I sent you a part of Cyrus last week, where you will meet with one Doralise in the story of Abradah and Panthee.  The whole story is very good; but the humour makes the best part of it.  I am of her opinion in most things that she says in her character of “L’honnest homme” that she is in search of, and her resolution of receiving no heart that had been offered to anybody else.  Pray, tell me how you like her, and what fault you find in my Lady Carlisle’s letter?  Methinks the hand and the style both show her a great person, and ’tis writ in the way that’s now affected by all that pretend to wit and good breeding; only, I am a little scandalized to confess that she uses that word faithful,—­she that never knew how to be so in her life.

I have sent you my picture because you wished for it; but, pray, let it not presume to disturb my Lady Sunderland’s.  Put it in some corner where no eyes may find it out but yours, to whom it is only intended.  ’Tis not a very good one, but the best I shall ever have drawn of me; for, as my Lady says, my time for pictures is past, and therefore I have always refused to part with this, because I was sure the next would be a worse.  There is a beauty in youth that every one has once in their lives; and I remember my mother used to say there was never anybody (that was not deformed) but were handsome, to some reasonable degree, once between fourteen and twenty.  It must hang with the light on the left hand of it; and you may keep it if you please till I bring you the original.  But then I must borrow it (for ’tis no more mine, if you like it), because my brother is often bringing people into my closet where it hangs, to show them other pictures that are there; and if he miss this long thence, ’twould trouble his jealous head.

You are not the first that has told me I knew better what quality I would not have in a husband than what I would; but it was more pardonable in them.  I thought you had understood better what kind of person I liked than anybody else could possibly have done, and therefore did not think it necessary to make you that description too.  Those that I reckoned up were only such as I could not be persuaded to have upon no terms, though I had never seen such a person in my life as Mr. Temple:  not but that all those may make very good husbands to some women; but they are so different from my humour that ’tis not possible we should ever agree; for though it might be reasonably enough expected that I should conform mine to theirs (to my shame be it spoken), I could never do it.  And I have lived so long in the world, and so much at my own liberty, that whosoever has me must be content to take me as they find me, without hope of ever making me other than I am.  I cannot so much as disguise my humour.  When it was designed that I should have had Sir Jus., my brother used to tell he was confident that, with all his wisdom, any woman that had wit and discretion might make an ass of him, and govern him as she pleased.  I could not deny that possibly it might be so, but ’twas that I was sure I could never do; and though ’tis likely I should have forced myself to so much compliance as was necessary for a reasonable wife, yet farther than that no design could ever have carried me; and I could not have flattered him into a belief that I admired him, to gain more than he and all his generation are worth.