soft innocence to allay his ferocity, with their sprightliness to
soothe his cares, and with their constant friendship to relieve
all the troubles and disappointments which can happen to him.
Seeing then that these are the blessings chiefly sought after and
generally found in every wife, how must we lament that disposition
in these lovely creatures which leads them to prefer in their
favour those individuals of the other sex who do not seem intended
by nature as so great a masterpiece! For surely, however useful
they may be in the creation, as we are taught that nothing, not
even a louse, is made in vain, yet these beaus, even that most
splendid and honoured part which in this our island nature loves
to distinguish in red, are not, as some think, the noblest work of
the Creator. For my own part, let any man chuse to himself two
beaus, let them be captains or colonels, as well-dressed men as
ever lived, I would venture to oppose a single Sir Isaac Newton, a
Shakespear, a Milton, or perhaps some few others, to both these
beaus; nay, and I very much doubt whether it had not been better
for the world in general that neither of these beaus had ever been
born than that it should have wanted the benefit arising to it
from the labour of any one of those persons.

If this be true, how melancholy must be the consideration that any
single beau, especially if he have but half a yard of ribbon in
his hat, shall weigh heavier in the scale of female affection than
twenty Sir Isaac Newtons! How must our reader, who perhaps had
wisely accounted for the resistance which the chaste Laetitia had
made to the violent addresses of the ravished (or rather
ravishing) Wild from that lady's impregnable virtue--how must he
blush, I say, to perceive her quit the strictness of her carriage,
and abandon herself to those loose freedoms which she indulged to