our proposals with all my soul. May God desert me, whenever I make
worldly grandeur my chiefest good! I know I am in your power; I dread
your will to ruin me is as great as your power. Yet, will I dare to
tell you, I will make no free-will offering of my virtue. All that I
_can_ do, poor as it is, I _will_ do, to shew you, that my will
bore no part in the violation of me.' And when future marriage was
intimated to her, to induce her to yield, to be able to answer, 'The
moment I yield to your proposals, there is an end of all merit, if
now I have any. And I should be so far from _expecting_ such an honour
that I will pronounce I should be most _unworthy_ of it.'

"If, I say, such a girl can be found, thus beautifully attractive in
_every one's_ eye, and not partially so only in a young gentle man's
_own_; and after that (what good persons would infinitely prefer
to beauty), thus piously principled; thus genteely educated and
accomplished; thus brilliantly witty; thus prudent, modest, generous,
undesigning; and having been thus tempted, thus tried, by the man she
hated not, pursued (not intriguingly pursuing), be thus inflexibly
virtuous, and proof against temptation: let her reform her libertine,
and let him marry her; and were he of princely extraction, I dare
answer for it, that no _two_ princes in _one age_, take the world
through, would be in danger. For, although I am sensible it is not to
my credit, I will say, that I never met with a repulse, nor a conduct
like this; and yet I never sunk very low for the subjects of my
attempts, either at home or abroad. These are obvious inferences,"
added he, "not refinements upon my Pamela's story; and if the
gentlemen were capable of thought and comparison, would rather make
such an example, as is apprehended, _more_ than _less_ difficult than
_before_.

"But if, indeed, the young fellow be such a booby, that he
cannot _reflect_ and _compare_, and take the case _with all its
circumstances_ together, I think his good papa or mamma should get him
a wife to their own liking, as soon as possible; and the poorest girl
in England, who is honest, should rather bless herself for escaping
such a husband, than glory in the catch she would have of him. For he
would hardly do honour to his family in any one instance."--"Indeed,"
said the countess, "it would be pity, after all, that such an one
should marry any lady of prudence and birth; for 'tis enough in
conscience, that he is a disgr