natured animadversions on it. The tale was not whispered in every society, with all the exaggerations that malice can lend, until nearly the whole story was changed, as would have been the case in England."

"Caroline, your depreciation of your own country is neither honourable to your judgment nor to your patriotism.”

"And have you seen or heard of no conduct in English people that you considered most reprehensible?"

Examples of such may exist, I grant; but they never fail to excite universal censure."

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Granted, my dear aunt; for the English are a very censorious nation. They love scandal as people do snuff: it excites them but, when they have winked away, and whispered, and read away, in the scandal-vending papers, the reputations of half, if not all their friends, do they break off from them, and leave them

alone, not in their glory, but in their notoriety? No such thing. They discover that poor Lady Chad a very foolish husband, who never looked sufficiently strictly after her; and, therefore, she was more to be pitied than blamed for that disagreeable affair: this same said Lady C— having a generous, confiding husband, who, believing in her protestations of affection for him, never dreamed of her liking another, until her guilt was made universally known. He is generally censured he ought to have suspected,' he must have known,'

:

was greatly to blame,' say all the world.

•he

And

for what? that he loved, and trusted his wife. Then Lady D, how deplorable her fate! With such a jealous, suspicious husband, was it to be wondered at that the poor, dear soul fell into that sad scrape? Lord D- - was wholly in fault. If men will be so jealous, suspicious, and severe, they must put up with the

consequences. Lord D is universally censured because he did look after his wife, yet could not save her; and this is the justice of society. Lady E-, whose bad conduct admits of no doubt, is found to be a most injured woman, because her husband is suspected of having liked Lady F; as if an error in the husband's conduct could excuse that of the wife! The English can no more dispense with the scandalous papers on the Sabbath, than they can with going to church. One is, perhaps, considered a fit preparation for the other; for, as we are commanded to pray for all sinners, it is as well to know them, and their whereabout, en detail."

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Caroline, Caroline, this is a very improper mode of talking."

"A very improper mode of acting, I think you ought to say, my dear aunt. Now, on

the Continent, there are no scandalous papers;

no trials in the courts of law, to offer a bonus to the malice of discharged domestics, or to enable husbands to put into their purses the valuation affixed to the honour of their wives. Scandal is not there considered a necessary stimulant to the daily food, and almost as indispensable; the consequence of which is, that, if there exists as much immorality on the Continent, the proofs of it, with all the disgusting details, are not obtruded, to shock the old, and corrupt the young. And this, surely, is an advantage gained."

"I deny it, Caroline. As well might you assert, that, if a contagious disease is making its ravages unseen and unsuspected, it is less dangerous to a community, than when it is made known, and people are warned to avoid it."

"Then you, aunt, approve the trials to which I refer?"

"I must always, on general principles, approve a salutary severity, while I deplore its necessity. If an incurable gangrene attack a limb, I should advise its amputation: on the same system I should counsel a similar treatment of those members of the moral body, that I sanctioned in the physical one."

"Then you approve the odious exposures of conjugal infidelity?"

"The trials that too frequently occur in England, and on which you, Caroline, have commented with a degree of freedom and flippancy habitual only to women who have lived long out of this country, have one great moral effect which those who take a superficial view of the subject may overlook. I refer to the publicity and revolting details that accompany them; which are so appalling, that it is easy to believe, that the terror they inspire may have served to deter many a woman from conduct