should know that you can so easily part with her, if you have the love for her which you declare you have. Be sure, if you are not absolutely determined, that you do not so much as whisper the contents of this your letter to your own heart, as I may say.

Her treatment of you, you say, does no credit either to her education or fine sense. Very home put, truly! Nevertheless, so say I. But is not hers the disgrace, more than yours? I can assure you, that every body blames her for it.And why do they blame her?-Why, because they think you merit better treatment at her hands: And is not this to your credit? Who but pities you, and blames her? Do the servants, who, as you observe, see her skittish airs, disrespect you for them? Do they not, at such times, look concerned for you? Are they not then doubly officious in their respects and services to you? I have observed, with pleasure, that they are..

But you are afraid you shall be thought tame, perhaps, when married. That you shall not be thought manly enough, I warrant !—And this was poor Mr Howe's fear. And many a tug did this lordly fear cost us both, God knows!Many more than needed, I am sure; and more than ought to have been, had he known how to bear and forbear, as is the duty of those who pretend to have most sense-And, pray, which would you have to have most sense, the woman or the man?

Well, sir, and now what remains, if you really love Nancy so well as you say you do?Why, I leave that to you. You may, if you please, come to breakfast with me in the morning; but with no full heart, nor resenting looks, I advise you, except you can brave it out. That have I, when provoked, done many a time with my husband, but never did I get any thing by it with my daughter, much less will you. Of which, for your observation, I thought fit to advise you, as from your friend,

ANNABELLA HOWE.

LETTER LXVIII.

MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE.

Thursday Morning.

I WILL now take some notice of your last favour; but being so far behind-hand with you, must be brief.

In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myself of that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoid deserving them now and then occasionally, when I admire the manner in which you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them?

• See Letter XLIII.

And when you are so well entitled to give them? For what faults can you possibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few to keep their many in countenance? But they are as kind to me in this as to you; for I may venture to affirm, that any one who should read your letters, and would say you were right, would not, on reading mine, condemn me for being quite wrong.

Your resolution not to leave your father's house is right, if you can stay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.

I think you answered Solmes's letter as I should have answered it. Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, that that was right?

You

You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that you ought to do. are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what it will. To offer to give up your estate! That would not I have done! You see this offer staggered them; they took time to consider of it. They made my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would have taken you at your word, and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace, I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is an offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeat the temptation to them.

I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's different treatment of you* in his last letter received at the same time, would have made me his, past redemption. The deuce take the man, I was going to say, for not having had so much regard to his character and morals as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted as she is!

I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some part of this subject by and by.

Pray-pray-I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your Betty Barnes to me!-Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye? The least I will do, shall be to send her home well soused in, and dragged through, our deepest horse-pond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.

I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is. If he loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment. The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shewn his vexation. Your expectations of such a Christian command of temper in him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early, by almost half a century, in a man of his constitution. But, nevertheless, I am very far from blaming you for your resentment.

+ See Letter LXIV.

I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and him. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately, and now such mountains?—And you think to hold it ?-May be so!

You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his preceding letter was not natural to him. And did you before think it was? Wretched creeppers and insinuators! Yet, when opportunity serves, as insolent encroachers! This very Hickman, I make no doubt, would be as saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half the arrogant bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns, that's all. But whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will butt at one as valiantly as the other.

If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the obsequious lover goes off, and how the imperative husband comes upon him; in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonial wheel, never to take my turn again but by fits and starts, like the feeble struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.

All good-natured men are passionate, says Mr Lovelace. A pretty plea to a beloved object in the plenitude of her power! As much as to say, "Greatly as I value you, madam, I will not take pains to curb my passions to oblige you." Methinks I should be glad to hear from Mr Hickman such a plea for good-nature as this.

