importunities, your equal fpirit 'entertains itself with ideas of al very different kind, and is follicitous to fearch for imperfections, where it were the utmost injuftice for any other to imagine any, and applauses only awaken you to an inquifition for errors. It is with this turn of mind, that, instead of affemblies and converfations, books and folitude have been your choice, and you have gone on in the ftudy of what you should be, rather than attended to the celebration of what you are. Thus with the charms of the fairest of your own fex, and knowledge not inferior inferior to the more learned of ours, a closet, a bower, or fome. beauteous fcene of rural nature, has conftantly robbed the world of a lady's appearance, who never was beheld but with gladnefs to her vifitants, nor ever admired but with pain to herself. But a conftant diftribution of large charities, a fearch for objects of new bounty, and a skilful choice of modeft merit, or fuffering virtue, touch the fouls of those who partake your goodnefs too deeply to be borne without inquiring for, and celebrating their benefactress: I fhould be loth to offend your tenderness in this particular, but I know, when I say this, the fatherless and the widow, the neglected man of merit, the wretch on the fick bed, in a word, the diftreffed under all forms, will from this hint learn to trace the kind hand which has fo often, as from heaven, conveyed to them what they have asked in the anguifh of foul, when none could hear, but he who has bleffed you with so ample a fortune, and given you a foul to employ it in his fervice. If much more than what is here intimated be not the plain truth, it is impoffible to come at what |