marriage vow, is indeed more criminal; but the
very magnitude of her crime emancipates her husband; while she who makes
him not dishonorable, but wretched, fastens on him a misery for life,
from which no laws can free him, and under which religion alone can
support him."

We continued talking, till we reached home, on the multitude of
marriages in which the parties are "joined not matched," and where the
term union is a miserable misnomer. I endeavored to turn all these new
acquaintances to account, and considered myself at every visit I made,
as taking a lesson for my own conduct. I beheld the miscarriages of
others, not only with concern for the individual, but as beacons to
light me on my way. It was no breach of charity to use the aberrations
of my acquaintance for the purpose of making my own course more direct.
I took care however, never to lose sight of the humbling consideration
that my own deviations were equally liable to become the object of their
animadversion, if the same motive had led them to the same scrutiny.

I remained some weeks longer in town, indulging myself in all its safe
sights, and all its sober pleasures. I examined whatever was new in art,
or curious in science. I found out the best pictures, saw the best
statues, explored the best museums, heard the best speakers in the
courts of law, the best preachers in the church, and the best orators in
parliament; attended the best lectures, and visited the best company, in
the most correct, though not always the most fashionable sense of the
term. I associated with many learned, sensible, and some pious men,
commodities with which London, with all its faults, abounds, perhaps,
more than any other place on the habitable globe. I became acquainted
with many agreeable, well informed, valuable women, with a few who even
seemed in a good measure to live above the world while they were living
in it.

There is a large class of excellent female characters who on account of
that very excellence, are little known, because to be known is not their
object. Their ambition has a better taste. They pass through life
honored and respected in their own small, but not unimportant sphere,
and approved by Him, "whose they are, and whom they serve," though their
faces are hardly known in promiscuous society. If they occasion little
sensation abroad, they produce much happiness at home. And when once a
woman who has "all appliances and means to get it," _can_ withstand