nd makes it matter of reproach to me, that she
went not off with me by her own consent; but was tricked out of herself.

Nor upbraid thou me upon the meditated breach of vows so repeatedly made.
She will not, thou seest, permit me to fulfil them. And if she would,
this I have to say, that, at the time I made the most solemn of them, I
was fully determined to keep them. But what prince thinks himself
obliged any longer to observe the articles of treaties, the most sacredly
sworn to, than suits with his interest or inclination; although the
consequence of the infraction must be, as he knows, the destruction of
thousands.

Is not this then the result of all, that Miss Clarissa Harlowe, if it be
not her own fault, may be as virtuous after she has lost her honour, as
it is called, as she was before? She may be a more eminent example to
her sex; and if she yield (a little yield) in the trial, may be a
completer penitent. Nor can she, but by her own wilfulness, be reduced
to low fortunes.

And thus may her old nurse and she; an old coachman; and a pair of old
coach-horses; and two or three old maid-servants, and perhaps a very old
footman or two, (for every thing will be old and penitential about her,)
live very comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old
prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving old lessons,
and old warnings, upon new subjects, as well as old ones, to the young
ladies of her neighbourhood; and so pass on to a good old age, doing a
great deal of good both by precept and example in her generation.

And is a woman who can live thus prettily without controul; who ever did
prefer, and who still prefers, the single to the married life; and who
will be enabled to do every thing that the plan she had formed will
direct her to do; to be said to be ruined, undone, and such sort of
stuff?--I have no patience with the pretty fools, who use those strong
words, to describe a transitory evil; an evil which a mere church-form
makes none?

At this rate of romancing, how many flourishing ruins dost thou, as well
as I, know? Let us but look about us, and we shall see some of the
haughtiest and most censorious spirits among out acquaintance of that sex
now passing for chaste wives, of whom strange stories might be told; and
others, whose husbands' hearts have been made to ache for their gaieties,
both before and after marriage; and yet know not half so much of them, as
some of us honest fello