it has had in all nations of the world, upon the public and private actions of men; with an appendix, which he calls, “The Bachelor’s Scheme for Governing his Wife.”  The first thing he makes this gentleman propose, is, that she shall be no woman; for she is to have an aversion to balls, to operas, to visits:  she is to think his company sufficient to fill up all the hours of life with great satisfaction:  she is never to believe any other man wise, learned, or valiant; or at least but in a second degree.  In the next place, he intends she shall be a cuckold; but expects, that he himself must live in perfect security from that terror.  He dwells a great while on instructions for her discreet behaviour, in case of his falsehood.  I have not patience with these unreasonable expectations, therefore turn back to the treatise itself.  Here, indeed, my brother deduces all the revolutions among men from the passion of love; and in his preface, answers that usual observation against us, that there is no quarrel without a woman in it, with a gallant assertion, that there is nothing else worth quarrelling for.  My brother is of a complexion truly amorous; all his thoughts and actions carry in them a tincture of that obliging inclination; and this turn has opened his eyes to see, we are not the inconsiderable creatures which unlucky pretenders to our favour would insinuate.  He observes that no man begins to make any tolerable figure, till he sets out with the hopes of pleasing some one of us.  No sooner he takes that in hand, but he pleases every one else by-the-bye.  It has an immediate effect upon his behaviour.  There is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath, till he saw the Lady Betty Modish;[164] now never gives his man an order, but it is, “Pray, Tom, do it.”  The drawers where he drinks live in perfect happiness.  He asked Will at the “George” the other day how he did?  Where he used to say, “Damn it, it is so,” he now believes there is some mistake:  he must confess, he is of another opinion; but however he won’t insist.

Every temper, except downright insipid, is to be animated and softened by the influence of beauty:  but of this untractable sort is a lifeless handsome fellow that visits us, whom I have dressed at this twelvemonth; but he is as insensible of all the arts I use, as if he conversed all that time with his nurse.  He outdoes our whole sex in all the faults our enemies impute to us; he has brought laziness into an opinion, and makes his indolence his philosophy:  insomuch, that no longer ago than yesterday in the evening he gave me this account of himself:  “I am, madam, perfectly unmoved at all that passes among men, and seldom give myself the fatigue of going among them; but when I do, I always appear the same thing to those whom I converse with.  My hours of existence, or being awake, are from eleven in the morning to eleven at night; half of which I live to myself, in picking my teeth, washing my hands, paring my nails,