Among those, however, were two gentlemen, whose attachment was declared to me in terms too strong to be misunderstood. Florio's person was universally allowed to be handsome; many, of whom I was one, thought it elegant. With external accomplishments his education had furnished him; his manner was easy and unembarrassed; some called it assuming, I thought it natural. His conversation was full of the language of sensibility; in my idea it spoke a mind replete with sensibility itself. Other people sometimes suspected him of shallowness and affectation; I praised him for avoiding the pedantry of knowledge, and the rusticity of men proud of its acquirements.

Alcander was the only son of a particular friend of my mother's, and therefore on a very intimate footing in our family. My mother, with whom he was a favourite, discovered in him a great fund of good sense and of useful knowledge. I was struck with the inelegance of his appearance and address, and the want of refinement in his sentiments and conversation. His goodness and candour were often the topics of my mother's commendation; I remarked his want of discernment, and the coldness of his attachments and aversions. My mother often repeated her own eulogiums of Alcander, and the criticisms of the world on Florio; I always heard her with a determined opposition of sentiment, and therefore rose from the conversation more averse to the first and more attached to the latter. Alcander, after persisting for some time under a very marked disinclina tion to him, gave up the pursuit; but as he still continued his visits to the family, particularly during any occasional absence of mine, he transferred by de grees his affections to my sister. When he had ceased to be my lover, I was willing to be very much his friend; my mother had always shewn her pag

tiality in his favour; my sister was won by his virtues, and after some time became his wife.

Florio's suit to me was opposed by my mother with rather more vehemence than was natural to her, She often insisted on the infatuation, as she called it, of that deception which I was under with regard to him, a deception which she predicted I should one day be convinced of. Her opposition, however, though it over-ruled my conduct, never overcame my attachment: I would not be his without the consent of my mother; but my affection it was not in her power to shake. Her love for me overcame her re. solution; and at last she gave, however unwillingly, my hand to Florio.

I was now the happiest of women. The scenes I had often pictured of conjugal tenderness and domestic happiness, I thought now realized in the possession of a man who, I had taught myself to believe, was to love me for ever, and was himself every thing I ought to love; and I often looked with a degree of pity on the situation of my sister, whose happiness (for she called it happiness) with Alcander was of a kind so inferior to mine.

How long this lasted I cannot exactly say. I fear I begun to be unhappy long before I would allow myself to believe it. I have often wept alone at the coldness and neglect of Florio, when on meeting him, a few words of seeming tenderness and affection made me again reproach my doubts of his love, and think my own situation the most enviable of any, Alas! he at length drove me from this last stronghold in which my affections for him had entrenched itself. It is now three years since he has treated me in such a manner as to leave me no apology for his treatment. During the last, my mother's death has deprived me of one of the few comforts I had left. From my mother I carefully concealed my distress a

but I believe in vain; she lived to guess at my misery; and I fear her sense of it added to the pressure of that disease which brought her to her grave.

After the loss of my husband's love, it is little to talk of my disappointment in his talents and accomplishments. It was long, however, before I allowed nyself te see defects which less penetration than I have been flattered with possessing, had long before discovered. My mother had often before our marnage expressed her surprise that one of my abilities should be so deceived, as not to see his inferiority: I believe it is by these abilities that the deception is aided. They are able to form a picture to which more ordinary minds are unequal; and in the weakness of their rash attachment, they find the likeness where they wish to find it.

I was interrupted by my sister. Why are her looks so serene? and why does she tell me, how much mine are altered? I am too proud to allow a witness to my distresses? and from her, of all woman-kind I would conceal them. This dissimulation is due to my pride, perhaps to my duty; yet if you knew, Sir, what it is to smile in public, to seem to be happy with such feelings as mine-to act contentment all daylong, and to retire at night to my lonely pillow with the anguish my heart has treasured up all the while! -But the subject overpowers me.-Farewel.

J

CONSTANTIA.

VOL. XXXVII.

N° 65. SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1786.

Malignitati falsa species Libertatis inest.

SIR,

To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER."

TAC

SOME time ago a female correspondent was obliged to enter a complaint with you against one of the Virtues, and set forth the hardships which a famly endures from the circumstances of its master's extreme cultivation of Truth. I am sorry, Sir, to be obliged to enter a similar compiaint against another of the Virtues, of the same family with that of which the Lady complains; and to relate to you the effects which I happened lately to witness from the extreme cultivation of Freedom.

The word Freedom, Sir, till this late incident in my life, carried with it a sound at once so sacred and so animating, as I thought was entitled to my warmest love and veneration. Yet a young man, and full of the classic remembrances of Roman virtue, I connected with the love of Liberty every thing that dignifies and humanizes man; and I heard the cautions of some of my elder and more experienced acquaintance with the secret triumph of a superior mind, whose vigour was unsubcued by age, whose honest warmth was unextinguished by interest or the world.

By one of those advisers I was lately carried on a visit to the house of a common relation of ours, with whose person, as he resided in a different part of the

country, I was not at all acquainted; but whose character, having often heard him celebrated as a warm partisan of Liberty, I had long learned to revere; and I was happy to find that I should have now an opportunity of acquiring an intimate acquaintance with him, our visit bemg proposed to be as long as it was distant, and meant to last during the whole Easter Holidays, according to their longest computation.

When we arrived at the house, and I was introduced to my cousin, I was somewhat disappointed with his aspect and manner, neither of which possessed a great deal of that dignity which, from an assertor of Freedom, according to my classic notions of the character, I had taught myself to expect. I found Mr. Wilfull a thick squat figure, with an ap pearance of great strength and freshness for his age, with a person rather lusty, and somewhat of rubicundity in his face. His motions were more quick than graceful, his voice rough and strong, which last, however, I was inclined, on the first hearing it, to call firm and manly. These qualities I afterwards found employed to give force and emphasis to a variety of oaths, of which the gentleman was very profuse in the course of his conversation. He gave us a very cordial welcome, and insisted on our recruiting ourselves after our journey with a glass of his cordial waters, which I found so strong as to make my eyes water the first mouthful I swallowed; but Mr. Wilfull himself took off a bumper, without seeming to feel any such inconvenience.

When dinner came, the ladies of the family appeared, who consisted of Mrs. Wilfull and two daughters, on whom our landlord bestowed a hearty scold for making us wait, as he said, a quarter of an hour for their damned hair-dressing. This reprimand the ladies bore with great submission. Mrs. Wilfull, indeed,