P. S. It may not be improper to tell you, that I have been some time engaged in drawing up a system of rules for the ladies' dress, in order to determine how far personal beauty, as the work of nature, is capable of being improved by the assistance of art. In these rules I shall endeavour to fix the proper standards of decorum, and to circumscribe the authority of fashion within the reasonable limits of modesty and discretion: and as this attempt is principally calculated to reform the present nakedness of the ladies, I intend to publish it under the title of "Canons for the Toilet."

No. LXXIX. THURSDAY, JULY 4.

To Mr. Fitz-Adam.

SIR,

YOU cannot do a greater service to the world, than by promoting the real happiness of the best part of it, the fair sex; for whose use I beg you will publish the following animadversions upon an error in education, which the good sense of the present age, with all its attachments to nature, has not totally eradicated. The error I mean is putting romances into the hands of young ladies; which being a sort of writing that abounds in characters no where to be found, can, at best, be but a useless employment, even supposing the readers of them to have neither relish nor understanding for superior concerns. But as this is by no means the case, and as the happiness of man

kind is deeply interested in the sentiments and conduct of the ladies, why do we contribute to the filling their heads with fancies, which render them incapable either of enjoying or communicating that happiness? Why do we suffer those hearts, which ought to be appropriated to the various affections of social life, to be alienated by the mere creatures of the imagination? In short, why do we suffer those who were born for the purpose of living in society with men endued with passions and frailties like their own, to be bred up in daily expectation of living out of it with such men as never have existed? Believe me, Mr. Fitz-Adam, (as much the age of nature as this is thought to be) I know several unmarried ladies, who in all probability had been long ago good wives and good mothers, if their imaginations had not been early perverted with the chimerical ideas of romantic love, and themselves cheated out of the charities (as Milton calls them) and all the real blessings of those relations, by the hopes of that ideal happiness, which is no where to be found but in romances.

It is a principle with such ladies, that it matters not if the qualities they ascribe to the heroes of these books be real or imaginary: upon which principle, a footman may as well be the hero as his master; for nothing, it seems, is necessary to dub him such, but the magic power of a lady's fancy, which creates chimeras much faster than nature can produce realities.

Surely, Mr. Fitz-Adam, this doctrine of ideal happiness is calculated for the meridian of Bedlam, and ought never to be received beyond the limits of Moorfields. For if we should admit that the monarch in his cell is as happy as the monarch on his throne, while both their objects are ambition; yet the happiness of society must depend only on the reasonableness of individuals. A father is by this pernicious doctrine frequently robbed of the comfort he expect

ed in his child; a daughter is deprived of the protection and support she might otherwise have claimed from her father; and society is interrupted in forming its general system of happiness, which those relations should contribute to establish.

These, Mr. Fitz-Adam, are almost the necessary consequences of reading romances: and as human nature is apt to be more influenced by example than precept, I shall beg leave to enforce the truth of what I have advanced by the following history.

Clarinda was the only child of a wealthy merchant, who placed all his happiness in the expectations of her merit, and the rewards of it. Nature had encouraged him in that expectation, by giving her a very liberal portion of her favours; and he determined to improve it by every means which the fondness of a parent could suggest to him. But, unfortunately for Clarinda, her father's good intentions were not guided by a judgment equally good: for it happened to her, as it too often does in the education of young women, that his endeavours were rather directed to grace her person, than to adorn her mind: and whatever qualifications he might wish the latter to possess, he seemed solicitous only of such as might recommend the former. Dress, dancing and music were the whole of her accomplishments: and they so immoderately softened the natural effeminacy of her mind, that she contracted an aversion to every kind of reading, which did not represent the same softness of manners. Every hour which was not appropriated to one of these accomplishments, was spent in the ensnaring practice of reading novels and romances: of which Clelia was her favourite, and the hero of it continually in her head.

Whilst Clarinda was thus accomplishing herself, the father was studying to reward the merits of his daughter with a husband suitable to her rank and for

tune. Nor was he unsuccessful in his care: for Theodore, the son of a neighbouring gentleman in the country, was chosen for this honour. But though all who knew him declared him to be worthy of it, unhappily for Clarinda, she alone thought otherwise. For notwithstanding he loved her with a sincerity hardly to be equalled, yet as he did not approach her in heroics, nor first break his passion to her in shady groves, he was not the hero she expected: he neither bowed gracefully, moved majestically, nor sighed pathetically enough to charm a heart which doated on romantic grimace: in short, he was not the hero which Clelia had impressed on Clarinda's imagination. But, what was still more unfortunate, Theodore's valet de chambre was completely so. That happy hero was a Frenchman, who to an imagination little less romantic than Clarinda's, had added all the fantastic levity of his country; which happening first to discover itself in those very shades where she used to meditate on the hero of Clelia, so captivated her heart with Monsieur Antoine the valet, that her imagination instantly annihilated every circumstance of his rank and fortune, and added every enchanting accomplishment to his mind and person.

There is no resisting the impetuosity of romantic love. Like enthusiasm, it breaks through all the restraints of nature and custom, and enables, as well as animates its votaries, to execute all its extravagant suggestions. A passion of this sublime original could have none of those difficulties in discovering itself to its subject, which are apt to oppose the rash wills of vulgar mortals and therefore it was not long before Clarinda gave Antonio (for so she chose to soften the unharmonious name of Antoine) to understand, that love, like death, levelled all distinctions of birth and fortune, and introduced the lowest and highest into Elysium together.

Antonio, who had been almost as conversant with romances as Clarinda, received the first intimations of the lady's passion for him with a transport that had less surprize than joy in it; and from the first discovery of it, there arose an intercourse between them, which entirely defeated the pretensions of Theodore, and confirmed Clarinda's passion for his valet.

But as much a hero as Antonio appeared to be both to Clarinda and himself during the first part of this tender intercourse, in the progress of it he discovered that he wanted one principal ingredient in the composition of that ideal character: he had not courage enough to be a martyr. For though he doated on Clarinda's person, whilst her fortune was annexed to it, yet he could not bring himself to starve with an angel: and this he soon perceived must be his fate, if he possessed the one without the other. Such a disappointment from a hero to a Dido, or to any woman who expected a natural gratification of her passion, would have excited resentment and aversion. This would have been nature, which romantic love has no knowledge of: it never changes any of those ideas with which it first captivates a fantastic heart: therefore Clarinda, though she most pathetically laments her disappointment in Antonio, yet charged it all upon her stars, and accused only them and the gods of cruelty. Her father at the same time declared his resolution to disinherit her, if she persisted in her folly and the more effectually to prevent it, he bribed Antonio to leave England; which so inflamed Clarinda's passion (who considered him as banished on her account) that she made a solemn vow never to marry any other man.

To conclude; the consequence of this vow was, that the father settled an annuity on his daughter, and entailed his estate on his next kindred. This annuity she still lives to enjoy; and in the fifty-fifth year of