I could hardly help smiling at that part of your letter, wherein you say, you think the husband the proper person to attend his wife to public places. How different are your ideas from those of the people of this town, or at least to their practice!--A woman, who would not blush at being convicted in a little affair of gallantry, would be ready to sink with confusion, should she receive these _tendres_ from an husband in public, which when offered by any other man is accepted with pleasure and complacency. Sir William never goes with me to any of these fashionable movements. It is true, we often meet, but very seldom join, as we are in general in separate parties. _Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder_, is a part of the ceremony; but here it is the business of every one to endeavour to put a man and wife asunder;--fashion not making it decent to appear together. These _etiquettes_, though so absolutely necessary in polite life, are by no means reconcilable to reason, or to my wishes. But my voice would be too weak to be heard against the general cry; or, being heard, I should be thought too insignificant to be attended to. "Conscience makes cowards of us all," some poet says; and your Julia says, fashion makes fools of us all; but she only whispers this to the dear bosom of her friend. Oh! my Louisa, that you were with me!--It is with this wish I end all my letters; mentally so, if I do not openly thus express myself.--Absence seems to increase my affection.--One reason is, because I cannot find any one to supply me the loss I sustain in you; out of the hundreds I visit, not one with whom I can form a friendly attachment. My attachment to Sir William, which was strong enough to tear me from your arms, is not sufficient to suppress the gushing tear, or hush the rising sigh, when I sit and reflect on what I once possessed, and what I so much want at this moment. Adieu, my dear Louisa! continue your tender attention to the best of fathers, and love me always. JULIA STANLEY. LETTER XIII. TO THE SAME.