would ruin me: thus, thus whole days we have sat and gaz’d, and sigh’d; but durst not trust our virtues with fond dalliance. My page is come to tell me that Madam the Duchess of ---- is come to _Bellfont_, and I am oblig’d to quit my cabinet, but with infinite regret, being at present much more to my soul’s content employ’d; but love must sometimes give place to _devoir_ and respect. _Dorillus_ too waits, and tells _Melinda_ he will not depart without something for his lord, to entertain him till the happy hour. The rustic pleas’d me with the concern he had for my _Philander_; oh my charming brother, you have an art to tame even savages, a tongue that would charm and engage wildness itself, to softness and gentleness, and give the rough unthinking, love; ‘tis a tedious time to-night, how shall I pass the hours? * * * * * _To_ SYLVIA. Say, fond love, whither wilt thou lead me? Thou hast brought me from the noisy hurries of the town, to charming solitude; from crowded cabals, where mighty things are resolving, to lonely groves; to thy own abodes where thou dwell’st; gay and pleas’d among the rural swains in shady homely cottages; thou hast brought me to a grove of flowers, to the brink of purling streams, where thou hast laid me down to contemplate on _Sylvia_, to think my tedious hours away in the softest imagination a soul inspir’d by love can conceive, to increase my passion by every thing I behold; for every sound that meets the sense is thy proper music, oh love, and every thing inspires thy dictates; the winds around me blow soft, and mixing with wanton boughs, continually play and kiss; while those, like a coy maid in love, resist, and comply by turns; they, like a ravish’d vigorous lover, rush on with a transported violence, rudely embracing their spring-dress’d mistress, ruffling her native order; while the pretty birds on the dancing branches incessantly make love; upbraiding duller man with his defective want of fire: man, the lord of all! He to be stinted in the most valuable joy of life; is it not pity? Here is no troublesome honour, amongst the pretty inhabitants of the woods and streams, fondly to give laws to nature, but uncontrolled they play, and sing, and love; no parents checking their dear delights, no slavish matrimonial ties to restrain their nobler flame. No spies to interrupt their blest appointments; but every little nest is free and open to receive the young fledg’d lover; every bough is conscious of their passion, nor do the generous pair languish in tedious ceremony; but meeting look, and like, and love, embrace with their wingy arms, and salute with their little opening bills; this is their courtship, this the amorous compliment, and this only the introduction to all their following happiness; and thus it is with the flocks and herds; while scanted man, born alone for the fatigues of love, with industrious toil, and all his boasting arts of eloquence, his god-like