Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/199

had been less great, his actions would have been better; for that tenderness and good-nature, which made him really love the object that gave him pleasure, was the cause of all his terrors. A man who looks upon a woman as a creature formed for his diversion, and who has neither compassion nor good- will towards her, can never be worked on by her arts to do himself or another an injury. Women have it in their power at once to please all the passions a man can be possessed of; he is flattered by her liking him, melted into tenderness (if he has any) by her softness, and easily drawn in to esteem her, if she thinks it worth her while to gain his friendship, because he finds she pleases him, and he would not willingly think he can be thus pleased with a creature unworthy his esteem. So that a man, in some measure, thinks it necessary, in order to prove his own judgment, to justify the woman he finds he cannot help being fond of. This is a passion I have always observed people of merit to be most liable to. If it happens to light on a woman who really deserves it, the man becomes a greater blessing to all his acquaintance; his thoughts are more refined; and, by continually being influenced by a person who has no other view but to promote his interest and honour, all the little carelessnesses of his temper are corrected, and he is visibly both happier and better than he was before. But if, on the contrary, as in the case of Livia and my father, the woman looks on her husband's love for her in no other light but as it gives her an opportunity to make a prey of his fortune, and to impose on his understanding; the latter will be destroyed as fast as the former is spent; his friends will drop from him; he will find a fault somewhere, and, from a desire not to impute it to the right cause, not know where to place it. He will awaken that suspicion which always sleeps at Wisdom's gate, and find