your time you may enjoy, moved perchance by a misunderstood oracle? what shall I say, if the affection of a father to his own children cannot plead sufficiently against such fancies? once, certain it is, the God which is God of nature doth never teach unnaturalness; and even the same mind hold I touching your banishing them from company, lest I know not what strange loves should follow. Certainly, Sir, in my ladies, your daughters, nature promiseth nothing but goodness, and their education by your fatherly care hath been hitherto such as hath been most fit to restrain all evil, giving their minds virtuous delights, and not grieving them for want of well-ruled liberty. Now to fall to a sudden straightening them, what can it do but argue suspicion? a thing no more unpleasant than unsure for the preserving of virtue. Leave women’s minds the most untamed that way of any: see whether a cage can please a bird; or whether a dog grow not fiercer with tying? what doth jealousy but stir up the mind to think what it is from which are restrained? for they are treasures or things of great delight, which men use to hide for the aptness they have to each man’s fancy: and the thoughts once awaked to that, harder sure it is to keep those thoughts from accomplishment than had been before to have kept the mind (which being the chief part, by this means is defiled) from thinking. Lastly, for the recommending of so principal a charge of the princess Pamela (whose mind goes beyond the governing of many thousand such) to such a person as Dametas is (besides that the thing in itself is strange) it comes of a very ill ground that ignorance should be the mother of faithfulness. Oh no, he cannot be good that knows not why he is good; but stands so far good as his fortune may keep him unassayed; but coming once to that, his rude simplicity is either easily changed, or easily {18} deceived: and so grows that to be the last excuse of his fault, which seemed to have been the foundation of his faith. Thus far hath your commandment and my zeal drawn me; which I, like a man in a valley that may discern hills, or like a poor passenger that may spy a rock, so humbly submit to your gracious consideration, beseeching you again to stand wholly upon your own virtue, as the surest way to maintain you in that you are, and to avoid any evil which may be imagined.