gave me no great pleasure; for either they dealt so much in the
_marvellous_ and _improbable_, or were so unnaturally _inflaming_ to
the _passions_, and so full of _love_ and _intrigue_, that most of
them seemed calculated to _fire_ the _imagination_, rather than to
_inform_ the _judgment._ Titles and tournaments, breaking of spears
in honour of a mistress, engaging with monsters, rambling in search
of adventures, making unnatural difficulties, in order to shew the
knight-errant's prowess in overcoming them, is all that is required
to constitute the _hero_ in such pieces. And what principally
distinguishes the character of the _heroine_ is, when she is taught to
consider her father's house as an enchanted castle, and her lover as
the hero who is to dissolve the charm, and to set at liberty from one
confinement, in order to put her into another, and, too probably, a
worse: to instruct her how to climb walls, leap precipices, and do
twenty other extravagant things, in order to shew the mad strength of
a passion she ought to be ashamed of; to make parents and guardians
pass for tyrants, the voice of reason to be drowned in that of
indiscreet love, which exalts the other sex, and debases her own. And
what is the instruction that can be gathered from such pieces, for the
conduct of common life?

"Then have I been ready to quarrel with these writers for another
reason; and that is, the dangerous notion which they hardly ever
fail to propagate, of a _first-sight_ love. For there is such a
susceptibility supposed on both sides (which, however it may pass in
a man, very little becomes the female delicacy) that they are smitten
with a glance: the fictitious blind god is made a _real_ divinity:
and too often prudence and discretion are the first offerings at his
shrine."

"I believe, Madam," said Miss Stapylton, blushing, and playing with
her fan, "there have been many instances of people's loving at first
sight, which have ended very happily."

"No doubt of it," replied I. "But there are three chances to one,
that so precipitate a liking does not. For where can be the room for
caution, enquiry, the display of merit and sincerity, and even the
assurance of a _grateful return_, to a lady, who thus suffers herself
to be prepossessed? Is it not a random shot? Is it not a proof of
weakness? Is it not giving up the negative voice, which belongs to the
sex, even while she is not sure of meeting with the affirmative one
from him who