be placed on the judgment. Yet, the judgment may do something; reason
may have some influence; and, therefore, I here offer you my advice with
regard to the exercise of that reason.

89. The things which you ought to desire in a wife are, 1. Chastity; 2.
sobriety; 3. industry; 4. frugality; 5. cleanliness; 6. knowledge of
domestic affairs; 7. good temper; 8. beauty.

90. CHASTITY, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so
essential, that, without it, no female is fit to be a wife. It is not
enough that a young woman abstain from everything approaching towards
indecorum in her behaviour towards men; it is, with me, not enough that
she cast down her eyes, or turn aside her head with a smile, when she
hears an indelicate allusion: she ought to appear _not to understand_
it, and to receive from it no more impression than if she were a post. A
loose woman is a disagreeable _acquaintance_: what must she be, then, as
a _wife_? Love is so blind, and vanity is so busy in persuading us that
our own qualities will be sufficient to ensure fidelity, that we are
very apt to think nothing, or, at any rate, very little, of trifling
symptoms of levity; but if such symptoms show themselves _now_, we may
be well assured, that we shall never possess the power of effecting a
cure. If _prudery_ mean _false_ modesty, it is to be despised; but if it
mean modesty pushed to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. Your
'_free and hearty_' girls I have liked very well to talk and laugh with;
but never, for one moment, did it enter into my mind that I could have
endured a 'free and hearty' girl for a wife. The thing is, I repeat, to
_last for life_; it is to be a counterbalance for troubles and
misfortunes; and it must, therefore, be perfect, or it had better not be
at all. To say that one _despises_ jealousy is foolish; it is a thing to
be lamented; but the very elements of it ought to be avoided. Gross
indeed is the beast, for he is unworthy of the name of man; nasty indeed
is the wretch, who can even entertain the thought of putting himself
between a pair of sheets with a wife of whose infidelity he possesses
the proof; but, in such cases, a man ought to be very slow to believe
appearances; and he ought not to decide against his wife but upon the
clearest proof. The last, and, indeed, the only effectual safeguard is,
to _begin_ well; to make a good choice; to let the beginning be such as
to render infidelity and jealousy nex