A fine woman, like cther fine things in nature, has 'ner proper point of view, from which she may be seen to most advantage. To fix this point requires great judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the human heart. By the present mode of female manners, the ladies seem to expect that they shall regain their ascendency over us by the fullest display of their personal charms, by being always in our eye at public places, by conversing with us with the same unreserved freedom as we do with one another; in short, by resembling us as nearly as they possibly can. But a little time and experience will show the folly of this expectation and conduct. The power of a fine woman over the hearts of men, even of the finest parts, is even beyond what she conceives. They are sensible of the pleasing illusion, but they can not, nor do they wish to dissolve it. But if she is determined to dispel the charm, it certainly is in her power; she may soon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl. There is a native dignity, an ingenuous modesty, to be expected in your sex, which is your natural protection from the familiarities of the men, and which you should feel previous to the reflection that it is your interest to keep yourselves sacred from all personal freedoms. The many nameless charms and endearments of beauty should be reserved to bless the arms of the happy man to whom you give your heart, but who, if he has the least delicacy, will despise them, if he knows they have been prostituted to fifty men before him. The sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms, provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your sex. Let me now recommend to your attention that elegance, which is not so much a quality of itself, as the high polish of every other. It is what diffuses an ineffable grace over every look, every motion, every sentence you utter. It is partly a personal quality, in which respect it is the gift of nature; but I speak of it principally as a quality of the mind. In a word, it Is the perfection of taste in life and manners-every virtue and every excellence, in their most graceful and amiable forms. You may think, perhaps, I want to throw every park of nature out of your composition, and to make you entirely artificial. Far from it. I wish you to possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manI think you may possess dignity without pride, affability without meanness, and simple elegance without affectation. Milton had my idea, when he says of Eve, ners. "Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love." AMUSEMENTS. EVERY period of life has amusements which are natural and proper to it. You may indulge the variety of your tastes in these, while you keep within the bounds of that propriety which is suitable to your sex. others, which are neither useful nor ornamental, such as play of different kinds. I would particularly recommend to you those exercises that oblige you to be much abroad in the open air, such as walking, and riding on horseback. This will give vigor to your constitutions, and a bloom to your complexions. If you accustom yourselves to go abroad always in chairs and carriages, you will soon become so enervated as to be unable to go out of doors without them. They are like most articles of luxury, useful and agreeable when judiciously used, but when made habitual they become both insipid and pernicious. An attention to your health is a duty you owe to yourselves and to your friends. Bad health seldom fails to have an influence on the spirits and temper. The finest geniuses, the most delicate minds have very frequently a correspondent delicacy of bodily constitutions, which they are too apt to neglect. Their luxury lies in reading and late hours, equal enemies to health and beauty. But though good health be one of the greatest blessings in life, never make a boast of it, but enjoy it in grateful silence. We so naturally associate the idea of female softness and delicacy with a correspondent delicacy of constitution, that when a woman speaks of her great strength, her extraordinary appetite, her ability to bear excessive fatigue, we recoil at the description in a way she is little aware of. The intention of your being taught needlework, knitting, and such like, is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands, which is trifling, but to enable you to judge more perfectly of that kind of work, and to direct the execution of it in others. Another principal end is to enable you to fill up, in a tolerably agreeable way, some of the many solitary hours you must necessarily pass 2: home. It is a great article in the happiness of life, to have your pleasures as independent of others as possible. By continually gadding about in search of amusement, you lose the respect of all your acquaintances, whom you oppress with those visits, which by a more discreet management might have been courted. The domestic economy of a family is entirely a woman's province, and furnishes a variety of subjects for the exertion both of good sense and good taste If you ever come to have the charge of a family, it ought to engage much of your time and attention; nor can you be excused from this by any extent of fortune, though with a narrow one the ruin that fol lows the neglect of it may