Indeed, we are too apt to make allowances for such tempers as early indulgence has made uncontrollable; and therefore habitually evil. But if a boisterous temper, when under obligation, is to be thus allowed for, what, when the tables are turned, will it expect? You know a husband, who, I fancy, had some of these early allowances made for him; and you see that neither himself nor any body else is the happier for

it.

The suiting of the tempers of two persons who are yet to come together, is a great matter; and there should be boundaries fixed between them, by consent as it were, beyond which neither should go; and each should hold the other to it; or there would probably be encroachment in both. To illustrate my assertion by a very high, and by a more manly, (as some would think it) than womanly instance-if the boundaries of the three estates that constitute our political union were not known, and occasionally asserted, what would become of the prerogatives and privileges of each? The two branches of the legislature would encroach upon each other; and the executive power would swallow up both.

But if two persons of discretion, you'll say, come together

Ay, my dear, that's true; but, if none but persons of discretion were to marry-And would it not surprise you if I were to advance, that the persons of discretion are generally single? Such persons are apt to consider too much, to resolve.

Are not you and I complimented as such? And would either of us marry, if the fellows and our friends would let us alone?

But to the former point ;-had Lovelace made his addresses to me, (unless indeed I had been taken with a liking for him more than conditional,) I would have forbid him, upon the first passionate instance of his good-nature, as he calls it, ever to see me more:-"Thou must bear with me, honest friend, might I have said, (had I condescended to say any thing to him) an hundred times more than this :-Begone, therefore! I bear with no passions that are predominant to that thou hast pretended for me!"

But to one of your mild and gentle temper, it would be all one, were you married, whether the man were a Lovelace or a Hickman in his spirit. You are so obediently principled, that perhaps you would have told a mild man, that he must not entreat, but command; and that it was beneath him not to exact from you the obedience you had so solemnly vowed to him at the altar. I know of old, my dear, your meek regard to that little piddling part of the marriagevow which some prerogative-monger foisted into the office, to make that a duty, which he knew was not a right.

Our way of training-up, you say, makes us need the protection of the brave. Very true; and how extremely brave and gallant is it, that this brave man will free us from all insults but those which will go nearest to our hearts; that is to say, his own!

How artfully has Lovelace, in the abstract you give me of one of his letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hate compulsion! He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once we thought him. He knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannot be concealed; and so owns just enough to palliate, (because it teaches you not to be surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; and then, truly, he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by no means an hypocrite; a character the most odious of all others, to our sex, in a lover, and the least to be forgiven, were it only because, when detected, it makes us doubt the justice of those praises which we are willing to believe he thought to be our due.

By means of this supposed ingenuity, Lovelace obtains a praise, instead of a merited dispraise; and, like an absolved confessionaire, wipes off as he goes along one score, to begin another; for an eye favourable to him will not see his faults through a magnifying glass; nor will a woman, willing to hope the best, forbear to impute to ill-will and prejudice all that charity can make so imputable. And if she even give credit to such of the unfavourable imputations as may be too flagrant to be doubted, she will be very apt to take in the future hope, which he inculcates, and which to question would be to question her own power, and perhaps merit ;

and thus may a woman be inclined to make a slight, even a fancied merit, atone for the most glaring vice.

I have a reason, a new one, for this preachment upon a text you have given me. But, till I am better informed, I will not explain myself. If it come out, as I shrewdly suspect it will, the man, my dear, is a devil; and you must rather think of-I protest I had like to have said Solmes than him.

But let this be as it will, shall I tell you, how, after all his offences, he may creep in with you again?

I will. Thus then; it is but to claim for him self the good-natured character; and this, granted, will blot out the fault of passionate inso lence; and so he will have nothing to do, but this hour to accustom you to insult; the next, to bring you to forgive him, upon his submis sion; the consequence must be, that he will, by this teazing, break your resentment all to pieces; and then, a little more of the insult, and a little less of the submission, on his part, will go down, till nothing else but the first will be seen, and not a bit of the second. You will then be afraid to provoke so offensive a spirit ; and at last will be brought so prettily, and so audibly, to pronounce the little reptile word OBEY, that it will do one's heart good to hear you. The Muscovite wife then takes place of the managed mistress. And if you doubt the progression, be pleased, my dear, to take your mother's judgment upon it.

