y with, but would detest the
thoughts of associating with such filthy sensualists, whose favourite
taste carries them to mingle with the dregs of stews, brothels, and
common sewers?

Yet, to such a choice are many worthy women betrayed, by that false and
inconsiderate notion, raised and propagated, no doubt, by the author of
all delusion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. We rakes,
indeed, are bold enough to suppose, that women in general are as much
rakes in their hearts, as the libertines some of them suffer themselves
to be take with are in their practice. A supposition, therefore, which
it behoves persons of true honour of that sex to discountenance, by
rejecting the address of every man, whose character will not stand the
test of that virtue which is the glory of a woman: and indeed, I may
say, of a man too: why should it not?

How, indeed, can it be, if this point be duly weighed, that a man who
thinks alike of all the sex, and knows it to be in the power of a wife
to do him the greatest dishonour man can receive, and doubts not her will
to do it, if opportunity offer, and importunity be not wanting: that such
a one, from principle, should be a good husband to any woman? And,
indeed, little do innocents think, what a total revolution of manners,
what a change of fixed habits, nay, what a conquest of a bad nature, and
what a portion of Divine GRACE, is required, to make a man a good
husband, a worthy father, and true friend, from principle; especially
when it is considered, that it is not in a man's own power to reform when
he will. This, (to say nothing of my own experience,) thou, Lovelace,
hast found in the progress of thy attempts upon the divine Miss Harlowe.
For whose remorses could be deeper, or more frequent, yet more transient
than thine!

Now, Lovelace, let me know if the word grace can be read from my pen
without a sneer from thee and thy associates? I own that once it sounded
oddly in my ears. But I shall never forget what a grave man once said on
this very word--that with him it was a rake's sibboleth.* He had always
hopes of one who could bear the mention of it without ridiculing it; and
ever gave him up for an abandoned man, who made a jest of it, or of him
who used it.

* See Judges xii. 6.

Don't be disgusted, that I mingle such grave reflections as these with my
narratives. It becomes me, in my present way of thinking, to do so, when
I see, in Miss Harlowe, how all hum