A VIRGIN.

A virgin is the beauty of nature, where the spirit gracious makes the creature glorious.  She is the love of virtue, the honour of reason, the grace of youth, and the comfort of age.  Her study is holiness, her exercise goodness, her grace humility, and her love is charity.  Her countenance is modesty, her speech is truth, her wealth grace, and her fame constancy.  Her virtue continence, her labour patience, her diet abstinence, and her care conscience.  Her conversation heavenly, her meditations angel-like, her prayers devout, and her hopes divine:  her parents’ joy, her kindred’s honour, her country’s fame, and her own felicity.  She is the blessed of the highest, the praise of the worthiest, the love of the noblest, and the nearest to the best.  She is of creatures the rarest, of women the chiefest, of nature the purest, and of wisdom the choicest.  Her life is a pilgrimage, her death but a passage, her description a wonder, and her name an honour.  In sum, she is the daughter of glory, the mother of grace, the sister of love, and the beloved of life.

A WANTON WOMAN.

A wanton woman is the figure of imperfection; in nature an ape, in quality a wagtail, in countenance a witch, and in condition a kind of devil.  Her beck is a net, her word a charm, her look an illusion, and her company a confusion.  Her life is the play of idleness, her diet the excess of dainties, her love the change of vanities, and her exercise the invention of follies.  Her pleasures are fancies, her studies fashions, her delight colours, and her wealth her clothes.  Her care is to deceive, her comfort her company, her house is vanity, and her bed is ruin.  Her discourses are fables, her vows dissimulations, her conceits subtleties, and her contents varieties.  She would she knows not what, and spends she cares not what, she spoils she sees not what, and doth she thinks not what.  She is youth’s plague and age’s purgatory, time’s abuse and reason’s trouble.  In sum, she is a spice of madness, a spark of mischief, a touch of poison, and a fear of destruction.

A QUIET WOMAN.

A quiet woman is like a still wind, which neither chills the body nor blows dust in the face.  Her patience is a virtue that wins the heart of love, and her wisdom makes her will well worthy regard.  She fears God and flieth sin, showeth kindness and loveth peace.  Her tongue is tied to discretion, and her heart is the harbour of goodness.  She is a comfort of calamity and in prosperity a companion, a physician in sickness and a musician in help.  Her ways are the walk toward heaven, and her guide is the grace of the Almighty.  She is her husband’s down-bed, where his heart lies at rest, and her children’s glass in the notes of her grace; her servants’ honour in the keeping of her house, and her neighbours’ example in the notes of a good nature.  She scorns fortune and loves virtue, and out of thrift gathereth charity.  She is a turtle in her love, a lamb in her meekness, a saint in her heart, and an angel in her soul.  In sum, she is a jewel unprizeable and a joy unspeakable, a comfort in nature incomparable, and a wife in the world unmatchable.