University of Virginia Library

LETTER XXXV.

How Truly did my Angel say, that she
whom I love is my deity, and her lips my oracle
and that to her pertains not only the
will to make me happy, by giving me stedfastness
and virtue, but the power also!

I have read your letter oftener than a dozen
times already, and at every reading my heart
burns more and more. That weight of humiliation
and despondency, which without your arm
to sustain me, would assuredly sink me to the
grave, becomes light as a feather, and while I
crush your testimonies of love in my hand, I
seem to have hold of a stay of which no storm
can bereave me.

One of my faults, thou sayest, is a propensity to
reason. Not satisfied with looking at that side
of the post that chances to be near me, I move
round and round it, and pause and scrutinize till
those whose ill fate it is to wait upon my motions,
are out of patience with me.

Every one has ways of his own. A transient
glance at the post, satisfies the mob of passengers.
'Tis my choice to stand awhile and
gaze.

The only post indeed, which I closely examine
is myself, because my station is most convenient
for inspecting that. Yet though I have
a fuller view of myself than any other can have
of me, my imperfect sight, that is, my erring
judgement, is continually blundering.

If all my knowledge relate to my own character,
and that knowledge is egregiously defective,
how profound must be my ignorance of others,
and especially of her, whom I presume to cail
mine?

No paradox ever puzzled me so much as your
conduct. On my first interview with you I loved
you, yet what kind of passion was that, which
knew only your features and the sound of your
voice. Every successive interview has produced,

not only something new or unexpected,
but something in seeming contradicion to my
previous knowledge.

She will act, said I, in such and such circumstances,
as those of her delicate and indulgent
education must always act. That wit, that eloquence,
that knowledge, must only make her despise
such a witless, unendowed, unaccomplished,
wavering and feeble a wretch as I am.

To be called your friend: to be your occasional
companion; to be a tolerated visitor was
more than I expected. When I found all this
anxiously sought and eagerly accepted I was
lost in astonishment. At times, may I venture
to confess, that your regard for me,
brought your judgment into question! It failed
to inspire me with more respect, for myself, and
not to look at me with my own eyes degraded
you in my opinion.

How have you laboured to bestow on me that
inestimable gift Self confidence! And some
success has attended your efforts. My deliverance
from my chains is less desperate than once
it was. I may judge of the future, perhaps, by
the past. Since I have already made such progress
in exchanging distant veneration for familiar
tenderness, and in persuading myself
that he must possess some merit whom a soul
like thine idolises, I may venture to anticipate
the time when all my humiliation may vanish,
and I shall come to be thought worthy of thy
love, not only by thee, but by myself.

What a picture is this thou drawest? Yet such
is my weakness, Jane, that I must shudder at
the prospect. To tear thee from thy present

dwelling and its comforts; to make thee a tenant
of thy good widow, and a seamstress for
me!

Yet what (thou sayest,) is a fine house, and
a train of servants, music and pictures? What
silly prejudice to connect dignity and happiness
with high ceilings and damask canopies, and
golden superfluity.

Yet so silly am I, when reason deserts the
helm, and habit assumes it. The change thou
hast painted, deceives me for a moment, or rather
is rightly judged of, while I look at nothing
but thy colouring, but when I withdraw my eye
from that, and the scene rises before me in the
hues it is accustomed to derive from my own
fancy, my soul droops, and I pray heaven to
avert such a destiny.

I tell thee all my follies, Jane. Art thou
not my sweet physician, and how canst thou
cure the malady, when thou knowest not all its
symptoms?

I love to regard myself in this light. As one
owing his virtue, his existence, his happiness
his every thing to thee, and as proposing no
end to himself, but thy happiness in turn: but
the discharge of an endless debt of gratitude.

On my account, Jane, I cannot bear you
should lose any thing. It must not be. Yet
what remedy? How is thy mother's aversion to
be subdued—how can she be made to reason on
my actions as you reason? yet not so, neither.
None but she that loves me, can make such constructions
and allowances as you do.

Why may she not be induced to give up the
hope of disuniting us, and while she hates me,

continue her affection for thee. Why rob thee of
those bounties hitherto dispensed to thee, merely
because I must share in them. My partaking
with thee contributes indispensibly to
thy happiness. Not for my own sake, then,
but merely for thine, ought competence to be
secured to thee.

But is there no method of excluding me from
all participation. She may withhold from me
all power of a landlord, but she cannot prevent
me from subsisting on thy bounty.

Yet why does she now allow you to possess
what you do? can she imagine that my happiness
is not as dear to you now, as it will be in
consequence of any change? If I share nothing
with you now, it is not from any want of benevolent
importunity in you.

There is a strange inconsistency and contradiction
in thy mother's conduct.

But something may surely be done to lighten
her antipathies. I may surely confute a false
charge. I may convince her of my innocence in
one respect.

Yet see my friend the evils of which one
error is the parent. My conduct towards the
poor Jessy appears to your mother a more enormous
wickedness than this imputed injustice
to Talbot. The frantic indiscretion of my correspondence
with Thomson, has ruined me, for
he that will commit the greater crime, will not
be thought to scruple the less.

And then there is such an irresistible crowd
of evidence in favor of the accusation! when I
first read Mrs. Fielder's letter the consciousness
of my innocence gave me courage, but the

longer I reflect upon the subject, the more
deeply I despond. My own errors will always
be powerful pleaders against me at the bar of
this austere judge.

Would to heaven I had not yielded to your urgency.
The indecorum of compliance stared me
in the face at the time. Too easily I yielded to the
inchantments of those eyes, and the pleadings
of that melting voice.

The charms of your conversation: the midnight
hour whose security was heightened by
the storm that raged without: so perfectly
screened from every interruption: and the subject
we had been talking on so affecting and attractive
to me, and so far from being exhausted;
And you so pathetically earnest in intreaty, so
absolutely forbidding my departure.

And was I such a shortsighted fool as not to
insist on your retiring at the usual hour! The
only thing that could make the expedient suggested
by me effectual, was that. Your Molly lying
with you, could avail you nothing, unless
you actually passed the night in your chamber.

As it was, no contrivance could be more unfortunate,
fince it merely enabled her the more
distinctly to remark the hour when you came
up. Was it three or four when you left the
parlour?

The unbosoming of souls which that night
witneffed, so sweetly as it dwelt upon my memory,
I now regard with horror, since it has
involved you in such evil.

But the letter—that was a most disastrous accident.
I have read very frequently this fatal
billet. Who is it that could imitate your hand

so exactly? The same fashion in the letters, the
same colour in the ink, the same style, and the
sentiments expressed, so fully and accurately
coalescing with the preceding and genuine passages—no
wonder that your mother, being so
well acquainted with your pen, should have no
doubt as to your guilt, after such testimony.

There must be a perpetrator of this iniquity.
Talbot it could not be; for where lay the letter
in the interval between its disappearance and his
return; and what motive could influence him
to commit or to countenance such a forgery?

Without doubt there was some deceiver—
Some one stole the letter, and by his hand was
this vile conclusion added, and by him was it
communicated to Talbot. But hast thou such
an enemy in the world? Whom have you offended,
capable of harbouring such deadly vengeance?

Pray my friend, fit down to the recollection
of your past life, and enquire who it was that
possessed your husband's confidence; who were
his intimate companions, endeavor to discover;
tell me the names and characters of all those
who were accustomed to visit your house, either
on your account or his. Strange if among all
these, there is no foundation for some conjecture,
however shadowy.

Thomson is no better, yet grows worse hardly
perceptibly. Adieu.