s to let you know, that you are to be Married to a Beau that
comes out on Thursday Six in the Evening. Be at the Park. You cannot
but know a Virgin Fop; they have a Mind to look saucy, but are out
of Countenance. The Board has denied him to several good Families. I
wish you Joy.
Corinna.

What makes my Correspondents Case the more deplorable, is, that as I
find by the Report from my Censor of Marriages, the Friend he speaks of
is employed by the Inquisition to take him in, as the Phrase is. After
all that is told him, he has Information only of one Woman that is laid
for him, and that the wrong one; for the Lady-Commissioners have devoted
him to another than the Person against whom they have employed their
Agent his Friend to alarm him. The Plot is laid so well about this young
Gentleman, that he has no Friend to retire to, no Place to appear in, or
Part of the Kingdom to fly into, but he must fall into the Notice, and
be subject to the Power of the Inquisition. They have their Emissaries
and Substitutes in all Parts of this united Kingdom. The first Step they
usually take, is to find from a Correspondence, by their Messengers and
Whisperers with some Domestick of the Batchelor (who is to be hunted
into the Toils they have laid for him) what are his Manners, his
Familiarities, his good Qualities or Vices; not as the Good in him is a
Recommendation, or the ill a Diminution, but as they affect or
contribute to the main Enquiry, What Estate he has in him? When this
Point is well reported to the Board, they can take in a wild roaring
Fox-hunter, as easily as a soft, gentle young Fop of the Town. The Way
is to make all Places uneasie to him, but the Scenes in which they have
allotted him to act. His Brother Huntsmen, Bottle Companions, his
Fraternity of Fops, shall be brought into the Conspiracy against him.
Then this Matter is not laid in so bare-faced a Manner before him, as to
have it intimated Mrs. Such-a-one would make him a very proper Wife; but
by the Force of their Correspondence they shall make it (as Mr. Waller
said of the Marriage of the Dwarfs) as impracticable to have any Woman
besides her they design him, as it would have been in Adam to have
refused Eve. The Man named by the Commission for Mrs. Such-a-one, shall
neither be in Fashion, nor dare ever to appear in Company, should he
attempt to evade their Determination.

The Female Sex wholly govern domestick Life; and by this Means, when