circumstances of my mother might have been expected to allow.

Of my beauty, I was, like other girls, fomewhat vain; but my mother was proud to an extreme degree. She looked upon it as a gift by which my fortune and hers were to be made, and confequently fpared no poffible pains to set it off to advantage. Its importance and its power were often inculcated on me; and my ambition was daily inflamed by the recital of the wealth and station which other girls had acquired by marriages to which their beauty alone had entitled them. I think I heard thofe inftances with more indifference than my mother wifhed I fhould; and could not eafily be brought to confider all happiness as centered in riches or in rank, to which her wishes and hopes were conftantly pointed.

Thefe hopes, however, accident put it in her power to accomplish. At the houfe of one of the genteeleft of our acquaintance (who had two daughters nearly of my age) we met with Mr. M, a gentleman whom the lady of the houfe introduced particularly to us, as a man of great fortune and fingular worth. Mr. M was past the meridian of life; he had the look and air of a man who had feen the world, and talked on most subjects with a degree of fhrewd and often farcaftic obfervation, which met with

much applaufe from the older part of the company, but which was not at all calculated to pleafe the younger. The enthusiasm of attach- · ment, of feeling, and of virtue, which our reading fometimes induced us to mention, he ridiculed as exifting only in the dreams of poetry, or the fanciful heroes of romance; but which fenfe or experience neither looked to find in others, nor ventured to indulge in ourselves. In fhort, my companions and I hated and feared him; and neither our averfion nor our fear was at all removed by the lectures of our mothers on his good fenfe and agreeable manners.

Thefe lectures were at last bestowed with particular emphasis on me, and, after a day or two's preamble of general commendations, he was formally propofed to me by my mother as a husband. He himself, though he made his court chiefly to her, was now pretty sedulous in his attentions to me; and made many fpeeches to my beauty, and proteftations of his love, which I heard with little emotion, but which my mother, and her friend whose guests we were, reprefented as the genuine expreffions of the most fincere and ardent attachment. Of love I had formed fuch ideas as girls of my age generally do; and though I had no particular preference for any one elfe, I did not hesitate in refufing him, for whom I had hitherto con

The

ceived nothing but difguft. My refusal increased the ardour of my lover in his fuit: to me he talked in common-place language of the anguish it caused him; to my mother he spoke in the language of the world, and increased his offers in point of fettlement to an exorbitant degree. Her influence was proportionally exerted. She perfuaded, implored, and was angry. luxury and happiness of that state which I might acquire were warmly painted; the folly, the impiety, of depriving myself and her of fo comfortable an establishment, was strongly held forth; the good qualities and generofity of Mr. Mwere expatiated on; thofe ideas which I ventured to plead as reasons for my rejection were ridiculed and exploded. At my time of life, unused to refiftance, fond of my mother, and accustomed to be guided by her; perhaps, too, somewhat dazzled with the profpect of the fituation which this marriage would open to me; it is not furprifing that my first refolutions were I became the wife of Mr. M

overcome.

For fome time the happiness they had promised feemed to attend me. My husband was warm, if not tender in his attachment; my wishes for myself were not only indulged, but prompted; and his kindness to my mother and my friends was unbounded. I was grateful to Mr. MI regarded, I. efteemed, I wifhed to love him.

On the birth of a fon, which happened about a year after our marriage, he redoubled his affiduities about me. I was more happy, more grateful; I looked on my boy, his father careffed him; and then it was that I loved Mr. M

indeed.

This happiness, however, it was not my, good fortune long to enjoy. Some projects of political ambition, in which Mr. Mwas engaged, called him from thofe domeftic enjoyments which feemed for a while to have interested him, into more public life. We took up our refidence in the capital, and Mr. Mintroduced me to what is called the beft company. Of his own fociety I foon came to enjoy but little. His attachment for me began vifibly to decay, and by degrees he loft altogether the attentions which for a while outlived it. Sullen and filent when we were alone, and either neglectful or contemptuous when we had company, he treated me as one whom it would have degraded him to love or to refpect; whom it was fcarce worth while to hate or to defpife. I was confidered as merely a part of his establishment; and it was my duty to do the honours of his table, as it was that of his butler to attend to his fide-board, or of his groom to take care of his horfes. Like them too, I was to minister to his vanity, by the fplendor of my appear

ance; I was to fhow that beauty of which he was mafter, in company and at public places, and was to carry the trappings with which he had adorned it, to be envied by the poor, and admired by the wealthy. While my affection for him continued, I fometimes remonftrated against this. His anfwers were first indifferent, and then peevish. Young, giddy, and fond of amusement, I at laft began to enjoy the part he affigned me, and entered warmly into that round of diffipation, which for a while I had paffed through without relish, and often with felf-reproach. My fon, who had been my tie to home, he took from me, to place him in the family of a former tutor of his own, who now kept a French academy; and I never had a fecond child. My fociety was made up of the

gay and the thoughtlefs; women who, like me, had no duty to perform, no laudable exertion to make, but who in the buftle of idlenefs were to lofe all thought, and in the forms of the world all honeft attachment.

For a confiderable time, however, a sense of right, which I had imbibed in my infancy, rofe up occasionally to embitter my pleasures, and to make me afhamed of the part I was acting. Whenever Mr. M— took the trouble of perceiving this, it ferved him but as a fubject for ridicule. The restraints of religion, or nice morality,

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