in, [a fellow as
gloomy and tyrannical as old Harlowe,] when he pursued a wife, who would
not have deserved ill of him, if he had deserved well of her!--But he was
not quite drowned. The man is alive at this day, and Miss Howe mentions
the story as a very shocking one. Besides, both these are a twelve-month
old, or more.

But evil fame and scandal are always new. When the offender has forgot a
vile fact, it is often told to one and to another, who, having never
heard of it before, trumpet it about as a novelty to others. But well
said the honest corregidor at Madrid, [a saying with which I encroached
Lord M.'s collection,]--Good actions are remembered but for a day: bad
ones for many years after the life of the guilty. Such is the relish
that the world has for scandal. In other words, such is the desire which
every one has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour. You and
I, Belford, have been very kind to the world, in furnishing it with
opportunities to gratify its devil.

[Miss Howe will abandon her own better prospects, and share fortunes with
her, were she to go abroad.]--Charming romancer!--I must set about this
girl, Jack. I have always had hopes of a woman whose passions carry her
to such altitudes.--Had I attacked Miss Howe first, her passions,
(inflamed and guided as I could have managed them,) would have brought
her into my lure in a fortnight.

But thinkest thou, [and yet I think thou dost,] that there is any thing
in these high flights among the sex?--Verily, Jack, these vehement
friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by
the very wind that raises them. Apes, mere apes of us! they think the
word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of--a
fashionable word. And so, truly, a single woman, who thinks she has a
soul, and knows that she wants something, would be thought to have found
a fellow-soul for it in her own sex. But I repeat, that the word is a
mere word, the thing a mere name with them; a cork-bottomed shuttle-cock,
which they are fond of striking to and fro, to make one another glow in
the frosty weather of a single-state; but which, when a man comes in
between the pretended inseparables, is given up, like their music and
other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be necessary to keep
the pretty rogues out of active mischief. They then, in short, having
caught the fish, lay aside the net.*

* He alludes here to the