love, the great idea you have of her, joined to a quick sense of her absence, fills your mind with a sort of tenderness, that gives your language too much the air of complaint, which is seldom successful.  For a man may flatter himself as he pleases, but he will find, that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have, and women of spirit are not to be won by mourners.  Therefore he that can keep handsomely within rules, and support the carriage of a companion to his mistress, is much more likely to prevail, than he who lets her see, the whole relish of his life depends upon her.  If possible therefore divert your mistress, rather than sigh to her.  The pleasant man she will desire for her own sake; but the languishing lover has nothing to hope from but her pity.  To show the difference I produced two letters a lady gave me, which had been writ to her by two gentlemen who pretended to her, but were both killed the next day after the date at the battle of Almanza.  One of them was a mercurial gay-humoured man; the other a man of a serious, but a great and gallant spirit.  Poor Jack Careless!  This is his letter:  you see how it is folded:  the air of it is so negligent, one might have read half of it by peeping into it, without breaking it open.  He had no exactness.

“MADAM,

“It is a very pleasant circumstance I am in, that while I should be thinking of the good company we are to meet within a day or two, where we shall go to loggerheads, my thoughts are running upon a fair enemy in England.  I was in hopes I had left you there; but you follow the camp, though I have endeavoured to make some of our leaguer ladies drive you out of the field.  All my comfort is, you are more troublesome to my colonel than myself:  I permit you to visit me only now and then; but he downright keeps you.  I laugh at his Honour as far as his gravity will allow me; but I know him to be a man of too much merit to succeed with a woman.  Therefore defend your heart as well as you can, I shall come home this winter irresistibly dressed, and with quite a new foreign air.  And so I had like to say, I rest, but alas!  I remain,

“Madam,

“Your most obedient,

“Most humble Servant,

“JOHN CARELESS.”

Now for Colonel Constant’s epistle; you see it is folded and directed with the utmost care.

“MADAM,

“I do myself the honour to write to you this evening, because I believe to-morrow will be a day of battle, and something forebodes in my breast that I shall fall in it.  If it proves so, I hope you will hear, I have done nothing below a man who had a love of his country, quickened by a passion for a woman of honour.  If there be anything noble in going to a certain death; if there be any merit, that I meet it with pleasure, by promising myself a place in your esteem; if your applause, when I am no more, is preferable to the most glorious life without you:  I say, madam, if any of these considerations can have weight with you, you will give me a kind place in your memory, which I prefer to the glory of Caesar.  I hope, this will be read, as it is writ, with tears.”