Letters to a Young Lady; On a Variety of Useful and Interesting Subjects Calculated to Improve the Heart, to Form the Manners and Enlighten the Understanding (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ly think of having a family, and calling yourself the mother of a numerous offspring, what possible comfort can you promise yourself without a man of solid probity and virtue; one who will be regular in the discharge of all the religious, social and domestic duties; who will faithfully train up your common children in the fear of God, and not neglect their many interests, and wants, and vishes, for the turbid and licentious pleasure of the bottle, gaming, intrigue, the chace, the theatre, or for any other scenes of fashionable dissipation. The next thing you should look for, is a person of a domestic cast. This will, most frequently, be found in men of the most virtuous hearts and im- proved understandings. Tluy will always have abundance of entertainment in private, unknown to vulgar minds. And these will secure them from seeking their happiness in the fictitious pleasures of the world. Of what consequence are all the good qualities of your husband, if you must be constantly separated from him ? Your tenderness in this case will only be the instrument of a poignant affliction; your anxiety will be perpetually on the rack; your jealousy may be alaraied; and, in the best point of view, you will be a widow, with only ai] nominal husband, and unprotected, with all the . appearance of protection. Men, whose circumstances absolutely require such absences, should never think of this tender cor- nexion. It is this necessary separation after marriage, and the artificial one, which fashion has created, that are the eause of half the disquiets, whichinfect this sacred state. True affection is only nursed by the parties living much together, in the stillness of retirement. It is in the shade, chiefly, that the purest affections glow. It is from dwelling on the graces ef a commo...