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20. The consciousness of her charms has rendered her insupportably vain and insolent towards all who have to do with her. Daphne, who was almost twenty before one civil thing had ever been said to her, found herself obliged to acquire some accomplishments to make up for the want of those attractions which she saw in her sister.

21. Poor Daphne was seldom submitted to in a debate wherein she was concerned; her discourse had nothing to recommend it but the good sense of it, and she was always under a necessity to have very well considered what she was to say before she uttered it; while Lætitia was listened to with partiality, and approbation sat in the countenances of those she conversed with, before she communicated what she had to say.

22. These causes have produced suitable effects, and Lætitia is as insipid a companion as Daphne is an agreeable one. Lutitia, confident of fayour, has studied no arts to please: Daphne, despairing of any inclination towards her person, has depended only on her merit; Lætitia has always something in her air that is sullen, grave and disconsolate.

23. Daphne has a countenance that appears cheerful, open and unconcerned. A young gentleman saw Lætitia this winter at a play, and became her captive. His fortune was such, that he wanted very little introduction to speak his sentiments to her father. The lover was admitted with the utmost freedom into the family, where a constrained behaviour, severe looks, and distant civilities were the highest favours he could obtain from Lætitia; while Daphne used him with the good humour, familiarity, and innocence of a sister.

24. Insomuch that he would often say to her, dear Daphne, wert thou but as handsome as Lætitia!-She received such language with that ingenious and pleasing mirth, which is natural to a woman without design. He still sighed in vain for Lætitia, but found certain relief in the agreeable conversation of Daphne. At length, heartily tired with the haughty impertinence of Lætitia, and charmed with the repeated instances of good humour he had observed in Daphne, he one day told the latter, that he had something to say to her which he hoped she would be pleased with.

25. -Faith Daphne, continued he, I am in love with thee, and despise thy sister sincerely. The manner of his declaring himself, gave his mistress occasion for a very hearty laughter.Nay, says he, I knew you would laugh at me, but I'll ask your father. He did so: the father received this intelligence with no less joy than surprise, and was very glad he had now no care left but for his beauty, which he thought he could carry to market at his leisure.

26. I do not know any thing that has pleased me so much in a great while, as this conquest of my friend Daphne's. All her acquaintance congratulate her upon her chance medley, and laugh at that premeditated murderer her sister. As it is an argument of a light mind, to think the worse of ourselves for the imperfections of our person, it is equally below us to value ourselves upon the advantages of them.

27. The female world seems to be almost incorrigibly gone astray in this particular: for which reason, I shall recommend the following extract out of a friend's letter to the professed beauties, who are a people almost as insufferable as the professed wits. 'Monsieur St. Evremont has concluded one of his essays with affirming, that the last sighs of a handsome woman are not so much for the loss of her life as her beauty.

28. Perhaps this raillery is pursued too far, yet it is turned upon a very obvious remark, that a woman's strongest passion is. for her own beauty, and that she values it as her favourite distinc tion. From hence it is that all arts, which pretend to improve or preserve it, meet with so general a reception among the sex.

29. To say nothing of many false helps, and contraband wares of beauty, which are daily vended in this great mart, there is not a maiden gentlewoman, of a good family, in any county of South Britain, who has not heard of the virtues of May-dew, or is unfurnished with some receipt or other in favour of her complexion; and I have known a physician of learning and sense, after eight years study in the university, and a course of travels into most countries of Europe, owe the first raising of his fortune to a cosmetic wash.

30. This has given me occasion to consider how so universal a disposition in womankind, which springs from a laudable motive, the desire of pleasing, and proceeds upon an opinion, not altogether groundless, that nature may be helped by art, may be turned to their advantage, And, methinks, it would be an acceptable service to take them out of the hands of quacks and pretenders, and to prevent their imposing upon themselves, by discovering to them the true secret and art of improving beauty.

31. In order to this, before I touch upon it directly, it will be necessary to lay down a few preliminary maxims, viz.

'That no woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech! 'That pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

"That no woman is capable of being beautiful, who is not incapable of being false.

And, that what would be odious in a friend, is deformity in a mistress.

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32. From these two principles thus laid down, it will be easy.

to prove, that the true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtuous and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is, that those who are the favourite work of nature, or as Mr. Dryden expresses it, the porcelain clay of human kind, become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms: and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable in a great measure of finishing what she has left imperfect.

33. It is, methinks, a low and degrading idea of that sex, which was created to refine the joys, and soften the cares of humanity, by the most agreeable participation, to consider them merely as the objects of right. This is abridging them of their natural extent of power, to put them upon a level with their pictures at the pantheon. How much nobler is the contemplation of beauty heightened by virtue, and commanding our esteem and love, while it draws our observation ?

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34. How faint and spiritless are the charms of a coquette when compared with the real loveliness of Sophronia's innocence, piety, good humour, and truth; virtues which add a new softness to her sex, and even beautify her beauty! That agree ableness which must otherwise have appeared no longer in the modest virgin, is now preserved in the tender mother, the prudent friend, and faithful wife.

