? And, the task being so very difficult, will it not be benevolent in me to lend her my assistance? What think you? Is it not possible to prove that marriage is a mere prejudice?

She shall find me willing to learn many or perhaps all of her doctrines; and in return I desire to teach her no more than one of mine. Can any thing be more reasonable, more generous? Nay, I will go further! I will not teach it her; she shall have all the honour of teaching it to me! Can man do more?
The most knotty and perplexed part of my plan was to find a contrivance to make the gardener's son an actor in the plot. The thing is difficult, but not impossible. I have various stratagems and schemes, in the choice of which I must be guided by circumstances. That which pleases me most is to invite him to sit in state, the umpire of our disquisitions.
I think I can depend upon myself,

otherwise there would be danger in the project. But if I act my part perfectly, if I have but the resolution to listen coolly to their quiddities, sometimes to oppose, sometimes to recede, and always to own myself conquered on the points which suit me best, I believe both the gentleman and the lady will be sufficiently simple to suppose that in all this there will be nothing apocryphal. They will imagine the gilt statue to be pure gold. I shall be numbered among their elect! I shall rise from the alembic a saint of their own subliming! Shall be assayed and stamped current at their mint!
Yet I must be cautious. I would put my hand in the fire ere undertake so apparently mad a scheme, with any other

couple in Christendom. Considering how very warm—Curses bite and tingle on my tongue at the recollection!—Considering I say how very warm I know their inclinations toward each other to be, nothing but the proofs I have had could prompt me to commence an enterprize so improbable. But the uncommonness of it is a main part of its merit; and I think I know the ground I have to travel so well that I do not much fear I should lose my road.
I am aware that the enemy I have most to guard against is myself. To pretend a belief in opinions I despise, to sit with saturnine gravity and nod approbation when my sides are convulsed with laughter, to ape admiration at what

reason contemns and spurns, and to smooth my features into suavity while my heart is bursting with gall at the intercourse they continually hold, of becks and