be more immediate. I am at the greatest loss what to advise you in regard to books. There is no impropriety in your reading history, or cultivating any art or science to which genius or accident leads you. The whole volume of Nature lies open to your eye, and furnishes an infinite variety of entertainment. If I was sure that Nature had given you such strong principles of taste and sentiment as would remain with you, and influence your future conduct, with the utmost pleasure would I en deavor to direct your reading in such a way as might form that taste to the utmost perfection of truth and elegance. "But when I reflect how easy it is to warm a girl's imagination, and how difficult deeply and permanently to affect her heart; how readily she enters into every refinement of sentiment, and how easily she can sacrifice them to vanity or convenience;" I think I may very probably do you an injury by ar Some amusements are conducive to health, as various kinds of exercise; some are connected with qualities really useful, as different kinds of women's||tificially creating a taste, which, if Nature never gave work, and all the domestic concerns of a family; some are elegant accomplishments, as dress, dancing, music, and drawing. Such books as improve your understanding, enlarge your knowledge, and cultivate your taste, may be considered in a higher point of view_than_mere amusements. There are a variety of it you, would only serve to embarrass your future conduct. I do not want to make you anything; I want to know what Nature has made you, and to perfect you on her plan. I do not wish you to have sentiments that might perplex you; I wish you to have sentiments that may uniformly and steadily guar jou, and such as your hearts so thoroughly approve, that you would not forego them for any consideration this world could offer. Dress is an important article in female life. The love of dress is natural to you, and therefore it is proper and reasonable. Good sense will regulate your expense in it, and good taste will direct you to dress in such a way as to conceal any blemishes, and set off your beauties, if you have any, to the greatest advantage. But much delicacy and judgment are required in the application of this rule. A fine woman shows her charms to most advantage, when she seems most to conceal them. The finest bosom in nature is not so fine as what imagination forms. The most perfect elegance of dress appears always the most easy, and the least studied. Do not confine your attention to dress to public appearances. Accustom yourself to an habitual neatness, so that in the most careless undress, in your unguarded hours, you may have no reason to be ashamed of your appearance. You will not easily believe how much we consider your dress as expressive of your characters. Vanity, levity, slovenliness, folly, appear through it. An elegant simplicity is an equal proof of taste and delicacy. In dancing, the principal points you are to attend to, are ease and grace. I would have you dance with spirit; but never allow yourself to be so far transported with mirth, as to forget the delicacy of your sex. Many a girl, dancing in the gayety and innocence of her heart, is thought to discover a spirit she little dreams of. I know no entertainment that gives such pleasure to any person of sentiment or humor, as the theatre. But I am sorry to say that there are few English comedies a lady can see, without a shock to delicacy. You will not readily suspect the comments gentlemen make on your behavior on such occasions. Men are often best acquainted with the most worthless of your set, and from them too readily form their judginent of the rest. A virtuous girl often hears very indelicate things with a countenance nowise embarrassed, because in truth she does not understand them. Yet this is, most ungenerously, ascribed to that command of features and that ready presence of mind, which you are thought to possess in a degree far beyond us; or, by still more malignant observers, it is ascribed to hardened effrontery. Sometimes a girl laughs with all the simplicity of ansuspecting innocence, for no other reason but being infected with other people's laughing; she is then believed to know more than she should do. If she does happen to understand an improper thing, she suffers a very complicated distress; she feels her modesty hurt in the most sensible manner, and at the same time is ashamed of appearing conscious of the injury. The only way to avoid these inconveniences, is never to go to a play that is particularly offensive to delicacy. Tragedy subjects you to no such distress. Its sorrows will soften and ennoble your hearts. I need say little about gaming, the ladies in this country being as yet almost strangers to it. It is a ruinous and incurable vice; and as it leads to all the selfish and turbulent passions, is peculiarly odious in your sex. I have no objection to your playing a little at any kind of game, as a variety in your amusements, provided that what you can possibly lose is such a trifle as can neither interest nor hurt you. FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, MARRIAGE. THE luxury and dissipation that prevail in genteel life, as they corrupt the heart in many respects, s they render it incapable of warm, sincere, and steady friendship. A