You ask me, my dear Lucy, how to preserve this affection, on the continuance of which, you justly say, your whole happiness depends. The question is perhaps the most delicate and important which respects human life; the caprice, the inconstancy, the injustice of men, makes the task of women in marriage infinitely difficult. Prudence and virtue will certainly secure esteem; but, unfortunately, esteem alone will not make a happy marriage; passion must also be kept alive, which the continual presence of the object beloved is too apt to make subside into that apathy, so insupportable to sensible
...more
