligations to that of the man she marries.

Something particular, something that has the look of forecast and prudence, you'll say, in the old knight.

O! but I had like to have forgot; his future niece must also be handsome. He values himself, it seems, upon the breed of his horses and dogs, and makes polite comparisons between the more noble and the less noble animals.

Sir Rowland himself, as you will guess by his particularity, is an old bachelor, and one who wants to have a woman made on purpose for his nephew: and he positively insists upon quali ties, before he knows her, not one of which, perhaps, his future niece will have.

Don't you remember Mr Tolson of Derbyshire? He was determined never to marry a widow. If he did, it should be one who had a vast

VOL. VIII.

fortune, and who never had a child; and he had still a more particular exception, and that was to a woman who had red hair. He held his exceptions till he was forty; and then being looked upon as a determined bachelor, no family thought it worth their while to make proposals to him; no woman to throw out a net for him, (to express myself in the style of the gay Mr Greville); and he at last fell in with, and married, the laughing Mrs Turner; a widow, who had little or no fortune, had one child, a daughter, living, and that child an absolute idiot; and, to complete the perverseness of his fate, her hair not only red, but the most disagreeable of reds. The honest man was grown splenetic; disregarded by every body, he was become disregardful of himself. He hoped for a cure for his gloominess, from her cheerful vein ; and seemed to think himself under obligation to one who had taken notice of him, when nobody else would. Bachelors' wives! Maids' children! These old saws always mean something.

Mr Fowler saw me at my cousin Reeves's the first time. I cannot say he is disagreeable in his person; but he seems to want the mind I would have a man blessed with to whom I am to vow love and honour. I purpose, whenever I marry, to make a very good, and even a dutiful wife: [Must I not vow obedience? and shall I break my marriage vow? I would not, therefore, on any consideration, marry a man, whose want of knowledge might make me stagger in the performance of my duty to him; and who would perhaps command, from caprice or want of understanding, what I should think unreasonable to be complied with. There is a pleasure and credit in yielding up even one's judgment, in things indifferent, to a man who is older and wiser than one's self; but we are apt to doubt in one of a contrary character, what in the other we should have no doubt about: and doubt, you know, of a person's merit, is the first step to disrespect; and what, but disobedience, which lets in every evil, is the next?

I saw instantly that Mr Fowler beheld me with a distinguished regard. We women, you know, (let me for once be aforehand with my uncle,) are very quick in making discoveries of this nature. But every body at table saw it. He came again next day, and besought Mr Reeves to give him his interest with me, without asking any questions about my fortune; though he was even generously particular as to his own. He might, since he has an unexceptionable one. Who is it, in these cases, that forgets to set foremost the advantages by which he is distinguished? While fortune is the last thing talked of by him, who has little or none; and then love, love, love, is all his cry.

Mr Reeves, who has a good opinion of Mr Fowler, in answer to his inquiries, told him, that he believed I was disengaged in my affec

B

tions. Mr Fowler rejoiced at that. That I had no questions to ask, but those of duty; which, indeed, he said, was a stronger tie with me than interest. He praised my temper, and my frankness of heart; the latter at the expense of my sex; for which I least thanked him, when he told me what he had said. In short, he acquainted him with everything that was necessary, and more than was necessary, for him to know, of the favour of my family, and of my good Mr Deane, in referring all proposals of this kind to myself; mingling the detail with commendations, which only could be excused by the goodness of his own heart, and accounted for by his partiality to his cousin.

Mr Fowler expressed great apprehensions on my cousin's talking of these references of my grandmother, aunt, and Mr Deane, to myself, on occasions of this nature; which, he said, he presumed had been too frequent for his hopes. If you have any hope, Mr Fowler, said Mr Reeves, it must be in your good character; and that much preferably to your clear estate and great expectations. Although she takes no pride in the number of her admirers, yet it is natural to suppose that it has made her more difficult; and difficulties are enhanced, in proportion to the generous confidence which all her friends have in her discretion. And when I told him, proceeded Mr Reeves, that your fortune exceeded greatly what Sir Rowland required in a wife for him; and that you had, as well from inclination, as education, a serious turn; Too much, too much, in one person, cried he out. As to fortune, he wished you had not a shilling; and if he could obtain your favour, he should be the happiest man in the world.

O my good Mr Reeves, said I, how have you over-rated my merits! Surely you have not given Mr Fowler your interest? If you have, should you not, for his sake, have known something of my mind before you had set me out thus, had I even deserved your high opinion? -Mr Fowler might have reason to repent the double well-meant kindness of his friend, if men in these days were used to break their hearts for love.

It is the language I do and must talk of you in to everybody, returned Mr Reeves: Is it not the language that those most talk who know you best?

Where the world is inclined to favour, replied I, it is apt to over-rate, as much as it will under-rate where it disfavours. In this case, you should not have proceeded so far as to engage a gentleman's hopes. What may be the end of all this, but to make a compassionate nature, as mine has been thought to be, if Mr Fowler should be greatly in earnest, uneasy to itself, in being obliged to shew pity, where she cannot return love?

What I have said, I have said, replied Mr

Reeves. Pity is but one remove from love. Mrs Reeves (there she sits) was first brought to pity me; for never was man more madly in love than I; and then I thought myself sure of her. And so it proved. I can tell you I am no enemy to Mr Fowler.

And so, my dear, Mr Fowler seems to think he has met with a woman who would make a fit wife for him; but your Harriet, I doubt, has not in Mr Fowler met with a man whom she can think a fit husband for her.

The very next morning, Sir Rowland himself

But now, my Lucy, if I proceed to tell you all the fine things that are said of me, and to me, what will my uncle Selby say? Will he not attribute all I shall repeat of this sort, to that fondness of admiration, which he, as well as Mr Greville, is continually charging upon all our sex?

Yet he expects that I shall give a minute account of everything that passes, and of every conversation in which I have any part. How shall I do to please him? And yet I know I shall best please him, if I give him room to find fault with me. But then, should he for my faults blame the whole sex? Is that just?

You will tell me, I know, that if I give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them justly: that the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat what they say, and their manner of saying: that I must leave it to the speakers and complimenters to answer for the likeness of the pictures they draw: that I know best my own heart, and whether I am puffed up by the praises given me: that if I am, I shall discover it by my superciliousness; and be enough punished on the discovery, by incurring, from those I love, deserved blame, if not contempt, instead of preserving their wished-for esteem.-Let me add to all this, that there is an author (I forget who) who says, "It is lawful to repeat those things, though spoken in our praise, that are necessary to be known, and cannot otherwise be come at. And now let me ask, Will this preamble do, once for all?

It will. And so says my aunt Selby. And so says every one but my uncle. Well, then, I will proceed, and repeat all that shall be said, and that as well to my disadvantage as advantage; only resolving not to be exalted with the one, and to do my endeavour to amend by the other. And here, pray tell my uncle, that I do not desire he will spare me; since the faults he shall find in his Harriet shall always put her upon her guard-Not, however, to conceal them from his discerning eye; but to amend them.

And now, having, as I said, once for all, prepared you to guard against a surfeit of selfpraise, though delivered at second or third hand, I will go on with my narrative-But hold—my