n for all these services is only a
little flattery, a philosophic endurance of the card-table, and some
skill in the disorders of lap-dogs. I know there are in England, as well
as in France, many notable females of a certain age, who delight in what
they call managing, and who are zealous in promoting, matches among the
young people of their acquaintance; but for one that you meet with in
England there are fifty here.

I doubt much if, upon the whole, the morals of the English women are not
superior to those of the French; but however the question may be decided
as to morals, I believe their superiority in decency of manners is
indisputable--and this superiority is, perhaps, more conspicuous in women
of a certain age, than in the younger part of the sex. We have a sort of
national regard for propriety, which deters a female from lingering on
the confines of gallantry, when age has warned her to withdraw; and an
old woman that should take a passionate and exclusive interest about a
young man not related to her, would become at least an object of
ridicule, if not of censure:--yet in France nothing is more common; every
old woman appropriates some youthful dangler, and, what is extraordinary,
his attentions are not distinguishable from those he would pay to a
younger object.--I should remark, however, as some apology for these
juvenile gallants, that there are very few of what we call Tabbies in
France; that is, females of severe principles and contracted features, in
whose apparel every pin has its destination with mathematical exactness,
who are the very watch-towers of a neighbourhood, and who give the alarm
on the first appearance of incipient frailty. Here, antique dowagers and
faded spinsters are all gay, laughing, rouged, and indulgent--so that
'bating the subtraction of teeth and addition of wrinkles, the disparity
between one score and four is not so great:

"Gay rainbow silks their mellow charms enfold,
Nought of these beauties but themselves is old."

I know if I venture to add a word in defence of Tabbyhood, I shall be
engaged in a war with yourself and all our young acquaintance; yet in
this age, which so liberally "softens, and blends, and weakens, and
dilutes" away all distinctions, I own I am not without some partiality
for strong lines of demarcation; and, perhaps, when fifty retrogrades
into fifteen, it makes a worse confusion in society than the toe of the
peasant trea