University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXXIV.

How little is the equanimity or patience
that nature has allotted me? thy entrance now
would find me quite peevish. Yet I do not fear
thy entrance. Always anxious as I am to be
amiable in your eyes, I am at no pains to conceal
from you that impatience which now
vexes my soul, because it is your absence that
occasions it.

I sat alone on the sofa below, for a whole
hour. Not once was the bell rung—not once

did my fluttering heart answer to footsteps in the
passage. I had no need to start up at the opening
of the parlour door, and to greet, as distinctly
as the joyous tumult of my bosom would
suffer me, the much loved, long expected visitant.

Yet deceived, by my fond heart, into momentary
forgetfulness of the interval of an
hundred miles that lies between us, more than
once cast I a glance behind me, and started,
as if the hoped for peal had actually been
rung.

Tired, at length, of my solitude, where I had
enjoyed your company so often, I covered up
the coals, and withdrew to my chamber. And
here, said I, tho' I cannot talk to him, yet I can
write.

But first, I read over again this cruel letter of
my mother. I weighed all the contents, and
especially those heavy charges against you.

How does it fall out that the same object is
viewed by two observers with such opposite
sensations. That what one hates, the other
should doat upon? two of the same sex: one
cherished from infancy; reared; modelled;
taught to think; feel, and even to speak, by the
other: acting till now, and even now, acting, in
all respects, but one, in inviolable harmony;
that two such should jar and thwart each other,
in a point, too, in respect to which, the whole
tendency and scope of the daughter's education
was to produce a fellow feeling with the mother.
How hard to be accounted for! how deeply
to be rued!

I sometimes catch myself trembling with
solicitude lest I should have erred. Am I not
betrayed by passion? can I claim the respect
due to that discernment which I once boasted?

I cannot blame my mother. She acts and determines,
as I sometimes believe, without the
benefits of my knowledge. Did she know as
much as I know, surely she would think as I
do.

In general, this conclusion seems to be just;
but there are moments when doubts insinuate
themselves. I cannot help remembering the
time when I reasoned like my mother: when
the belief of a christian seemed essential to
every human excellence. All qualities, without
that belief, were not to be despised as useless,
but to be abhorred as pernicious. There
would be no virtue, no merit, divorced from religion.
In proportion to the speciousness of his
qualities was he to be dreaded. The fruit, whatever
form it should assume, was nothing within
but bane, and was to be detested and shunned
in proportion as the form was fair and its promises
delicious.

I seldom trusted myself to enquire how it
was my duty to act towards one whom I loved,
but who was destitute of this grace, for of such
moment was the question to me, that I imagined
the decision would necessarily precede all
others. I could not love, till I had investigated
this point, and no force could oblige me to hold
communion with a soul, whom this defect despoiled
of all beauty and devoted to perdition.

But what now is the change that time and
passion have wrought. I have found a man without

religion. What I supposed impossible, has
happened. I love the man. I cannot give him up.
The mist that is before my eyes, does not
change what was once vice into virtue. I do not
cease to regard unbelief as the blackest stain;
as the most deplorable calamity that can befall
a human creature, but still I love the man, and
that fills me with unconquerable zeal to rescue
him from this calamity.

But my mother interferes. She reminds me
of the horror which I once entertained for men
of your tenets. She enjoins me to hate you,
or to abhor myself for loving one worthy of nothing
but hatred.

I cannot do either. My heart is still yours,
and it is a voluntary captive. I would not free it
from its thraldom, if I could. Neither do I think
its captivity dishonors it. Time, therefore, has
wrought some change. I can now discover
some merit: something to revere and to love,
even in a man without religion. I find my
whole soul penetrated with zeal for his welfare.
There is no scheme which I muse upon with
half the constancy or pleasure, as that of curing
his errors, and I am confident of curing
them.

“Ah Jane!” says my mother; “rash and
presumptuous girl! What a signal punishment
hangs over thee. Thou wilt trust thyself within
the toils of the grand deceiver. Thou wilt enter
the list with his subtleties. Vain and arrogant,
thou fearest not thy own weakness. Thou wilt
stake thy eternal lot upon thy triumph in argument
against one, who, in spite of all his

candour and humility, has his pride and his
passions engaged on the side of his opinions.

