[ 228 ]
do so upon all of them; but I study brevity; and I am very far from having a barren Subject before me; I have rather more Matter than can be brought into the Compass I have prescribed to my self; yet Things must be explained as I go, and especially because they all tend to make the married Life unhappy, though they may not be all equally fatal. I'll run them over therefore, in a summary Way, for the present, the Persons guilty will have room enough to enlarge in their own Reflections separately, and as it suits their Case; for the scandalous Inequalities of such Marriages as I aim at, are too many; no Man will say, there is a want of Examples.
Nor are the Inequalities of Matching, as they are now managed, especially by the Ladie, of so light a Consequence, and so insignificant as some would make them; and let but the Ladies reflect a little upon the melancholy Circumstances of some of their Sex, who warm'd thus by the secret Heats of Nature, which they have afterwards been sensible of, they have thrown themselves away in the scandalous manner I have mentioned, with what Self-Reproaches have they loaded themselves, when they have seen themselves in the Arms of Scoundrels and Brutes, who, at other times, they would have loathed the Thoughts of, and who they live to abhor with as compleat an Aversion, after these unhappy Heats are cool'd, as ever they did before. But of this in its Place.
CHAP.
