your advice, as becomes _your ever dutiful daughter_, P.B.

LETTER XLVI

My Dearest Child,

Your mother and I have as well considered the case you put as we are
able; and we think your own reasons very good; and it is a thousand
pities your honoured husband will not allow them, as you, my dear,
make it such a point with you. Very few ladies would give their
spouses, we believe, the trouble of this debate; and few gentlemen are
so very nice as yours in this respect; for I (but what signifies
what such a mean soul as I think, compared to so learned and brave a
gentleman; yet I) always thought your dear mother, and she has been a
pretty woman too, in her time, never looked so lovely, as when I saw
her, like the pelican in the wilderness, feeding her young ones from
her kind breast:--and had I never so noble an estate, I should have
had the same thoughts.

But since the good 'squire cannot take this pleasure; since he so much
values your person; since he gives you warning, that it may estrange
his affections; since he is impatient of denial, and thinks so highly
of his prerogative; since he may, if disobliged, resume some bad
habits, and so you may have all your prayers and hopes in his perfect
reformation frustrated, and find your own power to do good more
narrowed: we think, besides the obedience you have vowed to him, and
is the duty of every good wife, you ought to give up the point, and
acquiesce; for this seemeth to us to be the lesser evil: and God
Almighty, if it should be your duty, will not be less merciful than
men; who, as his honour says, by the laws of the realm, excuses a
wife, when she is faulty by the command of the husband; and we hope,
the fault he is pleased to make you commit (if a fault, for he really
gives very praise-worthy motives for his dispensation) will not be
laid at his own door. So e'en resolve, my dearest child, to submit to
it, and with cheerfulness too.

God send you an happy hour! But who knows, when the time comes,
whether it may not be proper to dispense with this duty, as you
deem it, on other accounts? For every young person is not enabled
to perform it. So, to shew his honour, that you will cheerfully
acquiesce, your dear mother advises you to look out for a wholesome,
good-humoured, honest body, as near your complexion and temper, and
constitution, as may be; and it may not be the worse, she thinks,
if she is twenty, or one--or two-and-twenty; for she will have more