I am now about to mention a failure; or, to speak more properly, a breach of conjugal duty, which I believe there are but few wives, if any, who do not look upon as the very worst and most unpardonable in a husband; I mean that of falsifying his marriage vows, and living in a criminal conversation with another.

            There are various degrees of this transgression, the most excusable of which is casual fruition, as Milton terms it; that is, when a man, without any premeditated design, happens to be hurried by a sudden start of inclination to yield himself to the allurements of some fond wanton beauty; but though he may afterwards be shocked at the reflection of what he has been guilty of, and perhaps love his wife with greater tenderness than before, yet if she is by any means made acquainted that he has been capable of wronging her in this point, she may forgive, but scarce ever forget the indignity; it will perpetually recoil upon her memory, and when he courts her to his embraces, make her apt to say with Statyra in the Tragedy:

Oh! I shall find Roxana in your arms,
And taste her kisses left upon your lips;
Her cursed embraces have defiled your body:
Nor shall I find the wonted sweetness there,
But artificial scents, and aching odours.

            And though he should vouchsafe even to confess his fault, protest the most unfeigned contrition for it, and reply to her in the same words that Alexander did to his beloved queen:

I know that subtle creature, in my riot,
My reason gone, seduced me to her bed;
But when I woke I shook the Circe off,
Ashamed of what I had done.

            Yet all this would not avail to restore to her breast the tranquillity she enjoyed before; she would be always in fear that what had once been, might be again; every little absence would give her pain; imagination is very strong in that sex, especially when inflamed with the least spark of jealousy; whenever he stayed abroad beyond the time in which she expected his return, she would presently torment her mind with the idea that some new and irresistible temptation had fallen in his way.

            In fine, an affair of this kind, if unhappily discovered to the wife, puts an end to all the confidence she had in him; distrust usurps the place of security in her mind, weakens her affection by degrees, and totally destroys all those unaffected tendernesses which flow from a heart full of love, and perfectly at ease as to the sincerity of the beloved object.

            How melancholy a thing is it, when a man, for the sake of a moment's fleeting pleasure, attended with remorse and shame, forfeits the affection of a chaste endearing wife, whom he ardently loves, and by whom he has been as ardently beloved; and that this has been sometimes the case there are but too many instances to prove?

            I hope therefore every husband, who has a due sense of what will make both his own and his wife's happiness, will never trust his virtue with himself: let him avoid all masquerades, midnight balls and assemblies, and hold no conversation with those who delight in the company of idle women; those creatures having acquired, by practice, blandishments to which the modest part of the sex are strangers. In a word, let him always keep in mind the advice which good old Acasto gives to his sons:

Beware the dangerous beauty of the wanton.

            But if to have been surprised, as it were, into an error afterwards repented of, and perhaps never repeated, may prove of such pernicious consequence to the felicity of marriage, what affection, what duty, what regard, can a husband expect from a wife, when he perseveres in a criminal attachment?

            A man, indeed, if he is not utterly abandoned to all sense of decency as well as honour, will endeavour to conceal his amour; he will visit his mistress with as much privacy as possible, and dissemble, as well as he is able, a tenderness he no longer feels towards his wife: but his turn will not be always served by these precautions; for besides that, a thousand accidents may discover the fatal secret to the injured partner of his bed; a woman who is a wife, and loves her husband, will easily distinguish a counterfeited passion from a real one.

            The effects of a wife's resentment, on detecting this crime in her husband, are various, according to the various dispositions of womankind; some are all fury, exclaim against the injustice has been done them in all companies they come into, and call on heaven and earth to revenge their cause; some more prudent confine the testimonies of their indignation at home, and content themselves with secret reproaches; and some, of a more soft and gentle nature, though I believe the number of such will be found but small, with silent patience bear the load of anguish, neither exposing nor reviling the cruel author of their woes.

