I know very little of either of the gentlemen:  but of Mr. Lovelace I know more than of Mr. Solmes.  I wish I could say more to his advantage than I can.  As to every qualification but one, your brother owns there is no comparison.  But that one outweighs all the rest together.  It cannot be thought that Miss Clarissa Harlowe will dispense with morals in a husband.

What, my dearest cousin, shall I plead first to you on this occasion?  Your duty, your interest, your temporal and your eternal welfare, do, and may all, depend upon this single point, the morality of a husband.  A woman who hath a wicked husband may find it difficult to be good, and out of her power to do good; and is therefore in a worse situation than the man can be in, who hath a bad wife.  You preserve all your religious regards, I understand.  I wonder not that you do.  I should have wondered had you not.  But what can you promise youself, as to perseverance in them, with an immoral husband?

If your parents and you differ in sentiment on this important occasion, let me ask you, my dear cousin, who ought to give way?  I own to you, that I should have thought there could not any where have been a more suitable match for you than Mr. Lovelace, had he been a moral man.  I should have very little to say against a man, of whose actions I am not to set up myself as a judge, did he not address my cousin.  But, on this occasion, let me tell you, my dear Clarissa, that Mr. Lovelace cannot possibly deserve you.  He may reform, you’ll say:  but he may not.  Habit is not soon or easily shaken off.  Libertines, who are libertines in defiance of talents, of superior lights, of conviction, hardly ever reform but by miracle, or by incapacity.  Well do I know mine own sex.  Well am I able to judge of the probability of the reformation of a licentious young man, who has not been fastened upon by sickness, by affliction, by calamity:  who has a prosperous run of fortune before him:  his spirits high:  his will uncontroulable:  the company he keeps, perhaps such as himself, confirming him in all his courses, assisting him in all his enterprises.

As to the other gentleman, suppose, my dear cousin, you do not like him at present, it is far from being unlikely that you will hereafter:  perhaps the more for not liking him now.  He can hardly sink lower in your opinion:  he may rise.  Very seldom is it that high expectations are so much as tolerably answered.  How indeed can they, when a fine and extensive imagination carries its expectation infinitely beyond reality, in the highest of our sublunary enjoyments?  A woman adorned with such an imagination sees no defect in a favoured object, (the less, if she be not conscious of any wilful fault in herself,) till it is too late to rectify the mistakes occasioned by her generous credulity.