No modest girl thinks of many men, till she has been in love with one, been ruined by him, and abandoned.  But to return to my theme, and it will fall heavy on yourself.  Could the milkwoman have been so bad, if you had merely kept her from starving, instead of giving her opulence?  The soil, I doubt, was bad; but it could not have produced the rank weed of ingratitude, if you had not dunged it with gold, which rises from rock, and seems to meet with a congenial bed when it falls on the human heart.

And so Dr. Warton imagines I m writing “Walpoliana!” No, in truth, nor any thing else; nor shall-nor will I go out in a jest-book.  Age has not only made me prudent, but, luckily, lazy; and, without the latter extinguisher, I do not know but that farthing candle my discretion would let my snuff of life flit to the last sparkle of folly, like what children call. the parson and clerk in a bit of burnt paper.  You see by my writability in pressing my letters on you, that my pen has still a colt’s tooth left, but I never indulge the poor old child with more paper than this small-sized sheet, I do not give it enough to make a paper kite and fly abroad on wings of booksellers.  You ought to continue writing, for you do good your writings, or at least mean it; and if a virtuous intention fails, it is a sort of coin, which, though thrown away, still makes the donor worth more than he was before he gave it away.  I delight too in the temperature of your piety, and that you would not see the enthusiastic exorcist.  How shocking to suppose that the Omnipotent Creator of worlds delegates his power to a momentary insect to eject supernatural spirits that he had permitted to infest another insect, and had permitted to vomit blasphemies against himself!  Pray do not call that enthusiasm, but delirium.  I pity real enthusiasts, but I would shave their heads and take away some blood.  The exorcist’s associates are in a worse predicament, I doubt, and hope to make enthusiasts.  If such abominable impostors were not rather a subject of indignation, I could smile at the rivalship between them and the animal magnetists, who are inveigling fools into their different pales.  And alas! while folly has a shilling left, there will be enthusiasts and quack doctors; and there will be slaves while there are kings or sugar-planters.(624) I have remarked, that though Jesuits, etc. travel to distant East and West to propagate their religion and traffic, I never heard of one that made a journey into Asia or Africa to preach the doctrines of liberty, though those regions are so deplorably oppressed.  Nay, I much doubt whether ever any chaplain of the regiments we have sent to India has once whispered to a native of Bengal, that there are milder forms of government than those of his country.  No; security of property is not a wholesome doctrine to be inculcated in a land where the soil produces diamonds and gold!  In short, if your Bristol exorcist believes he can cast out devils, why does he not go to Leadenhallstreet?  There is a company whose name is legion.