rality of them were so in reality, I gave myself not the trouble to examine, my whole wishes and desires being centred in the agreeable Armuthi, a gentleman, whose maturity may inform you, was all that was love-inspiring in his bloom; his age did not at that time exceed mine above five years, yet was there something of a manly majesty, which, mingled with the native sweetness and innocence of his unexperienced youth, gave such charms to his air, which I am unable to express: but he was inferior in point of fortune; and that deficiency, in the eyes of my parents, (who partially imagined the merits of their daughter might entitle her to the greatest expectations) over-balanced all his perfections. They could have given me a dowry which might have served as a competence for both, and made his wants unfelt: not all the tenderness I regarded him with, though not unknown to them, could prevail, on them to consent, that I should match with one whose only jointure was his love. In fine, they were now past all remembrance of what once they were, had lost in age the softening desires of youth, and looked on grandeur as the only felicity in marriage. They were continually preaching to me the pleasures of title and precedence; representing to me the instability of those desires which personal perfections excite, and the numberless ills to which a woman is exposed, who gives herself away merely for the sake of love; they bid me reflect on the mutability of all passions, and especially on that by which I was at present influenced; how wretched I should be if Armuthi, after becoming my husband, should swerve from his love, or I repent that which had made me his; reminded me that the tie of marriage was irrevocable, and that if either of us deviated from our first flame, with what anxiety the chain would be dragged by both. But this was a doctrine in which I had no faith; I could not believe there was a possibility for love, like ours, ever to diminish; and as to any other mischiefs, I set them at naught. A thousand times [good Heaven! pardon
