fall first into his own hand, being used to trust somebody to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his letter.  In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed beforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse and awaken his ill humour and choler.  I have seen, under various aspects, enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to the like effect.

Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands:  they lay hold with both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the first excuse serves for a plenary justification.  I have seen one who robbed her husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she might distribute the more liberal alms.  Let who will trust to that religious dispensation.  No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient dignity, if proceeding from the husband’s assent; they must usurp it either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has not the grace and authority they desire.  When, as in the case I am speaking of, ’tis against a poor old man and for the children, then they make use of this title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a common service, easily cabal, and combine against his government and dominion.  If they be males grown up in full and flourishing health, they presently corrupt, either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and all the rout.  Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily.  Cato the elder in his time said:  So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then, whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he lived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us that wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us?  ’Tis well for old age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance, and a proneness to being deceived.  For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce, what would become of us? especially in such an age as this, where the very judges who are to determine our controversies are usually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause.  In case the discovery of this cheating escape me, I cannot at least fail to discern that I am very fit to be cheated.  And can a man ever enough exalt the value of a friend, in comparison with these civil ties?  The very image of it which I see in beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously do I respect it!  If others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceive myself in thinking I am able to defend myself from them, or in cudgelling my brains to make myself so.  I protect myself from such treasons in my own bosom, not by an unquiet and tumultuous curiosity, but rather by diversion and resolution.  When I hear talk of any one’s condition, I never trouble myself to think of him;