repletion, and had made a resolution not to fornicate; it was incumbent on me to have a sister and companion, with whom I might lawfully carry on the succession. As a friend

to society, and passively-obedient to the laws of my higher country, a wife for ever, I declared; for, if on losing one, we can be still so fortunate as to get another, who is pretty without pride; witty without affectation; to virtue only and her friends a friend:
Whose sense is great, and great her skill,
For reason always guides her will;
Civil to all, to all she's just,
And faithful to her friend and trust:
Whose character, in short, is such,
That none can love or praise too much.
If such a charmer should again appear, and ten thousand such there ever are among the sex, silly and base tho' the majority may be; what man could say he had had enough of wedlock, because he had buried seven such wives? I am sure I could not. And if, like the men who were but striplings at fourscore, in the beginning of this world, I was to live for ages, and by accidents lost such partners as I have described; I would with rapture take hundreds of them to my breast, one after another, and piously propagate the kind. The most despicable of all creatures is a whore. An abomination to heaven: And if God was a mere fanciful fear; yet such a wretch the prostitute is, that neither honour nor honesty can ever be expected from her. But, in defiance to divine and human laws, she lives a fee to mankind; to ruin the fortune,

pox the body, and for ever damn the soul of the miserable man, who is dunce enough to become a Limberham to the execrable wretch. The misfortunes I have known happen to gentlemen of my acquaintance, by street-whores, chamber-whores, and kept-whores, would make a volume as large as this I am writing: and leave another world quite out of the history. I have seen gentlemen of the best fortunes and education, become worn-out beggars in the streets of London, without any thing hardly to cover them, by the means of those execrable harlots; some have become bullies to bawdy-houses; and many I have beheld going to the gallows, by maintaining the falsest and least-engaging of women: But take a modest sensible woman to your heart, who has the fear of the great God before her eyes, and a regard