the utmost importance in public life, and those of the last in private life. If the little states and republicks of Greece, for whom Homer’s poems were originally calculated, had adhered uniformly to their maxims, they would have been invincible, and must have subsisted to this day in all their glory and splendor. In the same manner, if the morals contained, and so admirably enforced by example, in your Clarissa, had their due weight, a vast variety of mischiefs and miseries in private life would be prevented. There is nothing in which parents are apter to stretch their authority too far, than in the article of marriage; there is nothing in which they pay less regard to the happiness of their children; nothing in which they allow less to the influence of passion and inclination in them; and nothing in which they are more sway’d by the dirty grovling passions of vanity, pride, and avarice, themselves. On the other hand, there is nothing in which young ladies, even of the greatest modesty and discretion, more readily fall into errors. It is pretty certain, that where they are allowed freely to follow their own biass, they generally prefer either real or reputed rakes, to men of a regular life and more sober deportment. I have often been puzzled in endeavouring to account for this conduct in the female world, so entirely contrary to what all of them think their real and most valuable interests. I have sometimes been tempted to impute it to the truth of this satyrical maxim in the poet, That _every woman is at heart a rake_, and that, custom and education having deterred them from the practice, they cannot help loving the theory in themselves, and preferring the practice in others. But I rather incline to attribute it to a cruel and unjust policy in the other sex, who have deceived and bubbled them in this, as well as several other articles, and have persuaded them of the truth of this notable maxim, that rakes make the best husbands, than which, as experience abundantly testifies, nothing can be more false. A rake, indeed, may be a good husband while the honey-moon lasts, for so long, perhaps, may novelty have a charm; but when that is ended, the lust of variety, the distinguishing characteristic of a rake, haunts him incessantly, like a ghost, and soon extinguishes all his principles of love, justice, and generosity. It is true, indeed, the proverb goes, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. It may be so, but then it is a truth of equal importance with this, that a pick-pocket going to the gallows is an honest man. His hands are tied behind him, and he has it not in his power to be otherwise; in the same manner a reformed rake is honest, because he has lost the ability to be otherwise, and he naturally fondles and doats upon his wife, that she may overlook deficiencies in more essential articles. He acts entirely from the same principles with those profuse and liberal old keepers, who are said to pay for what they cannot do.