table, and at the houses of his friends, and has seen, that she will not do him great discredit any where.  What obligations, and opportunities too, will this give her to love and honour such a husband, every hour, more and more! as she will see his wisdom in a thousand instances, and experience his indulgence to her in ten thousand, to the praise of his politeness, and the honour of them both!—­And then, when select parties of pleasure or business engaged him not abroad, in his home conversation, to have him delight to instruct and open her views, and inspire her with an ambition to enlarge her mind, and more and more to excel!  What an intellectual kind of married life would such persons find theirs!  And how suitable to the rules of policy and self-love in the gentleman; for is not the wife, and are not her improvements, all his own?—­Absolutely, as I may say, his own?  And does not every excellence she can be adorned by, redound to her husband’s honour because she is his, even more than to her own!—­In like manner as no dishonour affects a man so much, as that which he receives from a bad wife.

But where is such a gentleman as Mr. B. to be met with?  Look round and see where, with all the advantages of sex, of education, of travel, of conversation in the open world, a gentleman of his abilities to instruct and inform, is to be found?  And there are others, who, perhaps, will question the capacities or inclinations of our sex in general, to improve in useful knowledge, were they to meet with such kind instructors, either in the characters of parents or husbands.

As to the first, I grant, that it is not easy to find such a gentleman:  but for the second (if excusable in me, who am one of the sex, and so may be thought partial to it), I could by comparisons drawn from the gentlemen and ladies within the circle of my own acquaintance, produce instances, which are so flagrantly in their favour, as might make it suspected, that it is policy more than justice, in those who would keep our sex unacquainted with that more eligible turn of education, which gives the gentlemen so many advantages over us in that; and which will shew, they have none at all in nature or genius.

I know you will pardon me, dear Sir; for you are so exalted above your Pamela, by nature and education too, that you cannot apprehend any inconvenience from bold comparisons.  I will beg, therefore, to mention a few instances among our friends, where the ladies, notwithstanding their more cramped and confined education, make more than an equal figure with the gentlemen in all the graceful parts of conversation, in spite of the contempts poured out upon our sex by some witty gentlemen, whose writings I have in my eye.

To begin then with Mr. Murray, and Miss Damford that was; Mr. Murray has the reputation of scholarship, and has travelled too; but how infinitely is he surpassed in every noble and useful quality, and in greatness of mind, and judgment, as well as wit, by the young lady I have named!  This we saw, when last at the Hall, in fifty instances, where the gentleman was, you know, Sir, on a visit to Sir Simon and his lady.