happy choice of friends will be of the utmost consequence to you, as they may assist you by their advice and good offices. But the immediate gratification which friendship affords to a warm, open, and ingenuous heart, is of itself a sufficient motive to court it. In the choice of your friends, have principal regard to goodness of heart and fidelity. If they possess taste and genius, that will still make them more agreeable and useful companions. You have particular reason to place confidence in those who have: shown affection for you in your early days, when you were incapable of making them any return. This is an obligation for which you can not be too grateful; when you read this, you will naturally think of your mother's friend, to whom you owe so much. If you have the good fortune to meet with any who deserve the name of friends, unbosom yourselves to them with the most unsuspicious confidence. It is one of the world's maxims, never to trust any person with a secret, the discovery of which could give you any pain; but it is the maxim of a little mind and a cold heart, unless where it is the effect of frequen disappointments and bad usage. An open temper, it restrained by tolerable prudence, will make you on the whole much happier than a reserved suspicious one, although you may sometimes suffer by it. Coldness and distrust are but the too certain consequences of age and experience; but they are unpleasant feelings, and need not be anticipated before their time. But however open you may be in talking of your own affairs, never disclose the secrets of one friend to another. These are sacred deposites, which do no belong to you, nor have you any right to make use of || them. There is another case in which I suspect it is proper to be secret, not so much from motives of prudence as delicacy. I mean love matters. Though a woman has no reason to be ashamed of an attachment to a man of merit, yet nature, whose authority is superior to philosophy, has annexed a sense of shame to it. It is even long before a woman of delicacy dares avow to her own heart that she loves; and when all the subterfuges of ingenuity to conceal it from herself fail, she feels a violence done both to her pride and to her modesty. This, I should imagine, must always be the case where she is not sure of a return to her attachment. In such a situation, to lay the heart open to ary person whatever, does not appear to me consistent with the perfection of female delicacy. But perhaps I am in the wrong. At the same time I must tell you, that, in point of prudence, it cor erns you to attend well to the consequences of such a discovery. These secrets, however important in your own estimation, may appear very trifling to your friend, who possibly will not enter into your feelings, but may rather consider them as a subject of pleasantry. For this reason, love secrets are of all others the worst kept. But the consequences to you may be very serious, as no man of spirit and delicacy ever valued a heart much hackneyed in the ways of love. If, therefore, you must have a friend to pear out In this, as well as in all important points of conduct, your heart to, be sure of her honor and secresy. Let jer show a determined resolution and steadiness. This is her not be a married woman, especially if she live not in the least inconsistent with that softness and gen-happily with her husband. There are certain untleness so amiable in your sex. On the contrary, it guarded moments, in which such a woman, though gives that spirit to a mild and sweet disposition, with- the best and worthiest of her sex, may let hints escape, out which it is apt to degenerate into insipidity. It which, at other times, or to any other person than her makes you respectable in your own eyes, and dignifies husband, she would be incapable of; nor will a husyou in ours best in this case feel himself under the same obli gation of secresy and honor, as if you had put your nfidence originally in himself, especially on a subject which the world is apt to treat so lightly. picion of being your lover, who, perhaps, nevet thought of you in that view, and giving yourselves those airs so common among silly women on such oc If all other circumstances are equal, there are ob-casions. vious advantages in your making friends of one another. The ties of blood, and your being so much united in one common interest, form an additional bond of union to your friendship. If your brothers should have the good fortune to have hearts susceptible to friendship, to possess truth, honor, sense, and delicacy of sentiment, they are the fittest and most unexceptionable confidants. By placing confidence in them, you will receive every advantage which you could hope for from the friendship of men, without any of the inconveniences that attend such connexions with our sex. There is a kind of unmeaning gallantry much prao tised by some men, which, if you have any discernment, you will find really harmless. Men of this sort will attend you to public places, and be useful to you by a number of little observances, which those of a superior class do not so well understand, or have not leisure to regard, or perhaps are too proud to submi to. Look on the compliments of such men as words of course, which they repeat to every agreeable woman of their