leave you happy with your friends! Let yours be rather the felicity of ease and contentment, than the ecstasy of mirth and joy! May your mind repose in virtue and truth, and never in indolence or negligence! That you already know much, is the best incitement to know more; if you study trifles, you neglect two excellent things, knowledge and your own understanding. I wish we were as cautious of unbending the mind as we are of relaxing our nerves. I should as soon be afraid of stretching a glove till it was too strait, as of making the understanding and capacity narrow by extending them to things of a large comprehension; yet this is a common notion.

Our happy society is just breaking up; but I will think with gratitude, and not with regret, of the pleasant hours which I have had.-I hope this year will be happy to me: the last was encumbered with fears, and I had not much health in it; yet I was concerned at taking leave of it yesterday. I had not for it the tenderness one feels for a friend, or the gratitude one has to a benefactor: but I was reconciled to it as an old acquaintance. It had not enriched, nor, I fear, improved me; but it suffered me and admitted my friends.

The duchess of Portland thanks you for your letter she will answer it by word of mouth. I am sorry you have been low-spirited, but I can never like you the less for it. Mutual friendships are built on mutual wants: were you completely happy, you would not need me: imperfection wants and seeks assistance.

I am, dear madam, &c.

ELIZABETH ROBINSON.

Dr. Conyers Middleton to Mrs. Montagu.-On her marriage.

MADAM,

Hildersham, Aug. 17, 1742.

I SHOULD have paid my compliments earlier on the joyful occasion of your marriage, if I had known whither to address them, for your brother's letter, which informed me, happened to lie several days at Cambridge before it came to my hands. My congratulation, however, though late, wants nothing of the warmth with which the earliest was accompanied: for I must beg leave to assure you, that I take a real part in the present joy of your family; and feel a kind of paternal pleasure, from the good fortune of one, whose amiable qualities I have witnessed, from her tenderest years, and to whom I have ever been wishing and ominating every thing that is good. I always expected that your singular merits and accomplishments would recommend you, in proper time, to an advantageous and honourable match; and I was assured that your prudence would never suffer you to accept any which was not worthy of you: so that it gives me not only the greatest pleasure on your account, but a sort of pride also on my own, to see my expectations fully answered, and my predictions literally fulfilled.

You have the fairest prospect of conjugal felicity now open before you, by your marriage with a gentleman, not only of figure and fortune, but of great knowledge and understanding: who values you not so much for the charms of your person, as for those of your mind, which will always give you the surest hold of him; as they will every day be gathering strength, whilst the others are daily

losing it. Beauty has great power to conciliate affection, but cannot preserve it without the help of the mind: whatever the perfections of the one may be, the accomplishments of the other will always be the more amiable, and, in the married state especially, will be found, after all, the most solid and lasting basis of domestic comfort. But I am using the privilege of my years, and instead of compliments, giving lessons to one who does not need them. I shall only add, therefore, my repeated wishes of all the happiness that matrimony can give both to you and Mr. Montagu, to whose worthy character I am no stranger, though I have not the honour to be known to him in person; and that I am, with sincere respect, madam,

Your faithful friend,

And obedient servant,

CONYERS MIDDLETON.

Dr. Conyers Middleton to Mrs. Montagu.-On the same subject.

MADAM,

Hildersham, Oct. 4, 1742.

I SHOULD have paid my thanks much earlier for your obliging and entertaining letter, if business of various kinds had not constantly prevented me, till I was forced to a resolution of being prevented no longer. I now, therefore, beg leave to assure you, that your letter gave me great pleasure on many accounts: but above all, by letting me see that you are not only perfectly at ease, and happy in your late change of condition, but furnished with all the materials proper to secure that happiness for life; since the principles which you lay down for your conduct in it, can not fail to draw every good out of it, which it can possibly yield. Young

ladies who have been admired as beauties, are apt to consider a husband as an acquisition of conquest, and to be shocked at the thought of being reduced by marriage to a state of subjection; and from a resolution to shake off this yoke, often lay the foundation of a contest which begins with matrimony itself, and continues sometimes to the end of it. But this capital point you wisely give up at once, and profess the duty of submission as essential to the character of a good wife: a condescension, that can not betray you into any inconvenience, since a reasonable husband will never require more of it than is due; and a kind one will always be content with less, and, when convinced of the disposition, will generally dispense with the act. As your profession, I dare say, is sincere, I may trust you with a paradox, which you will certainly find to be true, that the more submissive you are the less you will be obliged to submit ; and should it be your ambition even to govern, you will accomplish it with the most ease, by acknowledging yourself a subject.

Between a married couple of sense and affection, for it is with such only that any happiness can be found, there can hardly be any dispute but what must turn upon trifles, or the contrast, perhaps, of some little habits, which, though indifferent in themselves, can not suffer a contradiction without some regret. But as these are common to both sexes, and every person has his foibles in some degree or other, it must be the business of reason to make this matter easy by mutual compliances, or a cartel, as it were, of exchange; where those, however, who happen to yield the most, will, by that conquest over themselves, which of all others is the most beneficial, be sure to be the greatest

gainers in the end. As I have formerly been a musician, a reflection has sometimes occurred to me, from that art, which might, I think, be applied, with good effect, to the married state. From the pains and patience, which are required to put an instrument in tune, before it can afford us any music, I have been induced to wonder why the married pair, who are mutually the instruments of that harmony on which each other's comfort depends, should be generally so regardless of the necessary care of tuning, or reducing each other's temper to its proper tone, by softening it when too sharp, and raising it when too low : for I am persuaded that much less pains, than what we employ, without scruple, upon a harpsichord, would keep both the husband and wife in, what we call, concert pitch. But some perhaps may be apt to raise a different reflection from the same subject; that discords in matrimony, like those in music, are both useful and necessary, to enhance and strengthen the harmony of the close. But the comparison will not hold, for the experiment will always be dangerous in the married state, where they may be compared more justly to those slight indispositions of the body, which, though they do not threaten the ruin of the whole, yet are apt to weaken some part; and whose proper use is to admonish us to guard our health with the greater care. In short, if two enemies should be forced by any accident to be comrades for life, the necessity of the thing would oblige them to become friends. The same reason then, one would think, should more strongly engage a pair of friends, tied together by choice and affection in a partnership inseparable, to extirpate every seed of discord, that might possibly arise betwixt them.