make me very proud, and very thankful), how much I am obliged to them; and particularly, my dear, how much I am

Your ever affectionate and

Faithful friend and servant,

P. B.

LETTER LXXXIV.

Miss Darnford to Mrs. B——.

[In answer to the preceding.]

MY DEAR MRS. B——,—I have been several times (in company with Mr. Peters) to see Mrs. Jewkes. The poor woman is very bad, and cannot live many days. We comfort her all we can; but she often accuses herself of her past behaviour to so excellent a lady; and with blessings upon blessings, heaped upon you, and her master, and your charming little boy, she is continually declaring how much your goodness to her aggravates her former faults to her own conscience.

She has a sister-in-law and her niece with her, and has settled all her affairs, and thinks she is not long for this world.

Her distemper is an inward decay, all at once, as it were, from a constitution that seemed like one of iron; and she is a mere skeleton: you would not know her, I daresay.

I will see her every day; and she has given me up all her keys and accounts, to give to Mr. Longman; who is daily expected, and I hope will be here soon; for her sister-in-law, she says herself, is a woman of this world, as she has been.

Mr. Peters calling upon me to go with him to visit her, I will break off here.

Mrs. Jewkes is

much as she was; but your faithful steward is come. I am glad of it-and so is she.-Nevertheless, I will go every day, and do all the good I can for the poor woman, according to your charitable desires.

I thank you, madam, for your communication of Lady Davers's letter. I am much obliged to my lord, and her ladyship; and should have been proud of an alliance with that noble family: but with all Mr. H's good qualities, as my lady paints them out, and his other advantages, I could not, for the world, make him my husband.

I'll tell you one of my objections, in confidence, however (for you are only to sound me, you know), and I would not have it mentioned that I have taken any thought about the matter, because a stronger reason may be given, such a one as my lord and lady will both allow; which I will communicate to you by and by.

My objection arises even from what you intimate of Mr. H's good-humour, and his persuadableness, if I may so call it. Now, madam, were I of a boisterous temper, and high spirit, such a one as required great patience in a husband, to bear with me, then Mr. H's goodhumour might have been a consideration with me. But when I have (I pride myself in the thought) a temper not wholly unlike your own, and such a one as would not want to contend for superiority with a husband, it is no recommendation to me, that Mr. H is a goodhumoured gentleman, and will bear with faults I design not to be guilty of.

But, my dear Mrs. B-, my husband must be a man of sense, and must give me reason to think he has a superior judgment to my own, or I shall be unhappy. He will otherwise do wrong-headed things: I shall be forced to oppose him in them: he will be tenacious and obstinate, and will be taught to talk of prerogative, and to call himself a man, without knowing how to behave as one, and I to despise him of course, and so be deemed a bad wife, when, I hope, I have qualities that would make me a toler

able good one, with a man of sense for my husband. You know who says,

For fools (pardon me this harsh word, 'tis in my author),
For fools are stubborn in their way,

As coins are hardened by th' allay;
And obstinacy's ne'er so stiff,

As when 'tis in a wrong belief.

Now you must not think I would dispense with real good-humour in a man. No, I make it one of my indispensables in a husband. A good-natured man will put the best constructions on what happens: but he must have sense to distinguish the best. He will be kind to little, unwilful, undesigned failings: but he must have judgment to distinguish what are or are not so.

But Mr. H's good-humour is softness, as I may call it; and my husband must be such a one, in short, as I need not be ashamed to be seen with in company; one who being my head, must not be beneath all the gentlemen he may happen to fall in with; and who, every time he is adjusting his mouth for speech, will give me pain at my heart, and blushes in my face, even before he speaks.

I could not bear, therefore, that every gentleman and every lady we encountered should be prepared, whenever he offered to open his lips, by their contemptuous smiles, to expect some weak and silly things from him; and when he had spoken, that he should, with a booby grin, seem pleased that he had not disappointed them.

The only recommendatory point in Mr. H- is, that he dresses exceedingly smart, and is no contemptible figure of a man, as you have observed in a former letter. But, dear madam, you know, that's so much the worse, when the man's talent is not taciturnity, except before his aunt, or before Mr. B-, or you; when he is not conscious of internal defect, and values himself upon outward appear

ance.

As to his attempt upon your Polly, though I don't like him the better for it, yet it is a fault so wickedly common

among men, that when a woman resolves never to marry till a quite virtuous man addresses her, it is, in other words, resolving to die single: so that I make not this the chief objection; and yet, I must tell you, I would abate in my expectations of half a dozen other good qualities, rather than that one of virtue in a husband.

But when I reflect upon the figure Mr. H-— made in that affair, I cannot bear him; and if I may judge of other coxcombs by him, what wretches are these smart, well-dressing, querpo-fellows, many of which you and I have seen admiring themselves at the plays and operas!

This is one of my infallible rules, and I know it is yours. too; that he who is taken up with the admiration of his own person, will never admire a wife's. His delights are centred in himself, and he will not wish to get out of that narrow, that exceeding narrow circle; and, in my opinion, should keep no company but that of tailors, wig-puffers, and milliners.

But I will run on no further upon this subject; but will tell you a reason which you may give to Lady Davers, why her kind intentions to me cannot be answered; and which she'll take better than what I have said, were she to know it, as I hope you won't let her: and this is, my papa has had a proposal made to him from a gentleman you have seen, and have thought polite.* It is from Sir W. G——, of this county, who is one of your great admirers, and Mr. B's too; and that, you must suppose, makes me have never the worse opinion of him, or of his understanding; although it requires no great sagacity or penetration to see how much you adorn our sex, and human

nature too.

Everything was adjusted between my papa and mamma, and Sir William, on condition we approved of each other, before I came down; which I knew not, till I had seen him here four times; and then my papa surprised me into half an approbation of him: and this, it seems, was one of the reasons why I was so hurried down from you.

* See vol. ii. p. 381.

I can't say but I like the man as well as most I have seen; he is a man of sense and sobriety, to give him his due, and is in very easy circumstances, and much respected by all who know him; and that's no bad earnest, you are sensible, in a marriage prospect.

But hitherto he seems to like me better than I do him. I don't know how it is, but I have often observed, that when anything is in our own power, we are not half so much taken with it, as we should be perhaps if we were kept in suspense! Why should this be?

But this I am convinced of, there is no comparison between Sir William and Mr. Murray.

Now I have named this brother-in-law of mine; what do you think?

Why, that good couple have had their house on fire three times already, and that very dangerously too. Once it was put out by Mr. Murray's mother, who lives near them; and twice Sir Simon has been forced to carry water to extinguish it; for, truly, Mrs. Murray would go home again to her papa: she would not live with such a surly wretch. And it was, with all his heart: A fair riddance! for there was no bearing the house with such an ill-natured wife! Her sister Polly was worth a thousand of her!

I am sorry, heartily sorry, for their unhappiness. But could she think everybody must bear with her and her fretful ways?

They'll jangle on, I reckon, till they are better used to one another; and when he sees she can't help it, why he'll bear with her, as husbands generally do with ill-tempered wives; that is to say, he'll try to make himself happy abroad, and leave her to quarrel with her maids, instead of him; for she must have somebody to vent her spleen upon, poor Nancy!

I am glad to hear of Mr. Williams's good fortune.

As Mr. Adams knows not Polly's fault, and it was prevented in time, they may be happy enough. She is a sly girl. I always thought her so: something so innocent, and yet so artful, in her very looks! She is an odd compound