acquaintance. There is a familiarity they are apt to assume, which a proper dignity in your behavior will be easily able to check. Beware of making confidants of your servants. There is a different species of men whom you may Dignity, not properly understood, very readily degen- like as agreeable companions, men of worth, taste, erates into pride, which enters into no friendships, be- and genius, whose conversation in some respects may cause it can not bear an equal, and is so fond of flat-be superior to what you generally meet with among tery as to grasp at it even from servants and depend-your own sex. It will be foolish in you to deprive ants. The most intimate confidants, therefore, of yourselves of a useful and agreeable acquaintance, proud people, are valets de chambre and waiting-wo- || merely because idle people say he is your lover. Such men. Show the utmost humanity to your servants; a man may like your company without having any de make their situation as comfortable to them as possi- sign on your person. ble; but if you make them your confidants you spoil them and debase yourselves. Never allow any person, under the pretended sanction of friendship, to be so familiar as to lose a proper respect for you. Never allow them to tease you on any subject that is disagreeable, or where you have once taken your resolution. Many will tell you that this reserve is inconsistent with the freedom which friendship allows. But a certain respect is as necessary in friendship as in love. Without it you may be liked as a child, but you will never be beloved as an equal. The temper and dispositions of the heart in your sex make you enter more readily and warmly into friendships than men. Your natural propensity to it is so strong, that you often run into intimacies which you soon have sufficient cause to repent of, and this makes your friendships so very fluctuating. People whose sentiments, and particularly whose tastes correspond, naturally like to associate together, although neither of them have the most distant view of any further connexion. But as this similarity of minds often gives rise to a more tender attachment than friendship, it will be prudent to keep a watchful eye over yourselves, lest your hearts become too far engaged before you are aware of it. At the same time, I do not think that your sex, at least in this part of the world, have much of that sensibility which dis poses to such attachments. What is commonly called love among you is gratitude, and a partiality to the Iman who prefers you to the rest of your sex; and such a man you often marry, with little of either personal esteem or affection. Indeed, without an unusual share of natural sensibility, and very peculiar good fortune, a woman in this country has very liule probability of marrying for love. It is a maxim laid down among you, and a very prudent one it is, that love is not to begin on your part, but is to be entirely the consequence of our at tachment to you. Now supposing a woman to have sense and taste, she will not find many men to whom she can possibly be supposed to bear any considerable share of esteem. Among these few it is a very great chance if any of them distinguishes her particularly. Love, at least with us, is exceedingly capricious, and will not always fix where reason says it should. But supposing one of them should become particularly attached to her, it is still extremely improbable that he should be the man in the world her heart most ap proved of. Another great obstacle to the sincerity as well as the steadiness of your friendships, is the great clashings of your interests in the pursuits of love, ambition, or vanity. For these reasons, it should appear|| at first view more eligible for you to contract your friendships with the men. Among other obvious advantages of an easy intercourse between the two sexes, it occasions an emulation and exertion in each to excel and be agreeable; hence their respective excellencies are mutually communicated and blended. As their interests in no degree interfere, there can be no foundation for jealousy or suspicion of rivalship. The friendship of a man for a woman is always blended with a tenderness which he never feels for one of his own sex, even where love is in no degree As, therefore, Nature has not given you that unconcerned. Besides, we are conscious of a natural limited range in your choice which we may enjoy, title you have to our protection and good offices, and she has wisely and benevolently assigned to you a therefore we feel an additional obligation of honor to greater flexibility of taste on this subject. Some serve you, and to observe an inviolable secrecy when-agreeable qualities recommend a gentleman to your ever you confide in us. But apply these observations with great caution. Thousands of women of the best hearts and the finest parts have been ruined by men who approached them under the specious name of friendship. But supposing a man to have the most uudoubted honor, yet his friendship to a woman is so near akin to love, that if she be very agreeable in her person she will probably very soon find a lover where she only wished to meet a friend. Let me here, however, warn you against that weakness so common among-vain women, the imagination that every man who takes particular notice of