moved, he obeyed her commands, and straight
went out of the box, more amazed at the oddness of the adventure, than
can be well expressed; and yet more so, when he afterwards heard she
was the wife of a person of great condition, was in the first month of
her marriage with him, and had the reputation of a woman of strict
virtue.

As this false step was meerly accidental, wholly unpremeditated on
either side, and by what can be judged by the character of the lady,
and her behaviour afterwards, was no more on her part than a surprize
on the senses, in which the mind was not consulted, and had not the
least share, I know not whether it may not more justly be called a
slip of unguarded nature, than a real crime in her; and as for Natura,
though certainly the most guilty of the two, whoever considers his
youth, his constitution, and above all the greatness of the
temptation, which presented itself before him, will allow, that he
must either have been _more_, or _less_, than _man_, to have behaved
otherwise than he did.

Let the most severely virtuous, who happily have never fallen into the
same error, but figure to themselves the circumstances of this
transgressing pair, and well consider in what manner nature must
operate, when thus powerfully excited, and if they are not rendered
totally incapable of any soft sensations, by an uncommon frigidity of
constitution, they will cease either to wonder at, or too cruelly
condemn, the effects of so irresistible an impulse.

Were it not for the precepts of religion and morality, the fears of
scandal, and shame of offending against law and custom, man would
undoubtedly think himself intitled to the same privileges which the
brute creation in this point enjoy above him; and it is not therefore
strange, that whenever reason nods, as it sometimes will do, even in
those who are most careful to preserve themselves under its
subjection, that the senses ever craving, ever impatient for
gratification, should readily snatch the opportunity of indulging
themselves, and which it is observable they ordinarily do to the
greater excess, by so much the longer, and the more strictly they have
been kept under restraint.

CHAP. III.

The uncertainty of human events displayed in many surprizing turns
of fortune, which befel Natura, on his endeavouring to settle
himself in the world: with some proofs of the necessity of
fortitude, as it may happen that actions, excited by the greate