Ha, Ned? But I forget; you are for the full-blown rose: 'tis a happiness, as we are friends, that 'tis impossible we can ever be rivals; a woman is grown out of my taste some years before she comes up to yours: absolutely, Ned, you are too nice; for my part, I am not so delicate; youth and beauty are sufficient for me; give me blooming seventeen, and I cede to you the whole empire of sentiment. This, I suppose, will find you trying the force of your destructive charms on the savage dames of America; chasing females wild as the winds thro' woods as wild as themselves: I see you pursuing the stately relict of some renown'd Indian chief, some plump squaw arriv'd at the age of sentiment, some warlike queen dowager of the Ottawas or Tuscaroras. And pray, _comment trouvez vous les dames sauvages?_ all pure and genuine nature, I suppose; none of the affected coyness of Europe: your attention there will be the more obliging, as the Indian heroes, I am told, are not very attentive to the charms of the _beau sexe_. You are very sentimental on the subject of friendship; no one has more exalted notions of this species of affection than myself, yet I deny that it gives life to the moral world; a gallant man, like you, might have found a more animating principle: _O Venus! O Mere de l'Amour!_ I am most gloriously indolent this morning, and would not write another line if the empire of the world (observe I do not mean the female world) depended on it. Adieu! J. Temple. LETTER 4. To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall. Quebec, July 1. 'Tis very true, Jack; I have no relish for _the Misses_; for puling girls in hanging sleeves, who feel no passion but vanity, and, without any distinguishing taste, are dying for the first man who tells them they are handsome. Take your boarding-school girls; but give me _a woman_; one, in short, who has a soul; not a cold inanimate form, insensible to the lively impressions of real love, and unfeeling as the wax baby she has just thrown away. You will allow Prior to be no bad judge of female merit; and you may remember his Egyptian maid, the favorite of the luxurious King Solomon, is painted in full bloom. By the way, Jack, there is generally a certain hoity-toity inelegance of form and manner at seventeen, which in my opinion is not balanc'd by freshness of complexion, the only advantage girls have to boast of.