you is a lover. Nothing can expose you more to ridicule than the taking up a man on the sus common good liking and friendship. In the course of his acquaintance he contracts an attachment to you. When you perceive it, it excites your gratitude; this gratitude rises into a preference, and this preference perhaps at last advances to some degree of attachment, especially if it meets with crosses and difficulties, for these, and a state of suspense, are very great excitements to attachment, and are the food of love in both sexes. If attachment was not excited in your sex in this manner, there is not one of a million of you that could ever marry with any degree of love. A man of taste and delicacy marries a woman becanse he loves her more than any other. A woman of equal taste and delicacy marries him because she esteems him, and because he gives her that preference. But if a man unfortunately becomes attached to a woman whose heart is secretly pre-engaged, his attachment. instead of obtaining a suitable return, is particularly offensive, and if he persists to tease her, he makes himself equally the object of her scorn and aversion. The effects of love among men are diversified by their different tempers. An artful man may counterfeit every one of them so as easily to impose on a young girl of an open, generous, and feeling heart, if she is not extremely on her guard. The finest parts in such a girl may not always prove sufficient for her security. The dark and crooked paths of cunning, are unsearchable and inconceivable to an honorable and elevated mind. The following, I apprehend, are the most genuine effects of an honorable passion among the men, and the most difficult to counterfeit. A man of delicacy aften betrays his passion by his too great anxiety to conceal it, especially if he has little hopes of success. True love, in all its stages, seeks concealment, and never expects success. It renders a man not only respectful, but timid to the highest degree in his behavior to the woman he loves. To conceal the awe he stands in of her, he may sometimes affect pleasantry, but it sits awkwardly on him, and he quickly relapses into seriousuess, if not into dulness. magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination, and is either blind to her failings, or converts them into beauties. Like a person conscious of guilt, he is jealous that every eye observes him; and to avoid this, be shuns all the little observances of common gallantry. He His heart and his character will be improved in every respect by his attachment. His manners will become more gentle, and his conversation more agreeable; but diffidence and embarrassment will always make him appear to disadvantage in the company of his mistress. If the fascination continue long, it will totally depress his spirit, and extinguish every active, vigorous, and manly principle of his mind. You will find this subject beautifully and pathetically painted in Thomson's Spring. When you observe in a gentleman's behavior the marks which I have described above, reflect seriously what you are to do. If his attachment is agreeable to you, I leave you to do as nature, good sense, and delicacy, shall direct you. If you love him, let me advise you never to discover to him the full extent of your love-no, not although you marry him. That sufficiently shows your preference, which is all he is entitled to know. If he has delicacy, he will ask for no stronger proof of your affection, for your sake; has sense, he will not ask for his own. This is an unpleasant truth, but it is my luty to let you know it; violent love can not subist, at least can not be expressed for any time together, on both sides; otherwise the certain consequence, however concealed, is satiety and disgust. Nature, in this case, has laid the reserve on you. But perhaps your particular temper may not admit of this. You may easily show that you want to avoid his company; but if he is a man whose friendship you wish to preserve, you may not choose this method, because then you lose him in every capacity. You may get a common friend to explain matters to him, or fall in with many other devices, if you are seriously anxious to put him out of suspense. But if you are resolved against every such method, at least do not shun opportunities of letting him explain himself. If you do this, you act barbarously and unjustly. If he brings you to an explanation, give him a polite, but resolute and decisive answer. In whatever way you convey your sentiments to him, if he is a man of spirit and delicacy, he will give you no further trouble, nor apply to your friends for their intercession. This last is a method of courtship which every man of spirit will disdain. He will never whine nor sue for your pity. That would mortify him almost as much as your scorn. In short, you may possibly break such a heart, but you can not bend it. Great pride always accompanies delicacy, however concealed under the appearance of the utmost gentleness and modesty, and is the passion of all others the most difficult to conquer. There is a case where a woman may coquet justifiably to the utmost verge which her conscience wil! allow. It is where a gentleman purposely declines tc make his addresses, till such time as he thinks himself perfectly sure of her consent. This at