You may be easy as to the fear of having offended me. Your letter rather excited my grief than my anger. It is not me, it is your-self you have offended, by a debauch in which the heart had no share. I am at this, however, but the more afflicted; for I had much rather you should affront Eloisa than debase yourself; and the injury you have done to yourself is that only which I cannot forgive.----To regard only the fault of which you accuse yourself, you are not so culpable as you imagine: I can reproach you on that account only with imprudence. But what I blame you for, is of a greater moment, and proceeds from a failing, that has taken deeper root than you imagine, and which it is the part of a friend to lay before you. Your primary error lies in having at first taken a wrong path, in which, the farther you advance the more you will go astray; and I tremble to see that, unless you tread back the steps you have taken, you are inevitably lost. You have suffered yourself to be led insensibly into the very snares I dreaded. The more gross and palpable allurements of vice I knew could not seduce you, but the bad company you keep, hath begun by deluding your reason, to corrupt your morals, and hath already made the first essay of its maxims on your behaviour. You have told me nothing, it is true, in particular, of the acquaintance you have made in Paris; but it is easy to judge of your companions by your letters, and of those who point out the objects, by your manner of describing them. I have not concealed from you how little satisfied I have been with your remarks; you have nevertheless continued them in the same stile, which has only increased my displeasure. In fact, one would rather take your observations for the sarcasms of some petit-maitre, than for the animadversions of a philosopher; and it is hardly possible to believe them written by the same hand that wrote your former letters. Do you think to study mankind by the confined behaviour of a few societies of finical prudes and other idlers? do none of your remarks penetrate beyond the exterior and changeable varnish which ought hardly to have engaged your attention? was it worthwhile to collect with so much care those peculiarities of manners and decorum, which ten years hence will no longer exist; while the unalterable springs of the human heart, the constant and secret workings of the passions have escaped your researches? let us turn to your letter concerning women: in what have you instructed me to know them? you have given indeed a description of their dress, which all the world might be as well acquainted with; and have made some malicious observations on the address and behaviour of some, as also of the irregularities of a few others, which you have unjustly attributed to them all, as if no person of virtuous sentiments was to be found in Paris, and every woman flaunted about there in her chariot, and sat in the front boxes. Have you told me any