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35. Colours artfully spread upon canvass may entertain the eye, but not affect the heart; and she who takes no care to add to the natural graces of her person any exceiling qualities, may be allowed still to amuse as a picture, but not triumph as a beauty.

"When Adam is introduced by Milton describing Eve, in Paradise, and relating to the angel the impression he felt upon seeing her at her first creation, he does not represent her like a Grecian Venus, by her shape of features, but by the lustre of her mind which shone in them and gave them their power of charming. 36. Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,

In all her gestures, dignity and love:

Without this irradiating power, the proudest fair-one ought to know, whether her glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect features are uninformed and dead.

'I cannot better close this moral, than by a short epitaph written by Ben Johnson, with a spirit which nothing could inspire, but such an object as I have been describing.

Underneath this stone doth lie,

As much virtue as could die ;
Which when alive did vigour give
To as much beauty as could live.

I am, Sir,

Your most humble servant,
H

R. B..

1.

EVE

Honour.

VERY principle that is a motive to good actions, ought to be encouraged, since men are of so different a mark, that the same principle does not work equally upon all minds. What some men are prompted to by conscience, duty, or religion, which are only different names for the same thing, others are prompted to by honour.

2. The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by great example, or a refined education. This paper, therefore, is chiefly designed for those who by means of any of these advantages, are, or ought to be, actuated by this glorious principle.

3. But as nothing is more pernicious than a principle of actions, when it is misunderstood, I shall consider honour with respect to three sorts of men. First of all, with regard to those who have a right notion of it. Secondly, with regard to those who have a mistaken notion of it. And thirdly, with regard to those who treat it as chimerical, and turn it into ridicule.

4. In the first place true honour, though it be a different principle from religion, is that which produces the same effects. The lines of action, though drawn from different parts terminate in the same point. Religion embraces virtue as it is enjoined by the laws of God: Honour as it is graceful and ornamental to hu

man nature.

5. The religious man fears, the man of honour scorns to do an ill action. The latter considers vice as something that is beneath him, the other as something that is offensive to the Divine Being. The one as what is unbecoming, the other as what is forbidden. Thus Seneca speaks in the natural and genuine language of a man of honour, when he declares that, were there no God to see and punish vice, he would not commit it, because it is of so mean, so base, and so vile a nature.

6. I shall conclude this head with the description of honour in the part of young Juba.

Honour's sacred tie, the law of kings,

The noble mind's distinguishing perfection,

That aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her,
And imitates her actions where she is not.

It ought not to be sported with.

CATO.

7. In the second place we are to consider those who have mistaken notions of honour, and these are such as establish any thing to themselves for a point of honour which is contrary either to the laws of God, or their country; who think it more honourable to revenge than to forgive an injury; who make no scruple of telling a lie, but would put any man to death who accuses

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them of it; who are more careful to guard their reputation by their courage than by their virtue.

8. True fortitude is indeed so becoming in human nature, that he who wants it scarce deserves the name of a man; but we find several who so much abuse this notion that they place the whole idea of honour in a kind of brutal courage: by which means we have many among us who have called themselves men of honour, who would have been a disgrace to a gibbet.

9. In a word, the man who sacrifices any duty of a reasonable creature to a prevailing mode of fashion, who looks upon any thing as honourable that is displeasing to his Maker, or destructive to society, who thinks himself obliged by this principle to the practice of some virtues and not of others, is by no means to be reckoned among true men of honour.

10. Timogenes was a lively instance of one actuated by false honour. Timogenes would smile at a man's jest who ridiculed his Maker, and at the same time run a man through the body who speaks ill of his friend. Timogenes would have scorned to have betrayed a secret, that was intrusted with him, though the fate of his country depended upon the discovery of it.

11. Timogenes took away the life of a young fellow in a duel for having spoken ill of Belinda, a lady whom he himself had seduced in her youth, and betrayed into want and ignominy. To close his character, Timogenes after having ruined several poor tradesman's families, who had trusted him, sold his estate to satisfy his creditors; but like a man of honour, disposed of all the money he could make of it, in paying off his play-debts, or to speak in his own language his debts of honour.

12. In the third place, we are to consider those persons, who treat this principle as chimerical, and turn it into ridicule. Men who are professedly of no honour, are of a more profligate and abandoned nature, than even those who are actuated by false notions of it, as there is more hopes of a heretic than of an atheist. These sons of infamy consider honour with old Syphax, in the play before mentioned, as a fine imaginary notion, that leads astray young unexperienced men, and draws them into real mischiefs, while they are engaged in the pursuit of a shadow.

13. These are generally persons, who, in Shakespeare's phrase, are worn and hackney'd in the ways of men whose imaginations are grown callous, and have lost all those delicate sentiments which are natural to minds that are innocent and undepraved. Such old battered miscreants ridicule every thing as romantic, that comes in competition with their present interest, and treat those persons as visionaries who dare stand up in a corrupt age, for what has not its immediate reward joined to it.

14. The talents, interest, or experience of such men, make

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