            A fatal, and indeed very extraordinary instance of this latter sort happened not many years ago in a family of no mean condition: A young couple, whom I shall distinguish by the names of Corydon and Daphne, which were the same they gave each other in their days of courtship, had almost from their childhood loved each other to the most romantic height; but some disagreement happening between their parents, the so much wished for union was delayed for a considerable time: at last, however, it was completed. Never was there a pair more loving and more fond; and by the proofs which both of them had given of their mutual passion before marriage, and the same ardency which continued afterwards, no one that knew them but believed their happiness would be as lasting as their lives.

            But lo! Behold the instability of the human heart, and the uncertainty of that happiness we think most permanent and established: four moons had scarce passed over from the day of their marriage before Daphne found a visible decay in the ardours of Corydon; he became every day less tender and more reserved; the warmth with which he had been accustomed to approach her degenerated into complaisance, and he treated her rather like a woman whom he highly respected, than one for whom he had a passion. In fine, his behaviour towards her fully verified these words of Shakespeare:

When love begins to slacken and decay,
It uses an enforced ceremony.

            Daphne was of a timid and soft nature, modest even to an excess; and as he continued to carry himself with all the marks of esteem and civility, was ashamed to complain of his want of fondness; and when she found his coldness every day increase, and even that he began to live more abroad than at home, he made such plausible pretences for his absence, and expressed them in so polite a manner, that though her heart was far from accepting them as real, yet she had not courage to reproach, or show any testimonies of her disbelief of what he said.

            The silent grief, however, preyed upon her vitals, her eyes lost great part of their lustre, her complexion of its delicacy, and her conversation of its former sprightliness. Everyone took notice of the change except Corydon, who, though he could not but see it as well as others, yet, doubtless conscious of the cause, would ask no questions on that head, for fear of giving her an opportunity to explain herself.

            That inconstant man was now indeed in pursuit of a new object; all the passion he once had for his Daphne,—all the difficulties he had found in gaining her,—all the late transports of his bridal joys—were already forgotten, and swallowed up in the tumultuous ocean of a wild and lawless inclination for one who had not half her merit.

            Daphne had a near kinswoman, who though bred in a convent had imbibed nothing of the austerity of the place: on the death of her parents, being entirely mistress of herself, she immediately quitted the holy sisterhood, to live in Paris in a manner more agreeable to her humour, and after staying there three or four years, came back to England the most finished coquette that ever flaunted in the Mall. She arrived soon after her cousin's marriage, and was her frequent guest. Nature had endowed this young lady with a good share of wit and beauty, both which she took care to improve with all the helps of art. In fine, the charms of her person and conversation appeared so striking in the eyes of Corydon, that those of his wife presently became tasteless and insipid to him.

            She was too much a mistress in the art of love, and too well acquainted with the disposition of mankind, not to discover there was something more in the devoirs he paid her than what she might have expected as the kinswoman of his wife; and as she regarded nothing but the gratification of her own vanity, whoever might suffer by it, displayed all her arts to encourage the latent passion she had begun to kindle in his heart.

            Sensible as Daphne was of the estrangement of her husband's affection, she had not the least suspicion that it was occasioned by his attachment to any new object, much less that it was to her cousin's more prevailing charms that she was indebted for this misfortune.

            She was one day amusing a lonely hour with reading Mr. Otway's excellent tragedy of Venice Preserved; the emphatic speech of Belvidera, when complaining of Jaffeir's unkindness, seemed so parallel to her own condition, that it brought a flood of tears into her eyes. The words which that scarce imitable poet has put into the mouth of his heroine on this occasion are as follow:

—— There was a time,
When Belvidera's tears, her cries and sorrows
Were not despised; when if she chanced to sigh,
Or look but sad!—There was, indeed a time,
When Jaffeir would have taken her in his arms,
Eased her reclining head upon his breast,
And never left till he had found the cause!
But now, let her weep seas,
Cry till she rend the earth, sigh till she burst
Her heart asunder, still he bears it all,
Deaf as the winds, and as the rocks unshaken!