“Subtle wretch!” does she exclaim, “accomplished
villain! How nicely does he select:
how adroitly manage his tools! He will oppose,
only to yield more gracefully. He will argue
only that the rash simpleton may the more congratulate
herself upon her seeming victory!
How easy is the verbal assent! the equivocating
accent! The hesitating air! These he will assume
whenever it is convenient to lull your fears
and gratify your vanity, and nothing but the
uniformity of his conduct, his continuance in
the same ignominious and criminal path, will
open your eyes, and shew you that only grace
from above can reach his obdurate heart, or dart
a ray into his benighted faculties.”

Will you be surprised that I shudder when my
mother urges me in this strain, with her customary
energy. Always wont to be obsequious
to the very turn of her eye, and to make her will,
not only the regulator of my actions, but the
criterion of my understanding; it is impossible
not to hesitate; to review all that has passed between
us, and re-consider anew the motives
that have made me act as I have acted.

Yet the review always confirms me in my first
opinion. You err, but are not obstinate in error.
If your opinions be adverse to religion,
your affections are not wholly estranged from it.
Your understanding dissents, but your heart is
not yet persuaded to refuse. You have powers,
irresistable in whatever direction they are bent:
capable of giving the highest degree of misery
or happiness to yourself and to others. At present

they are mis-directed or inactive. They
are either pernicious or useless.

How can I, who have had ample opportunities
of knowing you, stand by with indifference while
such is your state? I love you, it is true. All
your felicity and all your woe become mine.
I have a selfish interest in your welfare. I cannot
bear the thought of passing through this
world, or of entering any future world, without
you. My heart has tried in vain to create a separate
interest: to draw consolation from a
different source. Hence indifference to your
welfare is impossible. But would not indifference,
even if no extraordinary tie subsisted
between us, be criminal? What becomes of our
obligation to do good to others, if we do not exert
ourselves, when all the means are in our
power, to confer the most valuable of all benefits:
to remove the greatest of all ills?

Of what stuff must that heart be made which
can behold, unmoved, genius and worth, destitue
of the joys and energies of religion; wandering
in a maze of passions and doubts; devoured
by phantastic repinings and vague regrets:
Drearily conscious of wanting a foundation
whereon to repose; a guide in whom to
trust. What heart can gaze at such a spectacle
without unspeakable compassion.

Not to have our pity and our zeal awakened,
seems to me to argue the utmost depravity of
heart. No stronger proof can be given that we
ourselves are destitute of true religion. The
faith or the practice must be totally wanting.
We may talk devoutly; we may hie, in due season,
to the house of prayer; while there, we

may put on solemn visages and mutter holy
names. We may abstain from profane amusements,
or unauthorised words; we may shun,
as infectious, the company of unbelievers. We
may study homilies and creeds; but all this,
without rational activity for others good, is not
religion. I see, in all this, nothing that I am accustomed
to call by that name.

I see nothing but a narrow selfishness: sentiments
of fear degrading to the Deity: a bigotry
that contracts the view; that freezes the
heart; that shuts up the avenues to benevolent
and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness
does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade.
I will have none of it.

But then, it seems, there is danger to ourselves
from such attempts. In trying to save
another from drowning, may we not sometimes
be drawn in ourselves? Are we not taught to
deprecate, not only evil, but temptation to evil?

What madness to trust our convictions, in a
point of such immense importance, to the contest
of argument with one of superior subtlety and
knowledge. Is there not presumption in such
a trust?

Excellent advice is this to the mass of women:
to those to whom habit or childish fear
or parental authority has given their faith:
who never doubted or enquired or reasoned for
themselves. How easily is such a fabric to be
overturned. It can only stand by being never
blown upon. The least breath disperses it in
air; The first tide washes it away.

Now, I entertain no reverence for such a bubble.
In some sense, the religion of the timorous

and uninquisitive, is true. In another sense it
is false. Considering the proofs on which it
reposes, it is false, since it merely originates
in deference to the opinions of others, wrought
into belief by means of habit. It is on a level,
as to the proof which supports it, with the wildest
dreams of savage superstition, or the fumes
of a dervise's fanaticism.

