nd the other slopping tea for the good
of her country. They renewed their generous endeavours to set me right,
and I (graceless beast that I am) take up the smoked card which lay
before me, and with the corner of another wrote--

If ever I one thought bestow
On what such fools advise,
May I be dull enough to grow
Most miserably wise.

And flung down the card on the table, and myself out of the room, in the
most indecent fury. A few minutes on the cold water convinced me of my
folly, and I went home as much mortified as my Lord E. when he has lost
his last stake at hazard. Pray don't think (if you can help it) this is
an affectation of mine to enhance the value of a talent I would be
thought to despise; as celebrated beauties often talk of the charms of
good sense, having some reason to fear their mental qualities are not
quite so conspicuous as their outside lovely form.--_A propos_ of
beauties:

I know not why, but Heaven has sent this way
A nymph, fair, kind, poetical, and gay;
And what is more (tho' I express it dully),
A noble, wise, right honourable cully:
A soldier worthy of the name he bears,
As brave and senseless as the sword he wears.

"You will not doubt I am talking of a puppet-show; and indeed so I am;
but the figures (some of them) bigger than the life, and not stuffed
with straw like those commonly shown at fairs. I will allow you to think
me madder than Don Quixote when I confess I am governed by the
_que-dira-t-on_ of these things, though I remember whereof they are
made, and know they are but dust. Nothing vexes me so much as that they
are below satire. (Between you and me) I think there are but two
pleasures permitted to mortal man, love and vengeance; both which are,
in a peculiar manner, forbidden to us wretches who are condemned to
petticoats. Even vanity itself, of which you daily accuse us, is the sin
against the Holy Ghost not to be forgiven in this world or the next.

Our sex's weakness you expose and blame,
Of every prating fop the common theme;
Yet from this weakness you suppose is due
Sublimer virtue than your Cato knew.
From whence is this unjust distinction shown?
Are we not formed with passions like your own?
Nature with equal fire our souls endued:
Our minds as lofty, and as warm our blood.
O'er the wide world your wishes you pursue,
The change is justified by something new,
But we must sigh in silence and be true.

"How the gre