What, my good Sir, is this span of life, that a passenger through it should seek to overturn the interests of others to establish her own? And can th… - Samuel Richardson

Love-matches, my dear, are foolish things. I know not how you will find it some time hence: No general rule, however, without exceptions, you know. Violent Love on one side, is enough in conscience, if the other be not a fool, or ungrateful: The Lover and Lovée make generally the happiest couple. Mild, sedate convenience, is better than a stark staring-mad passion. The wall-climbers, the hedge and ditchleapers, the river-forders, the window-droppers, always find reason to think so. Who ever hears of darts, flames, Cupids, Venus’s, Adonis’s, and suchlike nonsense, in matrimony? — Passion is transitory; but discretion, which never bois over, gives durable happiness.

She boasted much of their reputation. Her mother would not do an ill thing, she said, for the world: And she had a brother who had a place in the Customhouse, and was as honest a man, tho’ she said it, as any in it. She owned that she knew my new vile servant; and praised his fidelity to the masters he had served, in such high terms, as if she thought all duties were comprised in that one, of obeying his principal, right or wrong. Mr. William, she said, was a pretty man, a genteel man, and she believed he was worth money; and she was sure would make an excellent husband. I soon found that the simple girl was in love with this vile, this specious fellow.

No-body, it seems, thinks of an husband for Miss Barnevelt. She is sneeringly spoken of rather as a young fellow, than as a woman; and who will one day look out for a wife for herself. One reason indeed, she every-where gives, for being satisfied with being a woman; which is, that she cannot be married to a WOMAN.