ture in me, I beged
of him his acceptance of it, on his own terms. I should appear to you
perhaps too partial to my passion, were I to attempt the doing his
delicacy justice, I shall content myself then with assuring you, that
after his flatly refusing the unreserved, unconditional donation that I
long persecuted him in vain to accept, it was at length, in obedience to
his serious commands (for I stood out unaffectedly, till he exerted the
sovereign authority which love had given him over me), that I yielded my
consent to waive the remonstrance I did not fail of making strongly
to him, against his degrading himself, and incurring the reflection,
however unjust, of having, for respects of fortune, bartered his honour
for infamy and prostitution, in making one his wife, who thought herself
too much honoured in being but his mistress.

The plea of love then over-ruling all objections, for him, which he
could not but read the sincerity of in a heart ever open to him, obliged
me to receive his hand, by which means I was in pass, among other
innumerable blessings, to bestow a legal parentage on those fine
children you have seen by this happiest of matches.

Thus, at length, I got snug into port, where, in the bosom of virtue, I
gathered the only uncorrupt sweets: where, looking back on the course
of vice I had run, and comparing its infamous blandishments with the
infinitely superior joys of innocence, I could not help pitying, even in
point of taste, those who, immersed in gross sensuality, are insensible
to the so delicate charms of VIRTUE, than which even PLEASURE has not
a greater friend, nor VICE a greater enemy. Thus temperance makes men
lords over those pleasures that intemperance enslaves them to: the
one, parent of health, vigour fertility cheerfulness, and every other
desirable good of life; the other, of diseases, debility, barrenness,
self-loathing, with only every evil incident to human nature.

You laugh, perhaps, at this tail-piece of morality, extracted from me by
the force of truth, resulting from compared experiences: you think
it, no doubt, out of character; possibly too you may look on it as the
paultry finesse of one who seeks to mask a devotee to vice under a rag
of a veil, impudently smuggled from the shrine of Virtue: just as if one
was to fancy one's self completely disguised at a masquerade, with no
other change of dress than turning one's shoes into slippers; or, as if
a writer should think to shi