            Her gay cousin came in that instant, and finding her thus, hastily demanded the occasion; on which Daphne told her what had been the subject of her entertainment, and repeated the passage above quoted. The other then laughed heartily, and cryed, "And what is all this to you?" "As I am a wife," replied Daphne, "I could not help being affected with the distresses of a wife, whom the poet has made to love her husband as much as I do mine."

            "Nay, I know but little of the play," said the other, "for I hate all tragedy; but I suppose this same Belvidera might be jealous of her husband; and if so, I should be so far from pitying her, that I should heartily despise her; for I look upon a jealous wife as the most ridiculous animal under the sun. That woman must certainly be very vain and silly who thinks to engross a pretty fellow to herself all his life long, merely because the parson has mumbled a few words over them."

            "You talk oddly, my dear," said Daphne, "but you will be of another mind when once you marry." "I talk reasonably," replied her cousin, "and shall never expect constancy from a husband, unless he is a fool. But this is not my present business with you; I came to borrow your husband of you for one whole day at least: you must know I have some flowers, and other trinkets, sent me from France, which are seized at the Custom-house; they tell me I must go in person to redeem them: the board sits to-morrow; but as it looks a little odd for a woman to go to those places by herself, I would beg the favour of Corydon to squire me thither, if it be convenient for him."

            "He has been of late very much engaged on some business or other," replied Daphne, "I know not what, but dare answer that he will not fail to attend you, if there be a possibility of his doing so." "Well then," rejoined the other, "let him come to my lodgings early in the morning, I will be dressed and have a coach ready at the door; for I intend to call in our way on one of the commissioners, in order to make him my friend in the affair."

            She then took her leave, saying she had an engagement on her hands, as indeed she had. Corydon waited all this time at her lodgings to pass the evening with her; and this faulty pair, having agreed to make an excursion a little way out of town the next morning, she had only invented the tale she came with to his wife to keep her from being surprised at his going abroad more early than was his custom.

            Thus, by various pretences, was the credulity of Daphne for some time imposed upon; but chance at last discovered the cruel secret to her; a letter accidentally dropped by Corydon left her no room to doubt the truth of her misfortune; she then could not forbear reproaching his perfidiousness; but though she did so in more soft terms than might have been expected, her mildness had not the effect it ought to have had; some men cannot bear detection. Plain as his guilt was proved he denied it all, and accused her of a jealous and suspicious nature. No amendment of his conduct appearing, grief threw her into a languishing disorder, which threatening her life, she went by the advice of her physicians into the country, where she soon after died. Corydon lost an excellent wife, but was not sensible of her real value, nor of the error which had deprived him of her, till too late to make atonement.

            In my admonitions to wives, concerning their behaviour on the score of a husband's infidelity, I gave some advice, which if Daphne had followed, might possibly have been attended with success: I believe, however, there are few modern ladies will resent an injury of this kind in the manner she did.

            But notwithstanding I cannot but think, and all the world must allow it to be a most enormous crime in a man to wrong his wife in so tender a point, there is yet one circumstance in which there seems to be some pity due to the transgressor.

            What I mean is this: when a man is merely compelled, by the over-ruling power of his parents, or is swayed by the prospect of some very great advantage, to give his hand to a woman who never had any possession of his heart, and shall afterwards meet with an object which captivates all his senses, and convinces him of the force of love, such a one, I say, has some sort of plea for commiseration.

            As too many marriages are made wholly on the account either of the one or the other of the motives I have mentioned, I would have every husband, who finds himself in this unhappy situation, be continually upon his guard against the assaults of beauty: whenever he sees a woman who pleases him too much, let him refrain from ever seeing her again; let him fly before the impression takes too deep a root, and let him take all imaginable measures to obliterate it for ever from his mind.

            Love in its beginning may be easily checked; but if in the least indulged it presently becomes too potent for control; and he that thinks to himself, thus far will I go and no further, will soon find he has been utterly unacquainted with the power of that passion by which he is instigated.

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