bottom is intended to force a woman to give up the undoubted privilege of her sex, the privilege of her refusing; it is intended to force her to explain herself, in effect. before the gentleman deigns to do it, and by this means to oblige her to violate the modesty and deli cacy of her sex, and to invert the clearest order of nature. All this sacrifice is proposed to be made merely to gratify a most despicable vanity in a man who would degrade the very woman whom he wishes to make his wife. It is of great importance to distinguish whether a gentleman who has the appearance of being your lover delays to speak explicitly, from the motive I have mentioned, or from a diffidence inseparable from true attachment. In the one case, you can scarcely use him too ill; in the other, you ought to use him with great kindness; and the greatest kindness you can show him, if you are determined not to listen to his addresses, is to let him know it as soon as possible. I know the many excuses with which women endeavor to justify themselves to the world, and to their own consciences, when they act otherwise. Sometimes they plead ignorance, or at least uncertainty of the gentleman's real sentiments. That may often be the case. Sometimes they plead decorums of their sex, which enjoin an equal behavior to all men, and forbid them to consider any man as a lover, till he has directly told them so. Perhaps few women carry their ideas of female delicacy and decorum so far as I do. But I must say you are not entitled to plead the obligation of these virtues, in opposition to the superior ones of gratitude, justice, and humanity. The man is entitled to all these, who prefers you to the rest of your sex, and perhaps whose greatest weakness is his very preference. The truth of the matter is, vanity and the love of admiration are so prevailing passions among you, that you may be considered to make a very great sacrifice when you give up a lover, till every art of coquetry fails to keep him, or till he forces you to an explanation. You can be fond of the love when you are indifferent to, or even despise the lover. If you see evident proofs of a gentleman's attachment and you are determined to shut your heart against him, as you ever hope to be used with genersity by the person who shall engage your own heart, treat him honorably and humanely. Do not let him finger in miserable suspense, but be anxious to let him know your sentiments with regard to him. However people's hearts may deceive them, there is serely a person that can love for any time, without at least some distant hope of success. If you really wish to undeceive a lover, you may do it in a variety But the deepest and most artful coquetry is emof ways. There is a certain species of easy familiar-ployed by women of superior taste and sense, to enity in your behavior, which may satisfy him, if he has gage and fix the heart of a man whom the world any discernment left, that he has nothing to hope for. and they themselves esteem, although they are de termined never to marry him. But his conversation amuses them, and his attachment is the highest gratification to their vanity; nay, they can sometimes be|| gratified with the utter ruin of his fortune, fame, and happiness. God forbid I should ever think so of all of your sex. I know many of them have principles, have generosity and diguity of soul, that elevate thera above the worthless vanity I have been speaking of. || Such a woman, I am persuaded, may always convert a lover, if she can not give her affections, into a warm and steady friend, provided he is a man of sense, || resolution, and candor. If she explains herself to him with a generous openness and freedom, he must feel the stroke as a man; but he will likewise bear it as a man; what he suffers he will suffer in silence. Every sentiment of esteem will remain; but love, though it requires very little food, and is easily surfeited with too much, yet it requires some. He will view her in the light of a married woman; and though passion subsides, yet a man of a candid and generous heart always retains a tenderness for a woman he has once loved, and who has used him well, beyond what he feels for any other of her sex. If he has not confided his own secret to anybody, he has an undoubted title to ask you not to divulge it. If a woman chooses to trust any of her companions with her own unfortunate attachments, she may, as it is her own affair alone; but if she has any generosity or gratitude, she will not betray a secret which does not belong to her. misfortune, but can not be your fault. In such a situation, you would be equally unjust to yourself and your lover, if you gave him your hand when your heart revolted against him. But miserable will be your fate if you allow an attachment to steal on you before you are sure of a return, or, what is infinitely worse, where are wanting those qualities which alone can insure happiness in a married state. I know nothing that renders a woman more despi cable, than her thinking it essential to happiness to be married. Beside the gross indelicacy of the sen timert, it is a false one, as thousands of women have experienced. But if it was true, the belief that it is so, and the consequent impatience to be married, i the most effectual way to prevent it. You must not think