Icongratulate you, my dear friend, on the happiness you enjoy at this time. Certain of possessing your daughter's affections, I think with you, that you ought to bear with and excuse her faults; her loving you will be sufficient. When she grows older, her temper will insensibly improve. You tell me she has made choice of an intimate friend. Allow me to give you some remarks on that subject, which I formerly made, when I had opportunities of observing what passed in society. This part of your letter brings it back to my mind, and perhaps it may be of use to you. It is by lavishing the sacred names of friendship and confidence, on all those transient and trifling attachments we are continually forming, that we are come almost to doubt whether such a sentiment as friendship exists at all. This rapid succession of lively and tumultuous emotions exhausts and hardens the heart, without being able to affect it. Fickleness proceeds from want of affection; we wish to attach ourselves, we change with the hope or prospect of making a better choice, and our lives pass away, in seeking, what at last we imagine is no-where to be met with, because we have not found it. These errors proceed from our own prejudices, and are every day increasing. One real attachment is sufficient for our hearts. But people persuade us we should have several at the same time. So, to make happiness more uncommon, they establish differences which do not exist, and give to the same sentiment an infinity of names. They divide it also into many branches, and they assure us, that perfect felicity consists in finding objects to fill this numerous list. I am going to make you a calculation according to these received notions. A young woman, taught to think in this manner, knows, if she does not love her husband, that she ought to be in love, and therefore she looks out for lover; she also knows, that she should feel a tender affection for her relations, which is a different sentiment from that of friendship; she visits them, and pays them all proper attentions, which is the whole of what they expect from her.