My enquiries had no sooner taken this turn, than I began to discover a thousand advantageous particulars in the very women who before appeared so insupportable. Indeed all strangers are agreed, that, provided you exclude the fashionable topic, there is no country in the world whose women have more knowledge, talk more sensibly, with more judgment, and are more capable of giving advice. If from the Spanish, Italian, or German ladies, we should take the jargon of gallantry and wit, what would there remain of their conversation? and you, my Eloisa, are not ignorant how it is in general with our country-women. But if, with a French woman, a man has resolution to sacrifice his pretensions to gallantry, and to draw her out of that favourite fortress, she will then make a virtue of necessity, and arming herself with reason, will fight manfully in the open field. With regard to their goodness of heart. I will not instance their zeal to serve their friends; for, as with the rest of mankind, that may partly proceed from self-love. But, though they generally love no body but themselves, long habit will frequently produce in them the effects of a sincere friendship. Those who have constancy enough to support an attachment of ten years, commonly continue it to the end of their lives, and they will then love their old friends with more tenderness, at least with more fidelity than their new lovers. One common accusation against the women of France is, that they do every thing, and consequently more evil than good; but it may be observed in their justification, that in doing evil they are stimulated by the men, and in doing good are actuated by their own principles. This does not in any ways contradict what I said before, that the heart has no concern in the commerce between the two sexes; for the gallantry of the French has given to the women an universal power, which stands in no need of tenderness to support it. Every thing depends upon the ladies; all things are done by them or for them; Olympus and Parnassus, glory and fortune, are equally subject to their laws. Neither books nor authors have any other value or esteem than that which the ladies are pleased to allow them. There is no appeal from their decree in matters of the nicest judgment or most trivial taste. Poetry, criticism, history, philosophy, are all calculated for the ladies, and even the bible itself has lately been metamorphosed into a polite romance. In public affairs, their influence arises from their natural ascendency over their husbands, not because they are their husbands, but because they are men, and it would be monstrous for a man to refuse any thing to a lady, even though she were his wife.