her. Their family is under so regular
an economy, in its hours of devotion and repast, employment and
diversion, that it looks like a little commonwealth within itself. They
often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to
one another; and sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as
to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a
country life. By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by
their children, adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or
rather the delight, of all that know them.

How different to this is the life of Fulvia! She considers her husband
as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good housewifery as little
domestic virtues unbecoming a woman of quality. She thinks life lost in
her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in
the ring, the playhouse, or the drawing-room. She lives in a perpetual
motion of body and restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one
place when she thinks there is more company in another. The missing of
an opera the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death
of a child. She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls
every woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited,
unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she
knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself, and that
she grows contemptible by being conspicuous!

I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has very finely
touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the character of
Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other
weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.
The poet tells us, that after having made a great slaughter of the enemy,
she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered
tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple. "A
golden bow," says he, "hung upon his shoulder; his garment was buckled
with a golden clasp, and his head covered with a helmet of the same
shining metal." The Amazon immediately singled out this well-dressed
warrior, being seized with a woman's longing for the pretty trappings
that he was adorned with:

--_Totumque incauta per agmen_,
_Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore_.

_AEn._, xi. 781.

--So greedy was she bent
On golden spoils, and on he