Nothing has more contributed to banish it from a married State, than too great a Familiarity, and laying aside the common Rules of Decency.  Tho’ I could give Instances of this in several Particulars, I shall only mention that of Dress.  The Beaus and Belles about Town, who dress purely to catch one another, think there is no further occasion for the Bait, when their first Design has succeeded.  But besides the too common Fault in point of Neatness, there are several others which I do not remember to have seen touched upon, but in one of our modern Comedies, [1] where a French Woman offering to undress and dress herself before the Lover of the Play, and assuring his Mistress that it was very useful in France, the Lady tells her that’s a Secret in Dress she never knew before, and that she was so unpolish’d an English Woman, as to resolve never to learn even to dress before her Husband.

There is something so gross in the Carriage of some Wives, that they lose their Husbands Hearts for Faults, which, if a Man has either Good-Nature or Good-Breeding, he knows not how to tell them of.  I am afraid, indeed, the Ladies are generally most faulty in this Particular, who, at their first giving into Love, find the Way so smooth and pleasant, that they fancy ’tis scarce possible to be tired in it.

There is so much Nicety and Discretion requir’d to keep Love alive after Marriage, and make Conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promise it, but an earnest endeavour to please on both sides, and superior good Sense on the part of Man.

By a Man of Sense, I mean one acquainted with Business and Letters.

A Woman very much settles her Esteem for a Man, according to the Figure he makes in the World, and the Character he bears among his own Sex.  As Learning is the chief Advantage we have over them, it is, methinks, as scandalous and inexcusable for a Man of Fortune to be illiterate, as for a Woman not to know how to behave her self on the most ordinary Occasions.  It is this which sets the two Sexes at the greatest Distance; a Woman is vexed and surpriz’d, to find nothing more in the Conversation of a Man, than in the common Tattle of her own Sex.

Some small Engagement at least in Business, not only sets a Man’s Talents in the fairest Light, and allots him a Part to act, in which a Wife cannot well intermeddle; but gives frequent occasions for those little Absences, which, whatever seeming Uneasiness they may give, are some of the best Preservatives of Love and Desire.

The Fair Sex are so conscious to themselves, that they have nothing in them which can deserve entirely to engross the whole Man, that they heartily despise one, who, to use their own Expression, is always hanging at their Apron-Strings.