Editor's note.
[In another letter bearing date eighteen months
after the preceding, we find the following
paragraphs, evidently written after Mr.
Lewis had visited her.]
“You are pleased with our situation, and with
the little society that surrounds us. I am glad
you are; I do not wonder at the approbation you
express of the manners, conversation, and general
character of our good curate, Mr. Hayley.
He is all that man ought to be; and since his
residence among us, it seems as though I felt
awakened to the joys of society. My brother,
let my heart stand open to your view; I feel,
had such a man been presented to my notice,
in early life, I should have experienced a different
sentiment to what I have ever yet known.
Perhaps I do not properly comprehend what
love is; at least such as the visionaries of romance
describe it; I never yet saw the man who could
make me defy the opinion of the world, slight
the moral duties, and forget the respect due to
myself. But methinks for such a man as Hayley,
I could suffer every temporal inconvenience
—bear poverty, contempt, reproach, yes, all
reproaches but those of my own heart; but
thinking him, as I do, the first of human beings,
I could never commit any action that would
sink me in his esteem, or expose him to the
contempt of the world. I ever thought, and
am now more fully convinced, that the woman
who experiences the sentiment which alone is
deserving the name of love in all its purity, can
never be guilty of aught that would call a blush
to her own cheek, or brand the object of her
esteem with infamy.
“I am not hypocrite sufficient to offer an
apology for the candid avowal of my sentiments
in regard to Mr. Hayley. They are not the
impulse of a momentary passion, they are the
result of reason and observation. I feel that his
esteem is necessary to my peace of mind, and
to obtain that esteem is so desirable an object,
that it has aroused the sleeping faculties of my
soul, and called them into action. I have now
some pleasurable object in view; I pursue some
daily amusement; I execute some little work of
taste, or fancy; I practise a new air upon my
guitar, or from my window sketch the outline
of a landscape, or a group of sportive children,
and have the hope of receiving approbation
from one of whose judgment I have the highest
opinion, and who I know, if he cannot praise
with truth, will remain silent. I offer no apology.
No, why should I? You require none.
Acquainted as you are with my strong sense of
moral rectitude, of my full persuasion of a superintending
Deity, and the certain rewards and
punishments that await us in a future state, you
cannot believe me depraved; knowing as you
do the character of the person I esteem, you
will dismiss all fear.
But mistake me not: it is neither affection to
my husband, nor the dread of the world's censure,
binds me to Darnley. No, every moral
tie he has himself voluntarily and repeatedly
broken; but I have never yet infringed my
duty, I am his wife. Love him, alas! I never
did! never can. Though had he taken the
proper means to conciliate tenderness, my heart
would have soon become his own; it was formed
for unbounded tenderness, but its impulses never
expanded; they were repelled by unkindness,
and shrunk again within itself. But if I have
found a source of happiness, which religion and
honor does not disallow, why should I reject it,
for one, who never studied my peace, but made
self gratification his sole object? Ah, my brother,
if I am to be a stranger to pleasure, till my
ideas of it are in unison with his, I shall remain
unacquainted with it forever.”
