lly in the power of him that is hardened by
villany, and inspirited by innocence. The wall of brass which Horace
erects upon a clear conscience, may be sometimes raised by impudence or
power; and we should always wish to preserve the dignity of virtue by
adorning her with graces which wickedness cannot assume.

For this reason I have determined no longer to endure, with either
patient or sullen resignation, a reproach, which is, at least in my
opinion, unjust; but will lay my case honestly before you, that you or
your readers may at length decide it.

Whether you will be able to preserve your boasted impartiality, when you
hear that I am considered as an adversary by half the female world, you
may surely pardon me for doubting, notwithstanding the veneration to
which you may imagine yourself entitled by your age, your learning, your
abstraction, or your virtue. Beauty, Mr. Rambler, has often overpowered
the resolutions of the firm, and the reasonings of the wise, roused the
old to sensibility, and subdued the rigorous to softness.

I am one of those unhappy beings, who have been marked out as husbands
for many different women, and deliberated a hundred times on the brink
of matrimony. I have discussed all the nuptial preliminaries so often,
that I can repeat the forms in which jointures are settled, pin-money
secured, and provisions for younger children ascertained; but am at last
doomed by general consent to everlasting solitude, and excluded by an
irreversible decree from all hopes of connubial felicity. I am pointed
out by every mother, as a man whose visits cannot be admitted without
reproach; who raises hopes only to embitter disappointment, and makes
offers only to seduce girls into a waste of that part of life, in which
they might gain advantageous matches, and become mistresses and mothers.

I hope you will think, that some part of this penal severity may justly
be remitted, when I inform you, that I never yet professed love to a
woman without sincere intentions of marriage; that I have never
continued an appearance of intimacy from the hour that my inclination
changed, but to preserve her whom I was leaving from the shock of
abruptness, or the ignominy of contempt; that I always endeavoured to
give the ladies an opportunity of seeming to discard me; and that I
never forsook a mistress for larger fortune, or brighter beauty, but
because I discovered some irregularity in her conduct, or some depravity
in her m