Gloriosus is sensible and accomplished, but egregiously fond of admiration. To gratify this passion, he paid his addresses to Sempronia, whose beauty and fortune attracted a crowd of suitors, and made her the belle of the town in which she lived. The lady was not insensible of his attentions, and he succeeded in gaining the prize, for which so many had sighed in vain. His vanity was highly gratified with the preference he had obtained, and nothing could exceed his satisfaction during his courtship and the first weeks of his marriage. The men called him a lucky fellow, the women praised Sempronia's discernment, and the handsome couple was the theme of general conversation. But, in a short time after the visits, which are usual on such occasions, had been duly paid and as duly returned, admiration, always fickle, lavished its regards on new objects, and Gloriosus and his wife were forgotten. He now found, that she, whom he had chosen for the companion of his life, was deficient in every qualification that could render such a companion useful or agreeable. She had been told from her earliest youth, that her charms of person were such as always to ensure her admirers, without being at the pains of cultivating the graces of her mind. Her mother thought she could not too early introduce into the world such a beautiful creature; and, from the age of fifteen to the day when she married Gloriosus, her time was almost wholly taken up in visiting and receiving visits, and her mind was entirely employed in devising some new mode of decorating her person. Such a one was little calculated to sustain with dignity, "the mild majesty of private life." Her ideas were few and trivial; and her conversation was consequently trifling and insipid. Her former habits made her ill qualified for a nurse; and her love of pleasure made home a restraint to her, and the duties of a mother insupportable. The disappointed Gloriosus, disgusted with his home, sought for relief in the circles of pleasure and dissipation. His wife was too much engrossed with her person and her parties to concern herself about him; so that finding themselves mutually disagreeable, they agreed to a final separation.