suspense, are very great incitements to attachment, and are the food of love in both sexes. 1f attachment was not excited in your sex in this manner, there is not one of a million of you that could ever marry with any degree of love.

A man of taste and delicacy marries a woman because he loves her more than any other; a woman of equal taste and delicacy marries him, because she esteems him, and because he gives her that preference: but if a man unfortunately be. comes attached to a woman whose heart is secretly pre-engaged, his attachinent, instead of obtaining a suitable return, is particularly offensive; and if he persists to tease her, he makes himself equally the object of her scorn and aversion.

The effects of love among men are diversified by their different tempers. An artful man may counterfeit every one of them so as easily to impose on a young girl of an open, generous, and feeling heart, if she is not extremely on her guard. The finest parts in such a girl may not. always prove sufficient for her security. The dark and crooked paths of cunning are unsearchable and inconceiv able to an honourable and elevated mind.

The following, I apprehend, are the most genuine effects of an honourable passion among the men, and the most difficult to counterfeit.-A man of delicacy often betrays his passion by his too great anxiety to conceal it, especially if he has little. hopes of success. True love, in all its stages, seeks concealment, and never expects success: it rendeis a man not only respectful, but timid to the highest degree in his behaviour to the woman he loves. To conceal the awe he stands in of her, he may sometimes affect pleasantry, but it sits awkwardly on him, aud he quickly relapses into seriousness, if not into dulness. He magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination, and is either blind to her failings, or converts them into beauties. Like a person conscious of guilt, he is jea lous that every eye observes him; and to avoid this,

he shuns all the little observances of common gallantry.

His heart and his character will be improved in every respect by his attachment; his manners will become more gentle, and his conversation more agreeable: but diffidence and embarrassment will always make him appear to disadvantage in the company of his mistress. If the fascination conti nue long, it will totally depress his spirit, and ex. tinguish every active, vigorous, and manly princi ple of his mind. You will find this subject beautifully and pathetically painted in Thomson's Spring.

When you observe in a gentleman's behaviour, these marks which I have described above, reflect seriously what you are to do. If his attachment is agreeable to you, I leave you to do as Nature, good-sense, and delicacy shall direct you. If yon love him, let me advise you never to discover to him the full extent of your love; no, not although you marry him. That sufficiently shews your pre. ference, which is all he is entitled to know. If he has delicacy, he will ask for no stronger proof of your affection for your sake; if he has sense, he will not ask it for his own. This is an unpleasant truth: but it is my duty to let you know it. Violent love cannot subsist, at least cannot be ex pressed, for any time together, on both sides; otherwise the certain consequence, however com cealed, is satiety and disgust. Nature, in this case, has laid the reserve on you.

If you see evident proofs of a gentleman's at. tachment, and are determined to shut your heart against him; as you ever hope to be used with ge nerosity by the person who shall engage your own heart, treat him honourably and humanely: do not let him linger in a miserable suspense, but be anxious to let him know your sentiments with regard to him.

However people's hearts may deceive them, there is scarcely a person that can love for any time with. out at least some distant hope of success. If you really wish to undeceive a lover, you may do it in a

variety of ways. There is a certain species of easy familiarity in your behaviour, which may satisfy him, if he has any discernment left, that he has nothing to hope for. But perhaps your parti. cular temper may not admit of this.-You may easily shew that you want to avoid his company: but if he is a man whose friendship you wish to preserve, you may not choose this method, because then you lose him in every capacity.-You may get a common friend to explain matters to him, or fall on many other devices, if you are seriously anxious to put him out of suspense.

But if you are resolved against every such method, at least do not shun opportunities of letting him explain himself: if you do this, you act barbarously and unjustly. If he brings you to an explanation, give him a polite, but resolute and decisive answer. In whatever way you convey your sentiments to him; if he is a man of spirit and delicacy, he will give you no further trouble, nor apply to your friends for their intercession. This last is a method of courtship which every man of spirit will disdain. He will never whine nor sue for pity. That would mortify him almost as much as your scorn. In short, you may possibly break such a heart, but you can never bend it. Great pride always accompanies delicacy, however concealed under the appearance of the utmost gentle. ness and modesty; and is the passion, of all others, the most difficult to conquer.

