be excused. You were aiming at prudence, girl, in your refusal, I see that, said my father. You had no reason to doubt but Lord L. would hereafter like you the better for declining marriage in that clandestine manner, because the refusal would

give him an opportunity to make things more convenient to himself. One half of a woman's virtue is pride, continued he [I hope not, truly, said Lady L.]; the other half, policy. If they were sure the man would not think the worse of them for it, they would not wait a second question. Had you had an independent fortune, Caroline, what wou'd you have done?—But go; you are a weak, and yet a cunning girl. Cunning is the wisdom of women. Womens weakness is man's strength. I am sorry that my daughters are not compounded of less brittle materials. I wonder that any man who knows the sex, marries.
Thus spoke the rakish, the keeping father, Lucy, endeavouring to justify his private vices by general reflections on the sex. And thus are wickedness and libertinism called a knowledge of the world, a knowledge of human nature. Swift, for often painting a dunghil, and for his abominable Yahoe story, was complimented with this knowledge: But I hope, that the character of human nature, the character of creatures made in the image of the deity, is not to be taken from the overflowings of such dirty imaginations.
What company, my dear, must those men be supposed to have generally kept? How are we authorised to wish (only that good is often produced out of evil, as is instanced in two such daughters, and such a son) that a man of this cast had never had the honour to call a Lady Grandison by his name! And yet Sir Thomas's vices called forth, if they did not establish, her virtues. What shall we say?
Whatever is, is in its causes just;
—But purblind man
Sees but a part o'th' chain, the nearest link;
His eyes not carrying to that equal beam,
That poises all above.

DRYD.

I thought, my Lucy, that the conversation I have attempted to give, would not, tho' long, appear tedious to you; being upon a new subject, the behaviour of a free-liver of a father to his grown-up daughters, when they came to have expectations upon him, which he was not disposed to answer; and the rather, as it might serve to strengthen us