University of Virginia Library

LETTER XVIII.

Though I am so soon to be with you,
and have received no answer to my last, yet I
cannot be alone in my chamber, and be within
reach of pen and paper, without snatching
them up and talking to my friend thus. This
is a mode of conversing I would willingly exchange
for the more lively and congenial intercourse
of eyes and lips, but 'tis better than
total silence.

What are you doing now? Busy, I suppose,
in turning over the leaves of some book.
Some painter of manners or of nature is before
you. Some dramatist, or poet, or historian,
furnishes you with occupation. The day, here,

is celestially benigh. Such, only, as our climate
can know. It is not less splendid and
serene with you. So, you have strolled into
that field, which is not excelled, for the grandeur
of its scenery, the balsamic and reviving
virtue of its breezes, its commodiousness of
situation, for the purpose of relieving those
condemned to a city life, by any field on this
globe. The batttery....what a preposterous
name! Yet not the only instance of a mound,
serving at once the double purpose of pleasure
and defence. Did you not say the bulwarks
of Paris were pleasure-walks? You have been
in Sicily and Provence. Did you ever meet
with sun, sky, and water, more magnificent,
and air more bland, than you are now contemplating
and breathing? For methinks I see that
lovely form gliding along the green, or fixed,
in musing posture, at the rails, and listening to
the ripling of the waters.

Perhaps, some duty keeps you at home.
You expect a visitant; are seated at your toilet;
adding all the inchantments of drapery; the
brilliant hues and the flowing train of muslin,
to a form whose excellence it is to be beautiful

when unadorned, and yet to gain from every
ornament, new beauty.

What a rare lot is yours, Clara! One of
the most fortunate of women art thou. Wealth,
affluence, is yours; but wealth is only the means
of every kind of happiness; it is not happiness
itself. But you have not only the tools, but
the inclination and ability to use them. In no
hands could riches be placed so as to produce
more felicity to the possessor, and to those
within reach of her munificence.

Which is the most unerring touchstone of
merit, poverty or riches? Ingeniously to supply
the place, or gracefully to endure the want
of riches, is the privilege of great minds. To
retain humility and probity, in spite of riches,
and to effect the highest good of ourselves and
others, by the use of them, is the privilege of
minds still greater. The last privilege is
Clara's. The first....vanity has sometimes
said....no matter what. It was, indeed, vanity
that said it. Vanity, that is now humbled into
wisdom and self-distrust. So far from bearing
poverty with dignity, I cannot justly call my
former situation by that name, and was far

from bearing even the moderate privations of
that state with fortitude.

And are, indeed, these privations forever
at an end? Is the harder test of wisdom, the
true use of riches, now to be imposed upon
me? It is. Clara Howard, and all that she
inherits, will be mine. I ought to tremble for
the consequences of exposure to such temptations.
And, if I stood alone, I should tremble;
but, in reality, whatever is your, or your father's
gift, is not mine. Your power over it shall ever
be unlimited and uncontrouled by me, and this,
not more from the equity of your claim to the
sole power, than from the absolute rectitude
with which that power will be exercised by
you. Had I millions of my own acquiring,
I should deem it no more than my duty to resign
to you the employment of them.

Ah! my divine friend! I will be no more
than your agent; your almoner; one whose
aid may make charity less toilsome to you;
may free the pleasures of beneficence from
some of those pains by which they are usually
attended. I will go before you, plucking up
thorns, and removing asperities from the path
that you chuse. All my recompense shall be

the consciousness in whose service I labour,
and whose pleasures I enhance.

They tell us that ambition is natural to
man: that no possession is so pleasing as power
and command. I do not find it so. I would
fain be an universal benefactor. The power,
that office or riches confers, is requisite to this
end; but power in infirm hands, is productive
only of mischief. I who know my own frailty,
am therefore undesirous of power. So far
from wishing to rule others, it is my glory and
my boast to submit to one whom I deem unerring
and divine. Clara's will is my law: her
pleasure the science that I study; her smiles
the reward that, next to an approving God,
my soul prizes most dearly.

Indeed, my friend, before you honour me
with your choice, you should contrive to exalt
me or lower yourself. Some parity there
ought to be between us. An angel in the heavens,
like thee, is not a fit companion for a
mere earth-worm, like