e circles I shall see the same attentions paid
to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coarse
complexions as to clear--to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she
is a beauty, a fortune, or a title.

I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a
well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the
topic of _female old age_ without exciting, and intending to excite,
a sneer:--when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one
has "overstoocl her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise
immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the Directors
of the South-Sea company--the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare
commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet--was the only pattern of
consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at
an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts
and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not
much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit
more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was
the finest gentleman of his time. He had not _one_ system of attention
to females in the drawing-room, and _another_ in the shop, or at the
stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost
sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous
situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed--smile if you please--to
a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to
some street--in such a posture of unforced civility, as neither to
embarrass her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He
was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women:
but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before
him, _womanhood_. I have seen him--nay, smile not--tenderly escorting
a marketwoman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his
umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no
damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a Countess. To the
reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to
an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show
our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore,
or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend
them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed fo