Indeed, my dear friend, I have so much honour for the clergy of all degrees, that I never forget in my prayers one article, that God will make them shining lights to the world; since so much depends on their ministry and examples, as well with respect to our public as private duties.  Nor shall the faults of a few make impression upon me to the disadvantage of the order; for I am afraid a very censorious temper, in this respect, is too generally the indication of an uncharitable and perhaps a profligate heart, levelling characters, in order to cover some inward pride, or secret enormities, which they are ashamed to avow, and will not be instructed to amend.

Forgive, my dear, this tedious scribble; I cannot for my life write short letters to those I love.  And let me hope that you will favour me with an account of your new affair, and how you proceed in it; and with such of your conversations, as may give me some notion of a polite courtship.  For, alas! your poor friend knows nothing of this.  All her courtship was sometimes a hasty snatch of the hand, a black and blue gripe of the arm, and—­“Whither now?”—­“Come to me when I bid you!” And Saucy-face, and Creature, and such like, on his part—­with fear and trembling on mine; and—­“I will, I will!—­Good Sir, have mercy!” At other times a scream, and nobody to hear or mind me; and with uplift hands, bent knees, and tearful eyes—­“For God’s sake, pity your poor servant.”

This, my dear Miss Darnford, was the hard treatment that attended my courtship—­pray, then, let me know, how gentlemen court their equals in degree; how they look when they address you, with their knees bent, sighing, supplicating, and all that, as Sir Simon says, with the words Slave, Servant, Admirer, continually at their tongue’s end.

But after all, it will be found, I believe, that be the language and behaviour ever so obsequious, it is all designed to end alike—­The English, the plain English, of the politest address, is,—­“I am now, dear Madam, your humble servant:  pray be so good as to let me be your master,”—­“Yes, and thank you too,” says the lady’s heart, though not her lips, if she likes him.  And so they go to church together; and, in conclusion, it will be happy, if these obsequious courtships end no worse than my frightful one.

But I am convinced, that with a man of sense, a woman of tolerable prudence must be happy.

That whenever you marry, it may be to such a man, who then must value you as you deserve, and make you happy as I now am, notwithstanding all that’s past, wishes and prays your obliged friend and servant,

P.B.

[N.B.—­Although Miss Darnford could not receive the above letter so soon, as to answer it before others were sent to her by her fair correspondent; yet we think it not amiss to dispense with the order of time, that the reader may have the letter and answer at one view, and shall on other occasions take the like liberty.]