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I trust that I may speak plainly on this delicate subject without offending the unco' guid or giving the priorient pulpiteers a pain. I believe the sexes should be equally pure when I make a world all my women shall be paragons of virtue, and all my men he-virgins. I'll construct no Messalinas nor Cleopatras, no Lovelaces or Sir Launcelots. I'll people the world with St.

Besides, several of his stories, such as, "The Wedding," full of the dissolute life led by the officers in their garrisons, "The Inquest," where the author shows the violences to which the Russian soldiers are subjected, "The Night's Lodging," and "The Ensign of the Army," which stigmatize certain lace-bedecked "Lovelaces," only help to nullify his best arguments.

It would move a blasé smile on the downy lips of juvenile Lovelaces, who count their conquests by their cotillons, and think nothing of making a declaration in an avant-deux, to be told of young people spending several evenings of each week in the year together, and speaking no word of love until they were ready to name their wedding-day. Yet such was the sober habit of the place and time.

First of all, if you wish really to understand the peculiarities of my situation, you must banish from your mind all that you have ever known of such amours as come within the reach of the poor Lovelaces of our everyday world.

'But let me tell all the world that do, not because they ought, but because all the world is apt to be misled by it. Let LOVE then be the motive: Love of whom? A Lovelace, is the answer. 'Is there but one Lovelace in the world? May not more Lovelaces be attracted by so fine a figure? By such exalted qualities?

And let us see him actually carrying her off, and having her at his mercy 'May there not be, I repeat, other Lovelaces; other like intrepid, persevering enterprizers; although they may not go to work in the same way? In such great points failed? And may she not further fail? Fail in the greatest point, to which all the other points, in which she has failed, have but a natural tendency?

May there not be other Lovelaces, thou askest, who, attracted by her beauty, may endeavour to prevail with her?* * See Letter XVIII. of this volume. No; there cannot, I answer, be such another man, person, mind, fortune, and thy character, as above given, taken in. If thou imaginest there could, such is thy pride, that thou wouldst think the worse of thyself.

Well, I have never set up for a man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry to look it up.

These Swiss, who were possessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year.

Old Lovelace, a man of ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow himself any gratifications, and very rarely went out; his daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, and writing some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could not afford to hire boats to row on the lake, or horses and guides to explore the neighborhood.