There is a case where a woman may coquette justifiably to the utmost verge which her conscience will allow it is, where a gentleman purposely declines to make his addresses, till such time as he thinks himself perfectly sure of her consent. This at bottom is intended to force a woman to give up. the undoubted privilege of her sex; the privilege of refusing: it is intended, to force her to explain herself, in effect, before the gentleman deigns to do it, and by this means to oblige her to violate the modesty and delicacy of her sex, and to invert the clearest order of nature. Ail this sacrifice is

proposed to be made merely to gratify a most despicable vanity in a man who would degrade the very woman whom he wishes to make his wife.

It is of great importance to distinguish, whether a gentleman who has the appearance of being your lover, delays to speak explicitly, from the motive I have mentioned, or from a diffidence inseparable from true attachment. In the one case, you can scarcely use him too ill: in the other, you ought to use him with great kindness: and the greatest kindness you can shew him, if you are determined not to listen to his addresses, is to let him know it as soon as possible.

I know the many excuses with which women en deavour to justify themselves to the world, and to their own consciences, when they act otherwise.Sometimes they plead ignorance, or at least uncer tainty, of the gentleman's real sentiments. That may sometimes be the case. Sometimes they plead the decorum of their sex, which enjoins an equal behaviour to all men, and forbids them to consider any man as a lover till he has directly told them so. -Perhaps few women carry their ideas of female delicacy and decorum so far as I do: but, I must say, you are not entitled to plead the obligation of these virtues, in opposition to the superior ones of gratitude, justice, and humanity. The man is entitled to all these, who prefers you to the rest of your sex, and perhaps whose greatest weakness is this very preference. The truth of the matter is; vanity, and the love of admiration, is so prevailing a passion among you, that you may be considered to make a very great sacrifice whenever you give up a lover, till every art of coquetry fails to keep him, or till he forces you to an explanation. You can be fond of the love, when you are indifferent to, or even when you despise, the lover.

But the deepest and most artful coquetry is em ployed by women of superior taste and sense, to engage and fix the heart of a man whom the world and whom they themselves esteem, although they are firmly determined never to marry him. But his

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conversation amuses them, and his attachment is the bighest gratification to their vanity; nay, they can sometimes be gratified with the utter ruin of his fortune, fame, and happiness.-God forbid, I should ever think so of all your sex! I know many of them have principles, have generosity and dignity of soul that elevate them above the worthless vanity I have been speaking of.

If

Such a woman, I am persuaded, may always convert a lover, if she cannot give him her affections, into a warm and steady friend, provided he, is a man of sense, resolution, and candour. she explains herself to him with a generous openness and freedom, he must feel the stroke as a man; but he will likewise bear it as a man: what. he suffers, he will suffer in silence. Every sentiment of esteem will remain; but love, though it requires very little food, and is easily surfeited with too much, yet it requires some. He will view her in the light of a married woman; and though. passion subsides, yet a man of a candid and gene rous heart always retains a tenderness for a woman he has once loved, and who has used him well, beyond what he feels for any other of her sex.

If he has not confided his own secret to aay body, he has an undoubted title to ask you not to divulge it. If a woman chooses to trust any of her companions with her own unfortunate attachments, she may, as it is her own affair alone: but if she has any generosity or gratitude, she will not betray a secret which does not belong to her.

Male coquetry is much more inexcusable than female, as well as more pernicious; but it is, rare in this country. Very few men will give themselves the trouble to gain or retain any woman's affections, unless they have views on them either of an honourable or dishonourable kind. Men employed in the pursuits of business, ambition, or pleasure, will not give themselves the trouble to engage a woman's affections, merely from the vanity of conquest, and of triumphing over the heart of an inno cent aud defenceless girl. Besides, people never