And he shall no longer be called a philoso pher, but the most eloquent of all the sophists.

And they shall wonder how a pure mind could conceive such an impure book.

And those who believed in him shall believe in him no more.

E. C.

THE two following letters lately fell into my hands. They are interesting and natural, and may be useful, as they speak the language of good sense, founded on experience, and strongly exemplify, that rectitude of conduct alone can insure happiness and peace of mind. They are said to be written by the famous Constantia Phillips, in her fortieth year, to the late Lord Chesterfield, in which she gives a picture of her own feelings, amidst all the pleasure, gaiety, admiration, and splendour, that attended her in the meridian of life.

In her retirement she was occupied in educating a niece. Little, perhaps, might be expected from a person of her character on such a subject as female education, but her plan will be found well calculated to train a young wo

man to avoid the rocks on which she herself had

struck.

I am, &c.

SCIPIO.

LETTER FIRST.

"When I wait upon your Lordship with my usual sprightliness and gaiety, pleased with the chit-chat of an hour, my loss of beauty is forgotten, and you go back five-and-twenty years, for my entertainment, and even condescend to suit your conversation to that gay time; imagining, no doubt, that I have too much of the woman in my composition to endure the thoughts of antiquated beauty. But, my Lord, believe me, I am so little out of humour with my loss. that way, that I could, with infinite pleasure and entertainment to myself, talk to your Lordship upon graver matters, without being under any apprehension that my sentiments would lessen me in your esteem. It is true, I was born constitutionally with as great a share of vivacity and spirits as any woman in the world; but I may say by fortune, as Milton said upon his own blindness: "In my beginning I was presented with an universal blank; and the obligations I had to nature were perverted by my accidental

poverty, which turned that beauty that was bestowed on me to so many snares by which I was ruined and undone; and, in consequence, I have passed my life in sorrow and misery:" And however this declaration may shock your Lordship's belief, it is most solemnly true; for, when in my youth, a time in which we are generally too much taken up with pleasures, to give ourselves leisure to reflect upon the rectitude of the means by which we obtain them; even then, I say, when we cheat our understandings with the dazzling prospects of imaginary pleasures,-I was wretched !-because the pleasures and gaieties which I tasted, had not their foundation upon a just and honourable basis.-I was allured and flattered by gaudy appearances, because I saw the eyes and adoration of the world followed those appearances; but, my Lord, my nightly slumbers, and the moments we are wont to turn our eyes inward on ourselves, were disturbed, and the sweets of rest embittered by the stinging reflections that followed the means by which those appearances were supported! Still, however, I went on, in hopes of better fate, until I found myself in the condition of a young prodigal, who, having brought his fortune to the last stake, hazards even that, hoping to retrieve; and, like him too, (but alas! too late), I found

myself cheated and undone: And this I soon found out; but at the same time perceived that cruel bar for ever shut against me, by which our unhappy sex, when once they offend against Virtue's sacred rule, are rigorously excluded from any degree of fame, be our future conduct ever so nice, or scrupulously regular.

Such is the fate unhappy women find,
And such the curse entail'd upon our kind,
That Man, the lawless libertine, may rove
Free and unquestion'd through the wilds of love;
While Woman, Sense and Nature's easy fool,
If poor weak Woman swerve from Virtue's rule—
If, strongly charm'd, she leave the thorny way,
And in the softer paths of Pleasure stray,
Ruin ensues, reproach, and endless shame,
And one false step for ever damns her fame.
In vain, with tears, the loss she may deplore-
In vain look back to what she was before-

She sets,-like stars that fall to rise no more,

"I became careless of my conduct; because I found all efforts to retrieve my loss were in vain: Were it otherwise, no woman, having had but a tolerable education, could possibly, when reflections returned, submit to live in any degree of infamy, let the temptations be ever so great and flattering. For my own part, I most solemnly aver, I would not. To have been mis

tress even to an emperor, I should have always looked upon as a state of infamy, misery, and dependence, to which I would have esteemed the humblest condition of innocence that can be imagined, infinitely preferable.

Such, indeed, are the disadvantages we labour under from being born women, that, for my own part, were beauty as lasting as our period of life, to change my sex I would be contented to be as deformed and ugly as Esop.

"For example, who denies Mr T G to be a man of honour? Yet this very man first betrayed and ruined the unhappy Miss Phillips; basely, nay villainously ruined her, and after that abandoned her to sorrow, misery, and infamy, which was the source of all the ruin and unhappiness that has since befallen her, and for which she is despised and shunned by the modest and valuable part of her own sex, and treated with levity by yours.

"In the first outsetting of a young girl's life, if she makes a slip from honour, how quick soever her return may be, though her life and conduct should ever after escape, yet she will be branded to her last moments with that misdemeanour and misfortune; and if she is beautiful, every man thinks he has a right to demand the