There is no resentment so implacable and lasting as that which is occasioned by love converted into hatred by ill treatment; and by the more slow degree this passion rises in our minds, the more virulent it becomes after having once gain'd possession.

Cleanthes, a gentleman of a good family, great worth, and opulent estate, loved to the most romantic excess a young woman, who, excepting a tolerable share of beauty, had no one real charm to recommend her to a person of his character: – she was meanly born, more meanly educated; – she was silly, vain, capricious, and of a reputation not quite unblemish'd.

Yet did he no sooner become acquainted with her than he broke off the addresses he had long made to a lady of great merit and fortune; and in a short time, contrary to all the remonstrances and dissuasions of his friends, publickly married her.

Being a husband made him not less a lover; – his obsequiousness is not to be parallel'd; – his whole study was to please her, every succeeding day brought with it an addition of his dotage of her; – he was always happy in her presence, never easy in her absence; – and, to use Shakespear's expression,

Aglaura, for so she is call'd, had so little sense of the happiness she enjoy'd, or affection or gratitude for the man who bestow'd it on her, that she presently gave the greatest loose to her too amorous inclinations; – thought of nothing but engaging new admirers, and to that end made advances, which would be shocking to repeat, to every pretty fellow she came in company with, even before the face of her much injur'd husband, who, blinded by his passion, for a long time look'd on all she did as proceeding only from the too great vivacity of her temper.