But it was not so easy to replace to our community the
loss of so sweet a member of it: for, not to mention her
beauty, she was one of those mild, pliant characters that if
one does not entirely esteem, one can scarce help loving,
which is not such a bad compensation neither. Owing all her
weakness to good-nature, and an indolent facility that kept
her too much at the mercy of first impressions, she had just
sense enough to know that she wanted leading-strings, and
thought herself so much obliged to any who would take the
pains to think for her, and guide her, that with a very little
management, she was capable of being made a most agreeable,
nay, a most virtuous wife: for vice, it is probable, had never
been her choice, or her fate, if it had not been for occasion,
or example, or had she not depended less upon herself than
upon her circumstances. This presumption her conduct after-
wards verified: for presently meeting with a match that was
ready cut and dry for her, with a neighbour's son of her own
rank, and a young man of sense and order, who took her as the
widow of one lost at sea (for so it seems one of her gallants,
whose name she had made free with, really was), she naturally
struck into all the duties of their domestic life with as much
constancy and regularity, as if she had never swerv'd from a
state of undebauch'd innocence from her youth.
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