very worthy our regard, and by how much the readier we are to embrace what ever resembles them, by so much the more dangerous it is that these venerable Names should be wretchedly abus’d and affixt to their direct contraries, yet this is the Custom of the World: And how can she possibly detect the fallacy, who has no better Notion of either than what she derives from Plays and Romances? How can she be furnished with any solid Principles whose very Instructors are Froth and emptiness? Whereas Women were they rightly Educated, had they obtain’d a well inform’d and discerning Mind, they would be proof against all those Batteries, see through and scorn those little silly Artifices which are us’d to ensnare and deceive them. Such an one would value her self only on her Vertue, and consequently be most chary of what she esteems so much. She would know, that not what others _say_, but what she her self _does_, is the true Commendation and the only thing that exalts her; the loudest Encomiums being not half so satisfactory, as the calm and secret Plaudit of her own Mind, which moving on true Principles of Honour and Vertue, wou’d not fail on a review of it self to anticipate that delightful Eulogy she shall one day hear. Whence is it but from ignorance, from a want of Understanding to compare and judge of things, to chuse a right End, to proportion the Means to the End, and to rate ev’ry thing according to its proper value, that we quit the Substance for the Shadow, Reality for Appearance, and embrace those very things which if we understood we shou’d hate and fly, but now are reconcil’d to, merely because they usurp the Name, tho’ they have nothing of the Nature of those venerable Objects we desire and seek? Were it not for this delusion, is it probable a Lady who passionately desires to be admir’d, shou’d ever consent to such Actions as render her base and contemptible? Wou’d she be so absurd as to think either to get love, or to keep it, by those methods which occasion loathing and consequently end in hatred? Wou’d she reckon it a piece of her Grandeur, or hope to gain esteem by such excesses as really lessen her in the eyes of all considerate and judicious persons? Wou’d she be so silly as to look big and think her self the better person, because she has more Money to bestow profusely, or the good luck to have a more ingenious Taylor or Milliner than her Neighbour? Wou’d she, who by the regard she pays to Wit, seems to make some pretences to it, undervalue her Judgment so much as to admit the Scurrility and profane noisy Nonsense of men, whose Fore-heads are better than their Brains, to pass under that Character? Wou’d she be so weak as to imagine that a few airy Fancies joyn’d with a great deal of Impudence and ill-nature (the right definition of modern Wit) can bespeak him a Man of sense, who runs counter to all the sense and reason that ever appear’d in the World? than which nothing can be an