round the company,
they make no stay on him they say she is to marry, but rest two
seconds of a minute on Wildair, who neither looks nor thinks of
her, or any woman else. However, Cynthio had a bow from her the
other day, upon which he is very much come to himself; and I heard
him send his man of an errand yesterday without any manner of
hesitation; a quarter of an hour after which he reckoned twenty,
remembered he was to sup with a friend, and went exactly to his
appointment."

All the love-making in "The Tatler" is of a very correct description.
Marriage is nowhere despised or ridiculed, though suggestions are made
for composing the troubles which sometimes accompany it:--

"A young gentleman of great estate fell desperately in love with a
great beauty of very high quality, but as ill-natured as long
flattery and an habitual self-will could make her. However, my
young spark ventures upon her like a man of quality, without being
acquainted with her, or having ever saluted her, until it was a
crime to kiss any woman else. Beauty is a thing which palls with
possession, and the charms of this lady soon wanted the support of
good humour and complacency of manners; upon this, my spark flies
to the bottle for relief from satiety; she disdains him for being
tired of that for which all men envied him; and he never came home
but it was, 'Was there no sot that would stay longer?' 'Would any
man living but you?' 'Did I leave all the world for this usage?' to
which he, 'Madam, split me, you're very impertinent!' In a word,
this match was wedlock in its most terrible appearances. She, at
last weary of railing to no purpose, applies to a good uncle, who
gives her a bottle he pretended he had bought of Mr. Partridge, the
conjurer. 'This,' said he, 'I gave ten guineas for. The virtue of
the enchanted liquor (said he that sold it) is such, that if the
woman you marry proves a scold (which it seems, my dear niece is
your misfortune, as it was your good mother's before you) let her
hold three spoonfuls of it in her mouth for a full half hour after
you come home.'"

But Steele says that his principal object was "to stem the torrent of
prejudice and vice." He did not limit himself to making amusement out of
the affectation of the day; he often directed his humour to higher ends.
He depreca