become pleasures, because she knows that on their fulfilment depends his happiness, as well as her own; but to one who is so unfortunate as to marry without a sincere and devoted affection, they should be, if possible, more sacred, as their scrupulous discharge is the only atonement she can offer for withholding that love which is to sweeten the draught of life; and which every man has a right to expect from her who voluntarily bestows on him her hand. Many have been the marriages without love that have been peaceful and respectable, if not happy. You, my dear Augusta, having committed a serious fault, must redeem it by your virtue; and prove, that not to be wise, is not to be unworthy. Leave no effort untried to attach yourself to Lord Annandale: gratitude for his attachment to you ought to excite kind feelings; and, when to this is added the knowledge, that, had you not accepted his offered

hand, he might have found many lovely and amiable women who would gladly have become his wife, and given him their affections, you surely cannot act otherwise than as a kind, indulgent friend, who will make his home cheerful, and his name respected. You must seriously examine your opinions and sentiments with regard to him; for indifference or dislike are great magnifiers of the defects of those whom we view through their medium, and we are seldom just when we permit their intervention. If he is not all that you could desire, despair not of rendering him so; for much depends on the use you make of the influence you will naturally acquire over him. Lord Annandale has lived too much in the great world to have escaped the faults it engenders; its glare and artificial enjoyments may have, probably, blunted the fine edge of his feelings, and led him to descend to less wise,

and less elevated views and pursuits. Let it be your task to lead him back to a more healthy tone of mind, and to more rational occupations; and be it yours to reap a rich reward, in the consciousness of duties fulfilled, and of tranquillity, if not happiness, secured. Remember that he bears a portion of the chain that binds

you together a chain to which he willingly

submitted, because he believed that you would make his bondage light, in preferring him to all other men; a natural conclusion, knowing, as he does, that it was solely owing to your request that your parents yielded him your hand. Virtue, generosity, pity, all call on you, my dearest friend, to respect his happiness, even though you may have sacrificed some portion of your own. You owe this fulfilment of your duty no less to your excellent father and mother than to Lord Annandale. Think what would be their despair, if, having yielded

their daughter so much sooner than parents in general are called on to relinquish their children, and to a husband chosen by her, and not by them, they discovered that she had imposed on their credulous affection, and left them, who so loved her, for one she did not love. Spare them this blow, my dearest Augusta; and let your next letter bring better tidings to your true friend,

M. DELAWard.

THE MARQUESS OF NOTTINGHAM TO
EDWARD MORDAUNT, ESQ.

Delaward Park.

I NEVER thought so seriously, nor with such complacency, of marriage, my dear Mordaunt, as since I have been beneath this peaceful and happy roof, which seems fitted to be the very temple where Hymen ought to be worshipped.

You know that Delaward was always my

model of what a nobleman should be; but, I assure you, I now look on him as the model of husbands a part, few, even of the best men, perform with that just mixture of firmness, tenderness, dignity, and equanimity, which is essentially requisite, and which he possesses in an eminent degree. I dislike those exhibitions of fondness that we so often witness during the first months of wedlock, in what are called love-matches,-designated to me, by a French friend, as l'indécence légitime, almost as much as the ill-bred carelessness which too often succeeds them. The first is the most disagreeable of the two, because it indicates a want of modesty and delicacy in the woman who permits such exhibitions, and a want of respect for her in the husband who makes them.

A man should see in his wife, not an amor