Observe, notwithstanding, that I do not wish you to hear of your faults without pain: Such an indifference would afford small hopes of amendment. Shame and remorse are the first steps to true repentance; yet we should be willing to bear this pain, and thankful to the kind hand that inflicts it for our good. Nor must we, by sullen silence under it, leave our kind physician in doubt, whether the operation has taken effect or not, or whether it has not added another malady, instead of curing the first. You must consider that those who tell you of your faults, if they do it from motives of kindness, and not of malice, exert their friendship in a painful office, which must have cost them as great an effort as it can be to you to acknowledge the service; and, if you refuse this encouragement, you cannot expect that any one, who is not absolutely obliged to it by duty, will a second time undertake such an ill-requited trouble. What a loss would this be to yourself!--How difficult would be our progress to that degree of perfection, which is necessary to our happiness, was it not for the assistance we receive from each other!--This certainly is one of the means of grace held out to us by our merciful Judge, and, if we reject it, we are answerable for all the miscarriages we may fall into for want of it. I know not, whether that strange caprice, that inequality of taste and behaviour, so commonly attributed to our sex, may be properly called a fault of temper,--as it seems not to be connected with, or arising from, our animal frame,--but to be rather the fruit of our own self-indulgence, degenerating by degrees into such a wantonness of will as knows not how to please itself. When, instead of regulating our actions by reason and principle, we suffer ourselves to be guided by every slight and momentary impulse of inclination, we shall, doubtless, appear so variable and inconstant, that nobody can guess, by our behaviour to day, what may be expected from us to-morrow; nor can we ourselves tell, whether what we delighted in a week ago will now afford us the least degree of pleasure. It is in vain for others to attempt to please us--we cannot please ourselves, though all we could wish for waits our choice: and thus does a capricious woman become "sick of herself, through very selfishness:" And, when this is the case, it is easy to judge how sick others must be of her, and how contemptible and disgusting she must appear. This wretched state is the usual consequence of power and flattery. May my dear child never meet with the temptation of that excessive and ill-judged indulgence from a husband, which she has happily escaped from her parents, and which seldom fails to reduce women to the miserable condition of a humoured child, always unhappy from having nobody's will to study but its own! The insolence of such demands for yourself, and such disregard to the choice and inclinations of others, can seldom fail to make you as many enemies as there are