As to me, I was once just such a pretty fool
in this respect, as the rest of my sex. I was
easily taught to regard religion not only as the
safe-guard of every virtue, but even as the test
of a good understanding. The name of infidel
was never mentioned but with abhorrence or
contempt. None but a profligate, a sensualist,
a ruffian, could disbelieve. Unbelief was a
mere suggestion of the grand deceiver, to palliate
or reconcile us to the unlimited indulgence
of our appetites, and the breach of every moral
duty. Hence it was never stedfast or sincere.
An adverse fortune or a death-bed, usually put
an end to the illusion.

Thus I grew up, never beset by any doubts;
never venturing on enquiry. My knowledge of
you, put an end to this state of superstitious ignorance.
In you I found, not one that disbelieved,
but one that doubted. In all your demeanor
there was simplicity and frankness.
You concealed not your sentiments; you obtruded
them not upon my hearing. When called
upon to state the history of your opinions,
it was candidly detailed; with no view of gaining
my concurrence, but merely to gratify my
curiosity.

From my remonstrances you never averted
your ear. Every proof of an unprejudiced attention,
and even of a bias favorable to my opinions,
was manifest. Your own experience had
half converted you already. Your good sense
was for a time the sport of a specious theory.
You became the ardent and bold champion of
what you deemed truth. But a closer and longer
view insensibly detected flaws and discords
where all had formerly been glossy smoothness
and ravishing harmony. Diffidence and caution,
worthy of your youth and inexperience,
had resumed their place; and those errors, of
which your own experience of their consequences
had furnished the antidote, which your
own reflections had partly divested of illusion,
had only been propitious to your advancement
in true wisdom.

What had I to fear from such an adversary?
What might I not hope from perseverance?
What expect but new clearness to my own convictions;
new and more accurate views of my
powers and habits?

In order to benefit you, I was obliged to scrutinize
the foundation of my own principles. I
found nothing but a void. I was astonished and
alarmed; and instantly set myself to the business
of enquiry. How could I hope to work on
your convictions without a suitable foundation
for my own?

And see now my friend the blindness of our
judgements. I who am imagined to incur such
formidable perils from intercourse with you,
am, in truth, indebted to you alone for all my
piety: all of it that is permanent and rational.

Without those apprehensions which your example
inspired, without that zeal for your conversion
which my attachment to you has produced,
what would now have been my claims to religious
knowldege?

Had I never extorted from you your doubts,
and the occasion of these doubts; had I never
known the most powerful objections to religion
from your lips, I should have been no less ignorant
of the topics and arguments favourable
to it.

And I think I may venture to ascribe to myself
no less a progress in candour than in knowledge.
My belief is stronger than it ever was,
but, I no longer hold in scorn or abhorrence
those who differ from me. I perceive the speciousness
of those fallacies by which they are
deluded. I find it possible for men to disbelieve
and yet retain their claims to our reverence,
our affection, and especially our good offices.

Those whom I once thought were only to be hated
and shunned, I now find worthy of compassionate
efforts for their good. Those whom I
once imagined sunk beneath the reach of all
succour, and to merit scarcely the tribute of a
sigh for their lost estate, now appear to be easily
raised to tranquillity and virtue, and to have
irresistable claims to our help.

In no respect has your company made me a
worse, in every respect it has made me a better
woman. Not only my piety has become more
rational and fervent, but a new spring has been
imparted to my languishing curiosity. To find a
soul, to whom my improvement will give delight;
eager to direct and assist my enquiries;

delcately liberal no less of censure when merited,
than of praise where praise is due; entering,
almost without the help of language from me,
into my inmost thoughts: assisting me, if
I may so speak, to comprehend myself; and
raising to a stedfast and bright flame, the
spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself,
would have instantaneously emitted and lost—

But why do I again attempt this impossible
theme. While reflecting on my debt to thee,
my heart becomes too big for its mansion.
My hand faulters, and the characters it traces,
run into an illegible scrawl.

My tongue only is fitted for such an office; and
Heaven grant that you may speedily return to
me, and put an end to a solitude which every
hour makes more irksome. Adieu.