Your letter has affected me exceedingly; I am perfectly convinced of the strength of a part of your arguments. I will delay as long as I possibly can the settling of Flora; and I flatter myself the choice I shall make will render her happy. But I must confess the manner in which you have described marriage makes me regard it as a cruel and heavy bondage. I should fear to let her see it in such a light; I should also fear to deceive her, by pointing out to her such severe duties of obedience as do not exist. But, to grant you something, I will acknowledge she should not aspire to the government of her husband; let them, however, at least be on an equal footing. Love, which is capable of uniting all states and conditions, can never admit of those shocking distinctions which you wish to make, and which would absolutely destroy the sentiment. I would have Flora's husband her lover at the same time, and then she can never experience those uneasinesses under which I have always laboured. She will have no master to fear. I would have him amiable, because it is necessary she should love him, and that she should do her duty at the same time that she follows the dictates of her own heart. For these two months past I have had many conversations with her on this subject; and have endeavoured to convince her, that marriage is an engagement which ought to be as delightful as it is sacred; and to this idea she listens with great pleasure, as I tell her continually, that the greatest happiness she can enjoy is to find in her husband the object of her tenderest affection. I also represent to her the dangers she will meet with in the world, and the rocks that she may chance to encounter; and here perhaps I may exaggerate a little, in order that she may have some distrust of it; and that his distrust may give her that pleasing timidity so necessary and so agreeable in all young persons to preserve them from the heedlessness and imprudence of acting improperly.