 as I have very lately experienced.—Where it is only assumed, it is easily detected; and when the paint is washed off, the complexion looks the worse, for having worn it—affectation in women, and hypocrisy in men, are equally detestable.
I have very uneasy apprehensions, tho' I hope they are not well founded, that Sir James Desmond's ruling passion is the love of play. Men addicted to this vice, of all others, shou'd never marry; it absorbs every generous affection of the human heart. The drunkard has intervals of sobriety, and in those

may be capable of friendship and of fondness.—The choleric man is not always in a passion, and is even proverbially good natured and humane; sorry for, and ready to atone, the evil his short lived frenzy may have caused.—Even the libertine, tho' he may cease to love, most generally esteems a virtuous wife; and if not a despicable wretch, indeed, endeavours to compensate for his want of fondness, by generosity and politeness towards her.
But let a man be once possessed with a passion for gaming, he becomes incapable of honour or affection; he wou'd wish to win money from his dearest friend, tho' he knew that friend must be distressed by losing it, and wou'd sacrifice the interest of his tenderest connection, to gratify this sordid vice, which

like a whirlpool swallows every virtue.—His mind can never be at peace; his losses are attended with a permanent regret; his winnings, with but a transient exultation. The constant contention of his passion, destroys his constitution and anticipates old age; he passes his days and nights with harpies, like himself; he lives unloved, and dies unlamented.
I know not how I have been drawn into this long exclamation against a vice which you hold in as much abhorrence as I do, but my mind was full of rancour against it, merely on a supposition that it may interfere with the happiness of a beloved sister—I have now let out my venom, and shall perhaps be able to throw off that reserve to Sir James and his associates,

which this mental bile has hitherto been the cause of.
I find from Emma, that my brother was rather averse to her marrying Sir James Desmond, but that he had suffered too much from a disappointed love to inflict such torments upon her; as she then confessed to him, and does now to me, that she cou'd not have been happy with any other man—May her husband's gratitude reward her predilection—And, indeed, if my suspicion
