'MADAM, 'I am no less astonished than affected by your letter if your brother has not long since informed you of his conference with my father, and the result of it, he has afted as unjustly by you as he has by my Lord Mortimer and myself: when my father waited upon Sir Paul, for the express purpose of making known to him the hopes I had the ambition to entertain of rendering myself acceptable to you upon a proposal of marriage, he received at once so short and peremptory a dismission on my behalf, that, painful as it was to my feelings, I had no part to act but silently to submit, and withdraw myself from a family, where I was so unacceptable an intruder. • When I confirm the truth of the report you have heard, and inform you that my marriage took place this very morning, you will pardon me if I add no more than that I have the honour to be, 'Madam, your most obedient And most humble servant, Every hope being extinguished by the receipt of this letter, the disconsolate Rachel became henceforth one of the most miserable of human beings : after venting a torrent of rage against her brother, she turned her back upon his house for ever, and undetermined where to fix, whilst at intervals she can scarce be said to be in possession of her senses, she is still wandering from place to place in search of that repose, which is not to be found, and wherever she goes exhibits a melancholy spectacle of disappointed envy and self-tormenting spleen. It was far otherwise with the unhappy Rachel ; her heart was on the rack; for though she naturally suspected her brother's jealousy of being the cause of Lionel's absence, yet she could not account for his silence towards herself in any other way than by supposing that Louisa had totally drawn off his affections from her, and this was agony not to be supported; day after day passed in anxious expectation of a letter to explain this cruel neglect, but none came; all communication with the whole fa mily of lord Mortimer was at a stop; no intelligence could be obtained from that quarter, and to all such inquiries as she ventured to try upon her brother, he answered so drily, that she could gather nothing from him in the mean time, as he became hourly better reconciled to Louisa, so he grew more and more cool to the miserable Rachel, who now too late discovered the fatal consequences of interfering between husband and wife, and heartily reproached herself for her officiousness in aggravating his jealousy. Whilst she was tormenting herself with these reflections, and when Louisa seemed to have forgotten that ever such a person as Lionel existed,a report was circulated that he was about to be married to a certain lady of great rank and fortune, and that he had gone up with Lord Mortimer to town for that purpose. There wanted only this blow to make Rachel's agonies complete; in a state of mind little short of phrensy she betook herself to her chamber, and there shutting herself up, she gave vent to her passion in a letter fully charged with complaints and reproaches, which she committed to a trusty messenger, with strict injunctions to deliver it into Lionel's own hand, and return with his answer : this commission was faithfully performed, and the following is the answer she received in return. office or profession, nor am possessed of any such superiorities over other men as might justify me in assuming a task to which nobody has invited me, I was sensible I had no claim upon the public for their attention, but what I could earn by zeal and diligence, nor any title to their candour and complacency but upon the evidence of those qualities on my own part. As I have never made particular injuries a cause for general complaints, I am by no means out of humour with the world, and it has been my constant aim throughout the progress of these papers to recommend and instil a principle of universal benevolence; I have to the best of my power endeavoured to support the Christian character by occasional remarks upon the evidences and benefits of Revealed Religion; and as the sale and circulation of these volumes have exceeded my most sanguine hopes, I am encouraged to believe that my endeavours are accepted, and if so, I trust there is no arrogance in presuming some good may have resulted from them. I wish I could contribute to render men mild and merciful towards each other, tolerating every peaceable member who mixes in our community without annoying its established church: I wish I could inspire an ardent attachment to our beloved country, qualified however with the gentlest manners, and a beaming charity towards the world at large: I wish I could persuade contemporaries to live together as friends and fellow-travellers, emulating each other without acrimony, and cheering even rivals in the same pursuit with that liberal spirit of patriotism, which takes a generous interest in the success of every art and science, that embellish or exalt the age and nation we belong to I wish I could devise some means to ridicule the proud man out of his folly, the voluptuary out of his falsc pleasures; if I could find one conspicuous example, only one, amongst the great and wealthy, of an estate administered to my entire content, I should hold it up with exultation; but when I review their order from the wretch who hoards to the madman who squanders, I see no one to merit other praise than of a preference upon comparison; as for the domestic bully, who is a brute within his own doors and a sycophant without, the malevolent de famer of mankind, and the hardened reviler of religion, they are characters so incorrigible, and held in such universal detestation, that there is little chance of making anyimpression upon their nature, and no need for provoking any greater contempt, than the world is already disposed to entertain for them: I am happy in believing that the time does not abound in such characters, for my observations in life have not been such as should dispose me to deal in melancholy descriptions and desponding lamentations over the enormities of the age: too many indeed may be found, who are languid in the practice of religion, and not a few, who are flippant in their conversation upon it; but let these senseless triflers call to mind, if they can, one single instance of a man, however eminent for ingenuity, who either by what he has written, or by what he has said, has been able to raise a well founded ridicule at the expence of true religion; enthusiasm, superstition and hypocrisy may give occasion for raillery, but against pure religion the wit of the blasphemer carries no edge; the weapon, when struck upon that shield, shivers in the assassin's hand, the point flies back upon his breast and plunges to his heart. I have not been inattentive to the interests of the fair sex, and have done my best to laugh them out of their fictitious characters: on the plain ground of truth and nature they are the ornaments of creation, but in the maze of affectation all their charms are lost. Where vice corrupts one, vanity betrays an hundred; out of the many disgraceful instances of nuptial infidelity upon record, few have been the wretches, whom a natural depravity has made desperate, but many and various are the miseries, which have been produced by vanity, by resentment, by fashionable dissipation, by the corruption of bad example, and most of all by the fault and neglect of the husband. They have associated with our sex to the profit of their understandings and the prejudice of their morals: we are beholden to them for having sof. tened our ferocity and dispelled our gloom; but it is to be regretted that any part of that pedantic character, which they remedied in us, should have in. fected their manners, A lady, who has quick ta. lents, ready memory, and ambition to shine in conversation, a passion for reading, and who is withal of a certain age or person to despair of conquering with her eyes, will be apt to send her understanding into the field, and it is well if she does not make a ridiculous figure before her literary campaign is over. If the old stock of our female pedants were not so busy in recruiting their ranks with young novitiates, whose understandings they distort by their training, we would let them rust out and spend their short annuity of nonsense without annoying them; but whilst they will be seducing credulous and inconsiderate girls into their circle, and transforming youth and beauty into unnatural and monstrous shapes, it becomes the duty of every knight-errant in morality to sally forth to the rescue of these hag-ridden and distressed damsels. It cannot be supposed I mean to say that genius ought not to be cultivated in one sex as well as in the other; the object of my anxiety is the preserva |