and the indolent, to whom it saves trouble.

Carefully, then, beyond all other care, shut up every avenue by which a secret which should die untold can further escape you. Avoid every species of particularity; neither shun nor seek any intercourse apparently; and in such meetings as general prudence may render necessary, or as accident may make inevitable, endeavour to behave with the same open esteem as in your days of unconsciousness. The least unusual attention would not be more suspicious to the world, than the least undue reserve to the subject of our discussion. Coldness or distance could only be imputed to resentment; and resentment, since you have received no offence, how, should it be investigated, could you vindicate? or how, should it be passed in silence, secure from being attributed to pique and disappointment?

There is also another motive, important to us all, which calls for the most rigid circumspection. The person in question is not merely amiable; he is also rich: mankind at large, therefore, would not give merely to a sense of excellence any obvious predilection. This hint will, I know, powerfully operate upon your disinterested spirit.

Never from personal experience may you gather, how far from soothing, how wide from honourable, is the species of compassion ordinarily diffused by the discovery of an unreturned female regard. That it should be felt unsought may be considered as a mark of discerning sensibility; but that it should be betrayed uncalled for, is commonly, however ungenerously, imagined rather to indicate ungoverned passions, than refined selection. This is often both cruel and unjust; yet, let me ask—Is the world a proper confident for such a secret? Can the woman who has permitted it to go abroad, reasonably demand that consideration and respect from the community, in which she has been wanting to herself? To me it would be unnecessary to observe, that her indiscretion may have been the effect of an inadvertence which owes its origin to artlessness, not to forwardness: She is judged by those, who, hardened in the ways of men, accustom themselves to trace in evil every motive to action; or by those, who, preferring ridicule to humanity, seek rather to amuse themselves wittily with her susceptibility, than to feel for its innocence and simplicity.

In a state of utter constraint, to appear natural is, however, an effort too difficult to be long sustained; and neither precept, example, nor disposition, have enured my poor child to the performance of any studied part. Discriminate, nevertheless, between hypocrisy and discretion. The first is a vice;