from this, that I do not wish you to marry. On the contrary, I am of opinion, that you may attain a superior degree of happiness in a married state to what you can possibly find in any other. I know the forlorn and unprotected situation of an old maid, the chagrin and peevishness which are apt to infect their tempers, and the great difficulty of making a transition with dignity and cheerfulness, from the period of youth, beauty, admiration, and re spect, into the calm, silent, unnoticed retreat of de clining years. I see some unmarried women of active, vigorous minds, and a great vivacity of spirits, degrading them selves, sometimes by entering into a dissipated course of life unsuitable to their years, and exposing themselves to the ridicule of girls who might have been their grand-children, sometimes by oppressing their acquaintances by impertinent intrusion into their pri vate affairs, and sometimes by being the propagators of scandal and defamation, All this is owing to an exuberant activity of spirit, which, if it had found employment at home, would have rendered them respectable and useful members of society. Male coquetry is much more inexcusable than female, as well as more pernicious; but it is rare in this country. Very few men will give themselves the trouble to gain or retain any woman's affections, unless they have views on her either of an honorable or dishonorable kind. Men employed in the pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure, will not give thenselves the trouble to engage a woman's affections I see other women in the same situation, gentle, merely from the vanity of conquest, and of triumph- modest, blessed with sense, taste, delicacy. and every ing over the heart of an innocent and defenceless girl. || milder feminine virtue of the heart, but of weak spirBesides, people never value much what is entirely in|| its, bashful, and timid; I see such women sinking their power. A man of parts, sentiment, and address, into obscurity and insignificance, and gradually losing if he lays aside all regard to truth and humanity, may every elegant accomplishment, for this evident reaengage the hearts of fifty women at the same time, son, that they are not united to a partner who has and may likewise conduct his coquetry with so much sense, and worth, and taste to know their value-one art, as to put it out of the power of any of them to who is able to draw forth their concealed qualities, specify a single expression that could be said to be di- and show them to advantage; who can give that sup rectly expressive of love. port to their feeble spirits which they stand so much in need of, and who, by his affection and tenderness, might make such a woman happy in exerting every talent, and accomplishing herself in every elegant art that could contribute to his amusement. This ambiguity of behavior, this art of keeping one in suspense, is the great secret of coquetry in both sexes. It is the more cruel in us, because we can carry it what length we please, and continue it as long as we please, without your being so much as at liberty to complain or expostulate; whereas we can break our chain, and force you to explain, whenever we become impatient of our situation. I have insisted the more particularly on this subject of courtship, because it may most readily happen to you at that early period of life when you can have little experience or knowledge of the world, when your passions are warm, and your judgments not arrived at such full maturity as to be able to correct them. I wish you to possess such high principles of honor and generosity as will render you incapable of deceiving, and at the same time to possess that acute discernment which may secure you against being deceived. A woman, in this country, may easily prevent the first impressions of love, and every motive of prudence and delicacy should make her guard against them, till such time as she has received the most convincing proof of the attachment of a man of such merit as will justify a reciprocal regard. Your hearts, indeed, may be shut inflexibly and permanently against all the merit a man can possess. That may be your || In short, I am of opinion, that a married state, if entered into from proper motives of esteem and affection, will be the happiest for yourselves, and make you most respectable in the eyes of the world, and the most useful members of society. But I must confess I am not enough of a patriot to wish you to marry for the good of the public. I wish you to marry for no other reason but to make yourselves happier. When I am so particular in my advices about your conduct, I own my heart beats with the fond hope of making you worthy the attachment of men who will deserve you, and be sensible of your merit. But Heaven forbid you should ever relinquish the ease and independence of a single life, to become the slaves of a fool or a tyrant's caprice. As these have been always my sentiments, I shall do yon but justice when I leave you in such independent circumstances as may lay you under no temptation to do from necessity what you would never do from choice. This will likewise save you from that cruel mortification to a woman of spirit-the suspi cion that a gentleman thinks he does you an honor or a favor when he asks you for his wife. If I live all |