_Sylvia_, and she for her _Philander_: and shall we, can we disappoint our fate? No, my soft charmer, our souls were touched with the same shafts of love before they had a being in our bodies, and can we contradict divine decree? Or is it undoing, dear, to bless _Philander_ with what you must some time or other sacrifice to some hated, loathed object, (for _Sylvia_ can never love again;) and are those treasures for the dull conjugal lover to rifle? Was the beauty of divine shape created for the cold matrimonial embrace? And shall the eternal joys that _Sylvia_ can dispense, be returned by the clumsy husband’s careless, forced, insipid duties? Oh, my _Sylvia_, shall a husband (whose insensibility will call those raptures of joy! Those heavenly blisses! The drudgery of life) shall he I say receive them? While your _Philander_, with the very thought of the excess of pleasure the least possession would afford, faints over the paper that brings here his eternal vows. Oh! Where, my _Sylvia_, lies the undoing then? My quality and fortune are of the highest rank amongst men, my youth gay and fond, my soul all soft, all love; and all _Sylvia_’.! I adore her, I am sick of love, and sick of life, till she yields, till she is all mine! You say, my _Sylvia_, I am married, and there my happiness is shipwrecked; but _Sylvia_, I deny it, and will not have you think it: no, my soul was married to yours in its first creation; and only _Sylvia_ is the wife of my sacred, my everlasting vows; of my solemn considerate thoughts, of my ripened judgement, my mature considerations. The rest are all repented and forgot, like the hasty follies of unsteady youth, like vows breathed in anger, and die perjured as soon as vented, and unregarded either of heaven or man. Oh! why should my soul suffer for ever, why eternal pain for the unheedy, short-lived sin of my unwilling lips? Besides, this fatal thing called wife, this unlucky sister, this _Myrtilla_, this stop to all my heaven, that breeds such fatal differences in our affairs, this _Myrtilla_, I say, first broke her marriage-vows to me; I blame her not, nor is it reasonable I should; she saw the young _Cesario_, and loved him. _Cesario_, whom the envying world in spite of prejudice must own, has irresistible charms, that godlike form, that sweetness in his face, that softness in his eyes and delicate mouth; and every beauty besides, that women dote on, and men envy: that lovely composition of man and angel! with the addition of his eternal youth and illustrious birth, was formed by heaven and nature for universal conquest! And who can love the charming hero at a cheaper rate than being undone? And she that would not venture fame, honour, and a marriage-vow for the glory of the young _Cesario_’. heart, merits not the noble victim; oh! would I could say so much for the young _Philander_, who would run a thousand times more hazards of life and fortune for the adorable _Sylvia_, than that amorous hero ever did for