I am astonished at the folly of many women, who are still reproaching their husbands for leaving them alone, for preferring this or that company to theirs, for treating them with this and the other mark of disregard or indifference; when, to speak the truth, they have themselves in a great measure to blame. Not that I would justify the men in any thing wrong on their part. But had you behaved to them with a more respectful observance, and

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more equal tenderness; studying their humours, overlooking their mistakes, submitting to their opinions in matters indifferent, passing by little instances of unevenness, caprice, or passion, giving soft answers to hasty words, complaining as seldom as possible, and making it your daily care to relieve their anxieties, and prevent their wishes, to enliven the hour of dulness, and call up the ideas of felicity: had you pursued this conduct, I doubt not but you would have maintained and even increased their esteem, so far as to have secured every degree of influence that could conduce to their virtue, or your mutual satisfaction; and your house might at this day have been the abode of domestic bliss.

There may, it is true, be some husbands whom no goodness can impress. We owned it before; but still we have ground to believe, that of men who would have turned out better, had they met with discreet and obliging women, multitudes have been lost by the inattention and neglect, as well as not a few by the impertinence and perverseness of their wives. Little do many of you think how easily the heart may be alienated. A generous readiness to make every kind allowance for what may be amiss in others, is perhaps the rarest quality in the world; it is however one of the most necessary, in the se

veral connexions of society, but especially in the nearest of all connexions. And yet how few husbands, comparatively speaking, have the good nature to exercise it towards the companions of their life! How soon after marriage does it often happen, that every error is magnified into a fault, every fault into a vice, and often a single look is construed into I know not what enormity! One great source of this misery is, that most men expect too much from the women they marry, expect to be always received with smiles, and cherished by endearments, forgetting that they do not always deserve them, that those women are like themselves imperfect, that even the best temper will be hurt by circumstances, and that the brightest sky cannot for ever remain unclouded. But, notwithstanding all this, it continues true, that women might often do much more to please. Their dropping to the husband, as we have frequently seen, those engaging manners which they practised on the lover, is impiety and distraction at the same instant ; as if the solemn vows they made at the altar were words of course, and their only concern was to be married, not to be happy, or to gain a heart, not to keep it. They are apt also to forget in their turn, that the complacence and obsequiousness of courtship seldom extend into wedlock; that the raptures of a common passion are necessarily short; that an attachment without tenderness, or at most an affection without delicacy, is as much as can be hoped from the ordinary run of husbands; and that to preserve even this, requires both vigilance and gentleness.

But that vigilance which is forced will be frequently suspended; and that gentleness which is put on will be always precarious. Therefore we wish you to acquire early the habits of self control, and

to cultivate from principle a meek and quiet spirit. This you will do with success, if imploring and depending on the grace of God, you make conscience of curbing betimes the irascible passions of nature, of submitting calmly to the daily mortifications of life, of generously yielding to those about you, and particularly of condescending to persons of low estate.

I have never seen a woman eminent for the last of these qualities, who was not excellent in many other ways. Respect to superiors may be enforced by fear, or prompted by interest, and is therefore no demonstrative proof of a good heart. But habitual mildness to those of inferior rank, is one of its surest indications. That young lady cannot have a bad mind, who readily enters into the distresses, and affectionately contributes to the felieity of those whom Providence has placed beneath her. In reality there is no such discovery of your tempers as your treatment of domestics. She is always the worthiest character, who behaves best at home, and is most liked by the servants. They are the truest judges of a woman's dispositions, because to them disguise is laid aside, and they see her in all lights. An unaffected propension to use them well, without partiality and without caprice, argues a confirmed benevolence. Those who use them otherwise, will urge indeed their mercenary spirit, their want of gratitude, their want of worth; and such complaints may in many instances be too well founded. But humanity is noble, and will rise above little considerations; Christianity is divine, and will not be overcome of evil, but will overcome evil with good. A faithful servant is a treasure, entitled to every possible mark of regard; and some such there certainly are in this country. But it must be confessed, the generality of that

class are often highly provoking: they are ever ready to corrupt one another; and there can be little attachment where there is no principle. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that treating them with senderness when sick, and with gentleness at other times, without making them confidants, would, joined to a wise and pious example, go far to gain and reform many of them. At any rate, condescension and generosity to those of lower station, will always give satisfaction to that mind in which there is real superiority.

Your behaving handsomely to your friends, and courteously to all with whom you converse, though not so certainly characteristic of the virtue I paint, will yet be a natural and agreeable effect of

Meekness is like the light, which spreads itself every where though, like the light too, it pleases most where it is least looked for. To carry on the resemblance; like that it will be sometimes obscured, but like that also, we cannot bear its being long absent. Starts of petulance may be forgiven to prosperity; fits of fretfulness are natural to affliction; but what can be pleaded for harbouring a passionate or a peevish temper, easily provoked and hardly pacified?

When I have seen a woman in rage, I have always wished for a mirror at hand, to show her to herself, How would she have started back from her own image, if not an absolute Demon! To those of such a stamp I have nothing to say but this, that a place awaits them where their rage will have its full scope for ever. But some are of a calmer strain, sour, splenetic, and sullen; not less unchristian, or less unfemale than the others, and on one account much worse. In those the storm breaks and clears; in these all is settled gloom,

that admits no sunshine, that presents no prospect of the cheerful kind. For vulgar and unenlightened spirits, thus continually overcast, there may be some excuse, from the want of better instruction, that might have helped to correct their natural infelicity of temper. But what shall be said for habitual rancour, deep resentment, and cool malignity in those women who, together with understandings originally good, (for some such there are,) have enjoyed the advantages of books, and conversation, of elegant breeding and knowledge of the world In truth, their heads seem to have starved their hearts; and the talents they possess serve, only to render them completer fiends.

It is a strange mistake of many who think, that, provided they do not indulge in one particular passion, they may give a loose to all the rest: as if a woman could offend only by incontinence; or as if her not committing a sin to which perhaps from the coldness of her complexion she has no propensity, or from which she is restrained by the dread of immediate infamy and ruin, would atone for the commission of others without number; for vanity and arrogance, for selfishness and envy, for suspicion and revenge, for unbounded censoriousness, or the blackest malice. I am sufficiently aware that pride may not comprehend the remark, and that uncharitableness may not forgive it: but no candid hearer will mistake me when I say, that, however scandalous and however destructive the lusts of the flesh may be, those of the mind are much more heinous, being the proper and peculiar image of the worst and wickedest being in the universe; in one word, they are infernal.