he true Spirit of Christianity, Meekness, and
Resignation; watchful over her own Conduct, and charitable to the
Failings of others; unwilling to condemn, and rejoicing in every
Opportunity to praise. But as the Laws of God and Man have placed a
Woman totally in the Power of her Husband, I believe it is utterly
impossible for any young Woman, who has any Reflection, not to form in
her Mind some kind of Picture of the Sort of Man in whose Power she
would chuse to place herself. That _Clarissa_ did so, I think, plainly
appears, from her steady Resolution to refuse any Man she could not
obey with the utmost Chearfulness; and to whose Will she could not
submit without Reluctance. She would have had her Husband a Man on whose
Principles she could entirely depend; one in whom she might have placed
such a Confidence, that she might have spoke her very Thoughts aloud;
one from whom she might have gained Instruction, and from whose
Superiority of Understanding she would have been pleased to have taken
the Rules of her own Actions. She desired no Reserves, no separate
Interest from her Husband; had no Plots, no Machinations to succeed in,
and therefore wanted not a Man who by artful Flattery she could have
cajoled madly to have worship'd her; a kind Indulgence, in what was
reasonable, was all her Desire, and that Indulgence to arise from her
own Endeavour to deserve it, and not from any Blindness cast before her
Husband's Eyes by dazzling Beauty, or cunning Dissimulation; but, from
her Infancy, having the Example daily before her of her Mother's being
tyrannized over, notwithstanding her great Humility and Meekness,
perhaps tyrannized over for that very Humility and Meekness. She thought
a single Life, in all Probability, would be for her the happiest;
cherishing in her Heart that Characteristic of a noble Mind, especially
in a Woman, of wishing, as Miss _Howe_ says she did, to pass through
Life unnoted.

In this State of Mind did _Lovelace_ first find _Clarissa_. She liked
him; his Person and Conversation were agreeable, but the Libertinism of
his Character terrified her; and her Disapprobation of him restrained
her from throwing the Reins over the Neck of a Passion she thought might
have hurried her into Ruin. But when by his Artifices, and the Cruelty
of her Friends, she was driven into his Power, had he not, to use her
own Words, treated her with an Insolence unbecoming a Man, and kept her
very Soul in suspence; fawning at her