-old Penelope Arby: Yet knows she not, says the malicious Lucy, what may be her own case. But I have appealed for you; and to whom? To Lady Gertrude. I was writing to her on a particular occasion, when your

pacquet was brought me; and, in order to enliven my subject, transcribed three lines of Lucy's query upon defending the single state. She was but at Enfield, and returned me the following by the same messenger; the other part of my Letter requiring an immediate answer.

"Your question, my dearest niece, is whimsically asked: You tell me that a whole room-full of young country ladies wait only the success of an appeal you have referred to me, to know whether they shall out of hand dispose of themselves to recruiting officers, mountebanks, and fox-hunters; or venture to live on with the melancholy title of old maids, in an unsupported, undesended state.


"One or two queries to be put, proceeds the Sage are, Whether the worthy matches you have mentioned, or any unsuitable matches whatsoever, would be a support and defence? Whether the woman who makes a rash and improper choice, does not throw herself out of that protection and defence which every one may depend upon in the state of life marked out to them by Providence? And whether the single state is not thus marked out to the woman who never has it fitly in her choice to change it?


"I, my dear, who am an old maid, must not write partially on that side of the question. In general, I will fairly own, that I think a woman is most likely to find her proper happiness in the married state. May you, my dear niece, experience it every day more and more!—But there are surely many exceptions: Women of large and independent fortunes, who have the hearts and understanding to use them as they ought, are often more beneficial to the world, than they would have been had they bestowed them on such men as look for fortune only. Women who have by their numerous relations many connexions in the world, need not

seek out of their own alliances for protection and defence. Ill health, peculiarity of temper or sentiments, unhappiness of situation, of person, afford often such reasons, as make it a virtue to refuse what it would otherwise be right to accept.


"But why do I write seriously to such a lively creature? Only, my dear"
—

But, girls, I will give you no more of Lady Gertrude. I have not done
