Letitia monologue (Act 1) — The Contrast

Be patient, Charlotte; your head so runs upon beaux. Why, she read _Sir Charles Grandison_, _Clarissa Harlow_, _Shenstone_, and the _Sentimental Journey_; and between whiles, as I said, Billy's letters. But, as her taste improved, her love declined. The contrast was so striking betwixt the good sense of her books and the flimsiness of her love-letters, that she discovered she had unthinkingly engaged her hand without her heart; and then the whole transaction, managed by the old folks, now appeared so unsentimental, and looked so like bargaining for a bale of goods, that she found she ought to have rejected, according to every rule of romance, even the man of her choice, if imposed upon her in that manner. Clary Harlow would have scorned such a match.