Hor. There you are in the right: I heartily beg your pardon, and to atone for the wrong I have done you, say what you please, I will hear it with patience, be it never so shocking; but I beg of you be serious. Cleo. I have nothing to say to you that is distasteful, much less shocking: all I desire is, to convince you, that I am neither so ill-natured nor uncharitable, in my opinion of mankind, as you take me to be: and that the notions I entertain of the worth of things, will not differ much from yours, when both come to be looked into. Do but consider what we have been doing: I have endeavoured to set every thing in the handsomest light I could think of; you say, to ridicule the social system; I own it; now reflect on your own conduct, which has been to show the folly of my strained panegyrics, and replace things in that natural view, which all just, knowing men would certainly behold them in. This is very well done: but it is contrary to the scheme you pretended to maintain; and if you judge of all actions in the same manner, there is an end of the social system; or, at least, it will be evident, that it is a theory never to be put into practice. You argue for the generality of men, that they are possessed of these virtues, but when we come to particulars, you can find none. I have tried you every where: you are as little satisfied with persons of the highest rank, as you are with them of the lowest, and you count it ridiculous to think better of the middling people. Is this otherwise than standing up for the goodness of a design, at the same time you confess, that it never was, or ever can be executed? What sort of people are they, and where must we look for them, whom you will own to act from those principles of virtue? Hor. Are there not in all countries men of birth and ample fortune, that would not accept of places, though they were offered, that are generous and beneficent, and mind nothing but what is great and noble?