it is not by the character which we respect, but by that in which we are interested, that the moral effect on our minds is produced.' 'Oh,' said Miss Julia, who very imperfectly comprehended the Captain's observation, 'he might make a charming husband without being religious; and then he is so warm-hearted--so generous.' 'I shall not dispute that point with you just now,' replied Laura, 'though my opinion differs materially from yours; but Tom Jones's warmth of heart and generosity do not appear to me of that kind which quality a man for adorning domestic life. His seems a constitutional warmth, which in his case, and I believe, in most others, is the concomitant of a warm temper,--a temper as little favourable to gentleness in those who command, as to submission in those who obey. If by generosity you mean the cheerful relinquishing of something which we really value, it is an abuse of the term to apply it to the profusion with which your favourite squanders his money.' 'If it is not generous to part with one's money,' said Miss Julia, 'I am sure I don't know what is.' 'The quiet domestic generosity which is of daily use,' replied Laura, 'is happily not confined to those who have money to bestow;--but may appear in any of a thousand little acts of self-denial.' Julia, whose ideas of generosity, culled from her favourite romances, were on that gigantic kind of scale that makes it unfit for common occasions, and therefore in danger of total extinction, was silent for some moments, and then said, 'I am sure you must allow that it was very noble in Jones to bury in his own miserable bosom his passion for Sophia, after he knew that she felt a mutual flame.' 'If I recollect right,' said Laura, smiling at the oddity of Julia's phrases, 'he broke that resolution; and I fancy the merely _resolving_ to do right, is a degree of virtue, to which even the most profligate attain many times in their lives.' Miss Dawkins, by this time more than half-suspected her companion of being a Methodist. 'You have such strict notions,' said she, 'that I see Tom Jones would never have done for you.' 'No,' said Captain Montreville, 'Sir Charles Grandison would have suited Laura infinitely better.' 'Oh no, papa,' said Laura, laughing; 'if two such formal personages as Sir Charles and I had met, I am afraid we should never have had the honour of each other's acquaintance.' 'Then, of all the gentlemen who are mentioned in novels,' said Miss Julia, 'tell me who is your favourite?--Is it Lord Orville, or Delville, or Valancourt, or Edward, or Mortimer, or Peregrine Pickle, or'--and she ran on till she was quite out of breath, repeating what sounded like a page of the catalogue of a circulating library.