“No doubt of it,” replied I.  “But there are three chances to one, that so precipitate a liking does not.  For where can be the room for caution, enquiry, the display of merit and sincerity, and even the assurance of a grateful return, to a lady, who thus suffers herself to be prepossessed?  Is it not a random shot?  Is it not a proof of weakness?  Is it not giving up the negative voice, which belongs to the sex, even while she is not sure of meeting with the affirmative one from him whose affection she wishes to engage?

“Indeed, ladies,” continued I, “I cannot help concluding (and I am the less afraid of speaking my mind, because of the opinion I have of the prudence of every lady that hears me), that where this weakness is found, it is no way favourable to a lady’s character, nor to that discretion which ought to distinguish it.  It looks to me, as if a lady’s heart were too much in the power of her eye, and that she had permitted her fancy to be much more busy than her judgment.”

Miss Stapylton blushed, and looked around her.

“But I observe,” said Mrs. Towers, “whenever you censure any indiscretion, you seldom fail to give cautions how to avoid it; and pray let us know what is to be done in this case?  That is to say, how a young lady ought to guard against and overcome the first favourable impressions?”

“What I imagine,” replied I, “a young lady ought to do, on any the least favourable impressions of the kind, is immediately to withdraw into herself, as one may say; to reflect upon what she owes to her parents, to her family, to her character, and to her sex; and to resolve to check such a random prepossession, which may much more probably, as I hinted, make her a prey to the undeserving than otherwise, as there are so many of that character to one man of real merit.

“The most that I apprehend a first-sight approbation can do, is to inspire a liking; and a liking is conquerable, if the person will not brood over it, till she hatches it into love.  Then every man and woman has a black and a white side; and it is easy to set the imperfections of the person against the supposed perfections, while it is only a liking.  But if the busy fancy be permitted to work as it pleases, uncontrolled, then ’tis very likely, were the lady but to keep herself in countenance for receiving first impressions, she will see perfections in the object, which no other living soul can.  And it may be expected, that as a consequence of her first indiscretion, she will confirm, as an act of her judgment, what her wild and ungoverned fancy had misled her to think of with so much partial favour.  And too late, as it probably may happen, she will see and lament her fatal, and, perhaps, undutiful error.

“We are talking of the ladies only,” added I (for I saw Miss Stapylton was become very grave):  “but I believe first-sight love often operates too powerfully in both sexes:  and where it does so, it will be very lucky, if either gentleman or lady find reason, on cool reflection, to approve a choice which they were so ready to make without thought.”