quaintance, he contracts an attachment to you. When you perceive it, it excites your gratitude; this gratitude rises int a preference, and this preference perhaps at last advances to some degree of attachment, especially if it meet with crosses and difficulties; for these, and a state of suspense, are very great incitements to attachment, and are the food of love, in both sexes. If attachments were not excited in your sex in this manner, there is not one in a million of you, that would ever marry with any degree of love. A man of taste and delicacy, marries a woman because 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 easily as to impose on a young girl, of an open, generous, and feeling heart, if she be 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 diffi cult to counterfeit. A man of delicacy often betrays his passion by his too great anxiety to conceal it, especially if he has little hopes of being fortunate.

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 seriousness, if not into dullness. He magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination, and is either blind to her failings, or converts them into real beauties. Like a person conscious of guilt, he is jealous that every eye observes him; and to avoid this, he shuns all the little observances of common gallantry. 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 compa

ny of his mistress. If the fascination continues long it wil totally depress his spirit, and extinguish every active, vigor ous, and manly principle of his mind.

When you observe in a gentleman's behavior, these marks, which I have described above, reflect seriously what you have to do. If his attachment be 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; if he has sense, he will not ask it for his own. This is an unpleasant truth; but I thought it my duty to let you know it. Violent love cannot subsist, at least cannot be expressed long together on both sides: otherwise, the certain consequence, however concealed, is satiety and disgust.

My zeal for your welfare has excited me to throw together these few thoughts, which, I flatter myself, will sink deep in your memory, and be of some use to you, at the time you shall stand most in need of assistance.

I remain yours affectionately, &c.

LETTER XXII.-On Courtship and Coquettish Behavior, from the same.

Dear Daughters,

In my last I laid before you my thoughts on love and friendship, and now proceed to consider some other particulars, very essential to your happiness. If you see evident proof of a gentleman's attachment, and are determined to shut your heart against him, as you ever hope to be used with generosity by the person who shall engage your own heart treat him honorably and humanely. Do not let him linger ir. miserable suspense, but be anxious to let him know your sentiments with regard to him.

However people's hearts may deceive them, there is scarcely a person that can love for any time without at least some distant hope of success. If you really wish to undeceive a 'over, you may do it in a variety of ways. There is a cer Lain species of familiarity in your behavior, which may satisfy him, if he has any discernment left, that he has nothing to hope for. But perhaps your particular temper will not permit this. You may easily show that you want to avoid his company, but if he be a man whose friendship vou 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 on many other devices, if you are seriously anxious to put him out of suspense.

But, if you are resolved against every such method, a least do not shun opportunities of letting him explain himselt If you do this, you act barbarously and unjustly. If he bring you to an explanation, give him a polite, but resolute and de cisive answer. In whatever way you convey your sentiments to him, if he be a man of spirit and delicacy, he will give you no farther trouble, nor apply to your friends for their in tercession. This last is a method of courtship, which every man of spirit will disdain. He never will whine or sue for your pity. That would mortify him almost as much as your scorn. In short, you may break such a heart, but you can never bend it. Great pride always accompanies delicacy, however concealed under the appearance of the utmost gentle. ness 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 will allow. It is where a gentleman purposely declines to make his addresses, till such times 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 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 delicacy 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 whorn 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 motives I have mentioned, or from a diffidence, inseparable from the 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 themse.ves to the world, and to their own consciences, when they act otherwise. Sometimes they plead ignorance, er at least, uncertainty of the gentleman's real sentimentsThat sometimes may be the case. Sometimes they plead the

decoruin of their sex, which enjoins an equal behavior to a! men, and forbids them to consider any man as a lover, until he has directly told them so. Perhaps few women carry their idea 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 all the rest of your sex, and perhaps whose greatest weakness is this very preference. The truth of the matter is, vanity and the love of admiration is so prevailing a passion among you, that you may be considered to make a very great sacrifice, whenever you give up a lover, till after the 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 when you despise, the lover. But the deepest and most artful coquetry is employed by womem of superior taste and sense, to engage and fix the heart of a man, whom the world, and who they themselves esteem, although they are determined 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 that I should ever think so of all your sex; I know many of them have principles, have generosity, and dignity of soul, that elevates them above the worthless vanity I have been speaking of.

Such a woman, I am persuaded, may always convert a lover, if she cannot give him 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 a 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.

iam, &c.

LETTER XXIII.-On the foregoing Subject

Dear Daughters,

I HAVE insisted the more particularly on this subject of courtship, because it may most readily happen to you, at tha. 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 o 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.

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 in them, either of an honorable or dishonorable kind. Men employed in the pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure, will not give themselves the trouble to engage a woman's affections, merely from the vanity of conquest, and triumphing over the heart of an innocent and defenceless girl. Besides, people never value much what is entirely in their power. A man of parts, sentiments, and address, if he lays aside all regard to truth and humanity, may engage the hearts of fifty women, at the same time, and may likewise conduct his coquetry with so much art, as to put it out of the power of any of them to specify a single expression that could be said to be directly expressive of love. 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 to what length we please, without your being so much as at liberty to explain or expostulate; whereas we can break our chain; and force you to explain, whenever we become impatient of our situation.

A woman, in this country, may easily prevent the first im pressions of love, and every motive of prudence and delicacy should make her guard her heart against them, till such time as she has received the most convincing proofs 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 misfortune, but cannot be your fault. In such a situation you would be equally unjust to yourself and to your lover, if you gave him your hand, when your heart revolted against aim. But miserable will be your fate, if you allow an attach