But no more of this just now. Your situation is become too critical to permit me to dwell upon these sort of topics. And yet this is but an affected levity with me. My heart, as I have heretofore said, is a sincere sharer in all your distresses. My sun-shine darts but through a drizzly cloud. My eye, were you to see it, when it seems to you so gladdened, as you mentioned in a former, is more than ready to overflow, even at the very passages perhaps upon which you impute to me the archness of exultation.

But now the unheard-of cruelty and perverse ness of some of your friends, (relations, I should say I am always blundering thus!) the as strange determinedness of others; your present quarrel with Lovelace; and your approaching interview with Solmes, from which you are right to apprehend a great deal; are such considerable circumstances in your story, that it is fit they should engross all my attention.

You ask me to advise you how to behave upon Solmes's visit. I cannot for my life. I know they expect a great deal from it; you had not else had your long day complied with. All I will say is, That if Solmes cannot be prevailed for, now that Lovelace has so much offended you, he never will. When the interview is over, I doubt not but that I shall have reason to say,

that all you did, that all you said, was right, and could not be better; yet, if I don't think so, I won't say so; that I promise you.

Only let me advise you to pull up a spirit, even to your uncle, if there be occasion. Resent the vile and foolish treatment you meet with, in which he has taken so large a share, and make him ashamed of it, if you can.

I know not upon recollection, but this inter view may be a good thing for you, however des signed. For when Solmes sees (if that be to be so) that it is impossible he should succeed with you; and your relations see it too; the one must, I think, recede, and the other come to terms with you, upon offers, that, it is my opinion, will go hard enough with you to comply with; when the still harder are dispensed with.

There are several passages in your last letters, as well as in your former, which authorize me to say this. But it would be unseasonable to touch this subject farther just now.

But, upon the whole, I have no patience to see you thus made the sport of your brother's and sister's cruelty; for what, after so much steadiness on your part, in so many trials, can be their hope? except indeed it be to drive you to extremity, and to ruin you in the opinion of your uncles as well as father.

I urge you by all means to send out of their reach all the letters and papers you would not have them see. Methinks, I would wish you to deposit likewise a parcel of clothes, linen, and the like, before your interview with Solmes; lest you should not have an opportunity for it afterwards. Robin shall fetch it away on the first orders by day or by night.

I am in hopes to procure from my mother, if things come to extremity, leave for you to be privately with us.

I will condition to be good-humoured, and even kind, to HER favourite, if she will shew me an indulgence that shall make me serviceable to

MINE.

This alternative has been a good while in my head. But as your foolish uncle has so strange ly attached my mother to their views, I cannot promise that I shall succeed as I wish.

Do not absolutely despair, however. What though the contention will be between woman and woman? I fancy I shall be able to manage it, by the help of a little female perseverance. Your quarrel with Lovelace, if it continue, will strengthen my hands. And the offers you made in your answer to your uncle Harlowe's letter of Sunday night last, duly dwelt upon, must add force to my pleas.

I depend upon your forgiveness of all the perhaps unseasonable flippancies of your naturally too lively, yet most sincerely sympathizing,

ANNA HOWE.

LETTER LXIX.

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE.

Friday, March 31.

You have very kindly accounted for your silence. People in misfortune are always in doubt. They are too apt to turn even unavoidable accidents into slights and neglects; especially in those whose favourable opinion they wish to pre

serve.

I am sure I ought evermore to exempt my Anna Howe from the supposed possibility of her becoming one of those who bask only in the sunshine of a friend; but nevertheless her friendship is too precious to me, not to doubt my own merits on the one hand, and not to be anxious for the preservation of it, on the other.

