e has happened at a time when
those, on whom so much of human felicity depends, have learned to think
as well as speak, and when respect takes possession of the ear, while
love is entering at the eye.

I have observed, that, even by the suffrages of their own sex, those
ladies are accounted wisest, who do not yet disdain to be taught; and,
therefore, I shall offer a few hints for the completion of the bracelet,
without any dread of the fate of Orpheus.

To the ladies, who wear the pictures of their husbands or children, or
any other relations, I can offer nothing more decent or more proper. It
is reasonable to believe that she intends at least to perform her duty,
who carries a perpetual excitement to recollection and caution, whose
own ornaments must upbraid her with every failure, and who, by an open
violation of her engagements, must for ever forfeit her bracelet.

Yet I know not whether it is the interest of the husband to solicit very
earnestly a place on the bracelet. If his image be not in the heart, it
is of small avail to hang it on the hand. A husband encircled with
diamonds and rubies may gain some esteem, but will never excite love. He
that thinks himself most secure of his wife, should be fearful of
persecuting her continually with his presence. The joy of life is
variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of
absence; and Fidelity herself will be wearied with transferring her eye
only from the same man to the same picture.

In many countries the condition of every woman is known by her dress.
Marriage is rewarded with some honourable distinction, which celibacy is
forbidden to usurp. Some such information a bracelet might afford. The
ladies might enrol themselves in distinct classes, and carry in open
view the emblems of their order. The bracelet of the authoress may
exhibit the Muses in a grove of laurel; the housewife may show Penelope
with her web; the votaress of a single life may carry Ursula with her
troop of virgins; the gamester may have Fortune with her wheel; and
those women _that have no character at all_ may display a field of white
enamel, as imploring help to fill up the vacuity.

There is a set of ladies who have outlived most animal pleasures, and,
having nothing rational to put in their place, solace with cards the
loss of what time has taken away, and the want of what wisdom, having
never been courted, has never given. For these I know not how to provide
a prope