manner; I confefs I fhould like to know (provided you feel no reluctance against giving me the information), what determined you to change your behaviour, and take fuch a decided resolution against him.

I have tried to account for this by various conjectures; and, particularly by one, which nothing but the strongest proofs of attachment and affection to me, which you have on different occafions evinced, joined to the indignation you feel against all whom you have reason to believe are ill-disposed towards me, could have raised in my mind. It is, that the coldness which has long existed between lady Deanport and me may have had weight in determining you on this occafion. If there is any foundation for this conjecture, I beg that every thing of that nature may be thrown out of the fcale; for, whatever prejudices a-. gainst me may have arisen on her ladyship's part, they would, in all probability, be effaced in case the connection in queftion should take place; and, even although no great intimacy

should ever exift between her and me, I should ftill feel a very fenfible fatisfaction in your being advantageously married.

Notwithstanding what you tell me of the agreeable fituation of the marchionefs at Richmond, I fear she will think it strange that I have been so long without waiting on her. On other accounts my abfence from town at present is vexatious; but I plainly perceive that my leaving Mrs. Denham at present would afflict her more than her weak state of mind and body could bear.-I must not propofe it till fhe gains a little more strength; she has no other friend.-Adieu! my dear Horatia.

Pray give me a little light respecting lord D.

LETTER LXXV.

Mifs HORATIA CLIFFORD to Lady DIANA

FRANKLIN.

MY DEAR LADY DIANA.

London.

HAVING AVING fometimes heard people turned into ridicule for asking their friends' advice, whether they should accept or reject those to whom they were already married, or at least fully determined to marry, I thought it would be equally ridiculous to confult mine refpecting the addreffes of a man whom, in case of his ever making the propofal to me, I was fully refolved to refufe.

I am happy to find that you do not disapprove of this. But you wish to know my objections to a man of high rank, who has been reprefented to you as handfome, polite, and accomplished.—With regard to the first, it would be affectation to pretend to look on it as an article of no weight; but I may say,

with truth, that when I perceive it has a great deal with the man himself, it has very little with me.

As for the second, I do confider it as esfential to the character of a gentleman; and I know that lord Deanport is spoken of, by some people, as remarkably polite. Without troubling you with my precife idea of that term, I shall only say, that I dislike his lordship's kind of politenefs. He performs the common civilities of fociety as if they were, in him, acts of condefcenfion. His air, his gesture, his ftately, yet obfequious bows, all betray a notion of his own fuperiority.

The great ufe of politeness, as my dear and ever-lamented father explained it to me, is to correct the partiality, and check the rapacity, of felf-love. He compared politeness to a mafk with the features of benevolence, by which men try to cover the deformity of felfishness. Some wear this mask fo aukwardly, that they continually show part of the ugly features behind it; others let it fall from their

face entirely, by too profound and too frequent bendings. This accident has frequently happened in my prefence to the noble lord in queftion. He who, in the midst of the homage he pays to the company, plainly difcovers that he thinks himself fuperior to them all, certainly defeats the purpose of politeness. Such a man is like one who, in the very of obfequiously bowing to another, is all the while admiring his own attitudes, in a mirror placed behind the perfon he pretends to be treating fo courteously.

act

I have often beheld lord Deanport acting this ridiculous part, and, all the time, he feemed convinced that he was admired by the fpectators as much as he admired himfelf.

I tried to difcover on what his own admiration could be founded; for, after all, a man muft, in spite of the delufions of vanity, know fomething of himfelf. I could find out nothing on which he could poffible reft it, unless it were his figure and rank: in every