You so generously gave me liberty to chide you, that I am afraid of taking it, because I could sooner mistrust my own judgment, than that of a beloved friend, whose ingenuousness in acknowledging an imputed error seems to set her above the commission of a wilful one. This makes me half-afraid to ask you, if you think you are not too cruel, too ungenerous shall I say? in your behaviour to a man who loves you so dearly, and is so worthy and so sincere a man? Only it is by you, or I should be ashamed to be outdone in that true magnanimity, which makes one thankful for the wounds given by a true friend. I believe I was guilty of a petulance, which nothing but my uneasy situation can excuse; if that can. I am almost afraid to beg of you, and yet I repeatedly do, to give way to that charming spirit, whenever it rises to your pen, which smiles, yet goes to the quick of my fault. What patient shall be afraid of a probe in so delicate a hand? I say, I am almost afraid to pray you to give way to it, for fear you should, for that very reason, restrain it. For the edge may be taken off, if it does not make the subject of its raillery wince a little. Permitted or desired satire may be apt, in a generous satirist, mending as it rallies, to turn too soon into panegyric. Yours is intended to instruct; and though it bites, it pleases at the same time; no fear of a wound's rankling or festering by so delicate a point as you carry; not envenomed by personality, not intending to expose, or ridicule, or exasperate. The most admired of our moderns know nothing of this art. Why? Because it must be founded in good nature, and directed by a right heart. The man, not the fault, is generally the subject of their satire; and were it to be just, how should it be useful; how should it answer any good purpose; when every gash, (for their weapon is a broad-sword, not a lancet) lets in the air of public ridicule, and exas

perates where it should heal? Spare me not therefore because I am your friend. For that very reason spare me not. I may feel your edge, fine as it is. I may be pained; you would lose your end if I were not; but after the first sensibility, (as I have said more than once before) I will love you the better, and my amended heart shall be all yours; and it will then be more worthy to be yours.

You have taught me what to say to, and what to think of, Mr Lovelace. You have by agreeable anticipation, let me know how it is proba ble he will apply to me to be excused. I will lay every thing before you that shall pass on the occasion, if he do apply, that I may take your advice, when it can come in time; and when it cannot, that I may receive your correction, or approbation, as I may happen to merit either. Only one thing must be allowed for me; that whatever course I shall be permitted or be forced to steer, I must be considered as a person out of her own direction. Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate controul, (and, as I think, unseasonable severity,) I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother's and sister's envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other; and tremble, lest I should split upon the former, or strike upon the latter.

But you, my better pilot, to what a charming hope do you bid me aspire, if things come to extremity! I will not, as you caution me, too much depend upon your success with your mother in my favour; for well I know her high notions of implicit duty in a child; but yet I will hope too; because her seasonable protection may save me perhaps from a greater rashness; and in this case, she shall direct me in all my ways. I will do nothing but by her orders, and by her advice and yours; not see any body; not write to any body; nor shall any living soul, but by her direction and yours, know where I am. In any cottage place me, I will never stir out, unless, disguised as your servant, I am now and then permitted an evening walk with you ; and this private protection to be granted for no longer time than till my cousin Morden comes; which, as I hope, cannot be long.

I am afraid I must not venture to take the hint you give me, to deposit some of my clothes; although I will some of my linen, as well as papers.

I will tell you why-Betty had for some time been very curious about my wardrobe, whenever I took out any of my things before her.

Observing this, I once, on taking one of my garden-airings, left my keys in the locks; and on my return surprised the creature with her hand upon the keys, as if shutting the door.

She was confounded at my sudden coming back. I took no notice; but on her retiring, I found my clothes were not in the usual order.

