of itself a sufficient motive to court it. In the choice of your friends, have your principal regard to goodness of heart and fidelity. If they also possess taste and genius that will make them still more agreeable and useful companions. You have particular reason to place confidence in those who have shown affection for you in your early days, when you were incapable of making them any return. This is an obligation for which you cannot be too grateful. If you have the good fortune to meet with any who deserve the name of friends, unbosom yourself with the utmost confidence. It is one of the world's maxims never to trust any person with a secret, the discovery of which could give any pain; but it is the maxim of a little mind and a cold heart, unless where it is the effect of frequent disappointments and bad usage. An open temper, if restrained but by tolerable prudence, will make you on the whole much happier than a reserved, suspicious one, although you may sometimes suffer by it. Coldness and distrust are the too certain consequences of age and experience; but they are unhappy and unpleasant feelings, and it is unnecessary to anticipate them before their time.

But however open you may be in talking of your own affairs, never discover the secrets of one friend to another. These are sacred deposites, which do not belong to you, nor have you any right to make use of them.

There is another case in which I suspect it is proper to be secret, not so much from motives of prudence as delicacy; I mean in love matters. Though a woman has no reason to be ashamed of an attachment to a man of merit, yet nature, whose authority is superior to philosophy, has annexed a sense of shame to it. It is even long before a woman of delicacy dare avow to her own heart

that she loves; and when all the subterfuges of ingenuity to conceal it from herself fail, she feels violence done both to her pride and to her modesty. This, I should imagine, must be always the case where she is not sure of a return to her attachment. In such a situation to lay the heart open to any person whatever, does not appear to me consistent with the perfection of female delicacy. But perhaps I am in the wrong. At the same time I must tell you, that in point of prudence, it concerns you to attend well to the consequences of such a discovery. These secrets, however important in your own estimation, may appear very trifling to your friend, who possibly will not enter into your feelings, but may rather consider them as a subject of pleasantry. For this reason, love secrets are of all others the worst kept. But the consequences to you may be very serious, as no man of spirit and delicacy ever valued a heart hackneyed in the ways of love. If therefore, you must have a friend to pour out your heart to, be sure of her honor and secrecy. Let her not be a married woman, especially if she lives happily with her husband. There are certain unguarded moments in which such a woman, though the best and worthiest of her sex, may let hints escape, which, at other times, or to any other person than her husband, she would be incapable of; nor will a husband, in this case, feel himself under the same obligations of secrecy and honor, as if you had put your confidence originally in himself, especially on a subject which the world is apt to treat so lightly.

If all other circumstances are equal, there are obvious advantages in your making friends of your brothers and sisters. The ties of blood, and your being so much united in one common interest, form an additional bond of union to your friendship. If your brothers should have

the good fortune to have hearts susceptible of friendship, to possess truth, honor, sense, and delicacy of sentiment, they are the fittest and most unexceptionable confidants. By placing confidence in them, you will receive every advantage which you could hope for from the friendship of men, without any of the inconveniences that attend such connexions with our sex.

Beware of making confidants of your servants. Dignity, not properly understood, very readily degenerates into pride, which enters into no friendships because it cannot bear an equal; and is so fond of flattery as to grasp at it even from servants and dependants. The most intimate confidants, therefore, of proud people, are valet-de-chambres and waiting women. Show the utmost humanity to your servants; make their situation as comfortable to them as possible; but if you make them your confidants you spoil them, and debase yourselves.

Never allow any person under the pretended sanction of friendship, to be so familiar as to lose a proper respect for you. Never allow them to teaze you on any subject that is disagreeable, or where you have once taken your resolution. Many will tell you that this is inconsistent with the freedom which friendship allows, but a certain respect is necessary in friendship as well as in love: without it, you may be liked as a child, but will never be loved as an equal. The temper and disposition of the heart, in your sex, make you enter more readily into friendships than men. Your natural propensity to it is so strong, that you often run into intimacies which you soon have sufficient cause to repent of; and this makes your friendships so very fluctuating.

Another great obstacle to the sincerity, as well as steadiness of your friendships, is the great clashing of

your interests in the pursuits of love, ambition, or vanity. For these reasons it would appear at first sight more eligible for you to contract your friendships with the men. Among other obvious advantages of an easy intercourse between the two sexes, it occasions an emulation and exertion in each to excel and be agreeable: hence their respective excellencies are mutually communicated and blended. As their interests in no degree interfere, there can be no foundation for jealousy or suspicion of rivalship. The friendship of a man for a woman is always blended with a tenderness which he never feels for one of his own sex, even where love is in no degree concerned. Besides, we are conscious of a natural title you have to our protection and good offices; and therefore we feel an additional obligation of honor to serve you, and to observe an inviolable secrecy, whenever you confide in us. But apply these observations with great caution. Thousands of women of the best hearts and finest talents have been ruined by men, who approached them under the specious name of friendship. But, supposing a man to have the most undoubted honor, yet his friendship to a woman is so near akin to love, that if she be very agreeable in her person, she will prob ably very soon find a lover where she only wishes to meet a friend. Let me here, however, warn you against that weakness so common among vain women, the imagination, that every man who takes particular notice of you is a lover. Nothing can expose you more to ridicule, than the taking up a man on the suspicion of his being your lover, who, perhaps, never once thought of you in that view; thus giving yourselves those airs so common among silly women on such occasions.

I am, &c.

LETTER 143.

From the same to the same, on the foregoing subject.

DEAR DAUGHTERS,

There is a kind of unmeaning gallantry much practiced by some men, which if you have any discernment, you will really find very harmless. Men of this sort will attend you to public places, and be useful to you by a number of little observances, which those of a superior class do not so well understand, or have not leisure to regard, or perhaps are too proud to submit to. Look on the compliments of such men as words of course, which they repeat to every agreeable woman of their acquaintance. There is a familiarity they are apt to assume, which a proper dignity in your behaviour will be easily able to check.

There is a different species of men, whom you may like as agreeable companions, men of worth, taste, and genius, whose conversation, in some respects, may be superior to what you generally meet with among those of your own sex. It will be foolish in you to deprive yourself of a useful and agreeable acquaintance, merely because idle people say he is your lover. Such a man may like your company, without having any design upon your person. People whose sentiments, and particularly whose taste correspond, naturally like to associate together, although neither of them have the most distant view of any further connexion. But, as this similarity of minds often gives rise to a more tender attachment than friendship, it will be proper to keep a watchful eye over yourselves, lest your hearts become too far engaged before you are aware of it.