I doubted not, upon this, that her curiosity was owing to the orders she had received; and being afraid they would abridge me of my airings, if their suspicions were not obviated, it has ever since been my custom, (among other contrivances) not only to leave my keys in the locks, but to employ the wench now and then in taking out my clothes, suit by suit, on pretence of preventing their being rumpled or creased, and to see that the flowered silver suit did not tarnish; sometimes declaredly to give myself employment, having little else to do. With which employment, (superadded to the delight taken by the low as well as by the high of our sex in seeing fine clothes) she seemed always, I thought, as well pleased as if it answered one of the offices she had in charge.

To this, and to the confidence they have in a spy so diligent, and to their knowing that I have not one confidant in a family in which nevertheless I believe every servant loves me; nor have attempted to make one; I suppose, I owe the freedom I enjoy of my airings; and perhaps, (finding I make no movements towards going away) they are the more secure, that I shall at last be prevailed upon to comply with their measures; since they must think, that, otherwise, they give me provocation enough to take some rash step, in order to free myself from a treatment so disgraceful; and which, (God forgive me, if I judge amiss!) I am afraid my brother and sister would not be sorry to drive me to take. If, therefore, such a step should become necessary, (which I yet hope will not,) I must be contented to go away with the clothes I shall have on at the time. My custom to be dressed for the day, as soon as breakfast is over, when I have had no household employments to prevent me, will make such a step (if I am forced to take it) less suspected. And the linen I shall deposit, in pursuance of your kind hint, cannot

be missed.

Besides, people in adversity (which is the state of trial of every good quality) should endeavour to preserve laudable customs, that, if sun-shine return, they may not be losers by their trial.

Does it not, moreover, manifest a firmness of mind, in an unhappy person, to keep hope alive? To hope for better days, is half to deserve them; for could we have just ground for such a hope, if we did not resolve to deserve what that hope bids us aspire to? Then who shall befriend a person who forsakes herself?

These are reflections by which I sometimes endeavour to support myself.

I know you don't despise my grave airs, although (with a view no doubt to irradiate my mind in my misfortunes) you rally me upon them. Every body has not your talent of introducing serious and important lessons, in such a happy manner as at once to delight and instruct. What a multitude of contrivances may not young people fall upon, if the mind be not engaged by acts of kindness and condescension! I am not used by my friends of late as I always used their servants.

When I was intrusted with the family-management, I always found it right, as well in policy as generosity, to repose a trust in them. Not to seem to expect or depend upon justice from them, is in a manner to bid them take opportunities, whenever they offer, to be unjust.

Mr Solmes, (to expatiate a little on this low, but not unuseful subject,) in his more trifling solicitudes, would have had a sorry key-keeper in me. Were I mistress of a family, I would not either take to myself, or give to servants, the pain of keeping those I had reason to suspect. People low in station have often minds not sordid. Nay, I have sometimes thought, that (even take number for number) there are more honest low peo ple, than honest high. In the one, honesty is their chief pride. In the other, the love of power, of grandeur, of pleasure, mislead; and that and their ambition induce a paramount pride, which too often swallows up the more laudable one.

Many of the former would scorn to deceive a confidence. But I have seen, among the most ignorant of their class, a susceptibility of resentment, if their honesty has been suspected; and have more than once been forced to put a ser vant right, whom I have heard say, that, although she valued herself upon her honesty, no master or mistress should suspect her for nothing.

How far has the comparison I had in my head, between my friends' treatment of me, and my treatment of their servants, carried me!-But we always allowed ourselves to expatiate on such subjects, whether low or high, as might tend to enlarge our minds, or mend our management, whether notional or practical, and whether such expatiating respected our present, or might re spect our probable future situations.

What I was principally leading to, was to tell you how ingenious I am in my contrivances and pretences to blind my gaoleress, and to take off the jealousy of her principals on my going down so often into the garden and poultry-yard. People suspiciously treated are never I believe at a loss for invention. Sometimes I want air, and am better the moment I am out of my cham ber. Sometimes spirits; and then my bantams and pheasants or the cascade divert me; the for mer, by their inspiriting liveliness; the latter,