last extremity of all, will make her father, and her uncles, and her other friends, forgive her.

The easy pardon perverse children meet with, when they have done the rashest and most rebellious thing they can do, is the reason (as is pleaded to us every day) that so many follow their example. They depend upon the indulgent weakness of their parents' tempers, and, in that dependence, harden their own hearts; and a little humiliation, when they have brought themselves into the foretold misery, is to be a sufficient atonement for the greatest perverseness!

But for such a child as this I mention what others hourly say, but what I must sorrowfully subscribe to to lay plots and stratagems to deceive her parents as well as herself! and to run away with a libertine! Can there be any atonement for her crime? And is she not answerable to God, to us, to you, and to all the world who knew her, for the abuse of such talents as she has abused?

You say her heart is half broken: Is it to be wondered at? Was not her sin committed equally against warning and the light of her own knowledge?

That he would now marry her, or that she would refuse him, if she believed him in earnest, as she has circumstanced herself, is not at all probable; and were I inclined to believe it, nobody else here would. He values not his relations, and would deceive them as soon as any others; his aversion to marriage he has always openly declared, and still occasionally declares it. But, if he be now in earnest, which every one who knows him must doubt, which do you think (hating us too, as he professes to hate and despise us all) would be most eligible here, To hear of her death, or of her marriage with such a vile man?

To all of us, yet, I cannot say! For, O my good Mrs Norton, you know what a mother's tenderness for the child of her heart would make her choose, notwithstanding all that child's faults, rather than lose her for ever!

But I must sail with the tide; my own judgment also joining with the general resentment; or I should make the unhappiness of the more worthy still greater, my dear Mr Harlowe's particularly; which is already more than enough to make them unhappy for the remainder of their days. This I know; if I were to oppose the rest, our son would fly out to find this libertine ; and who could tell what would be the issue of

that with such a man of violence and blood as that Lovelace is known to be?

All I can expect to prevail for her is, that in a week, or so, Mr Brand may be sent up to inquire privately about her present state and way of life, and to see she is not altogether destitute; for nothing she writes herself will be regarded.

Her father, indeed, has, at her earnest request, withdrawn the curse, which, in a passion, he laid upon her, at her first wicked flight from

us.

But Miss Howe [it is a sad thing, Mrs Norton, to suffer so many ways at once had made matters so difficult by her undue liberties with us all, as well by speech in all companies, as by letters written to my Bella, that we could hardly prevail upon him to hear her letter read.

These liberties of Miss Howe with us; the general cry against us abroad, wherever we are spoken of; and the visible, and not seldom audible, disrespectfulness, which high and low treat us with to our faces, as we go to and from church, and even at church, (for nowhere else have we the heart to go,) as if none of us had been regarded but upon her account; and as if she were innocent, we all in fault; are constant aggravations, you must needs think, to the whole family.

She has made my lot heavy, I am sure, that was far from being light before!—To tell you truth, I am enjoined not to receive anything of hers, from any hand, without leave. Should I, therefore, gratify my yearnings after her, so far as to receive privately the letter you mention, what would the case be, but to torment myself, without being able to do her good?-And were it to be known-Mr Harlowe is so passionateAnd should it throw his gout into his stomach, as her rash flight did-Indeed, indeed, I am very unhappy!-For, O my good woman, she is my child still!-But unless it were more in my power -Yet do I long to see the letter-you say it tells of her present way and circumstances. The poor child, who ought to be in possession of thousands!-And will!-For her father will be a faithful steward for her.-But it must be in his own way, and at his own time.

And is she really ill ?—so very ill ?—But she ought to sorrow-she has given a double measure of it.

But does she really believe she shall not long trouble us?-But, O my Norton !-She must, she will, long trouble us-For can she think her death, if we should be deprived of her, will put an end to our afflictions?—Can it be thought that the fall of such a child will not be regretted by us to the last hour of our lives?

But, in the letter you have, does she, without reserve, express her contrition? Has she in it no reflecting hints? Does she not aim at extenuations ?—If I were to see it, will it not shock me so much, that my apparent grief may expose me to harshness ?-Can it be contrived

But to what purpose?-Don't send it-I charge you don't-I dare not see it—

Yet

and this for the sake of my outward quiet; although my inward peace suffers more and more by the compelled reserve.

I WAS forced to break off. But I will now try to conclude my long letter.

I am sorry you are ill. But if you were well, I could not, for your own sake, wish you to go up, as Betty tells us you long to do. If you went, nothing would be minded that came from you. As they already think you too partial in her favour, your going up would confirm it, and do yourself prejudice, and her no good. And as everybody values you here, I advise you not to interest yourself too warmly in her favour, especially before my Bella's Betty, till I can let you know a proper time. Yet to forbid you to love the dear naughty creature, who can ? O my Norton! you must love her!—And so must I !

I send you five guineas, to help you in your present illness, and your son's; for it must have lain heavy upon you. What a sad, sad thing, my dear good woman, that all your pains, and all my pains, for eighteen or nineteen years together, have, in so few months, been rendered thus deplorably vain! Yet I must be always your friend, and pity you, for the very reason that I myself deserve every one's pity.

Perhaps I may find an opportunity to pay you a visit, as in your illness; and then may weep over the letter you mention with you. But, for the future, write nothing to me about the poor girl, that you think may not be communicated to us all.

And I charge you, as you value my friendship, as you wish my peace, not to say anything of a letter you have from me, either to the naughty one, or to anybody else. It was some little relief (the occasion given) to write to you, who must, in so particular a manner, share my affliction. A mother, Mrs Norton, cannot forget her child, though that child could abandon her mother; and, in so doing, run away with all her mother's comforts!-As I can truly say is the case of

Your unhappy friend,

CHARLOTTE HARLOWE.

LETTER CCLXXXIV.

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MRS JUDITH

NORTON.

Sat. July 29. I CONGRATULATE you, my dear Mrs Norton, with all my heart, on your son's recovery; which I pray to God, with your own health, to perfect.

I write in some hurry, being apprehensive of the consequence of the hints you give of some method you propose to try in my favour [with my relations, I presume, you mean]; but you will not tell me what, you say, if it prove unsuccessful.

Now I must beg of you that you will not take any step in my favour, with which you do not first acquaint me.

I have but one request to make to them, besides what is contained in my letter to my sister; and I would not, methinks, for the sake of their own future peace of mind, that they should be teazed so by your well-meant kindness, and that of Miss Howe, as to be put upon denying me that. And why should more be asked for me than I can partake of? More than is absolutely necessary for my own peace?

You suppose I should have my sister's answer to my letter by the time yours reached my hand. I have it: and a severe one, a very severe one, it is. Yet, considering my fault in their eyes, and the provocations I am to suppose they so newly had from my dear Miss Howe, I am to look upon it as a favour that it was answered at all. I will send you a copy of it soon; as also of mine, to which it is an answer.

I have reason to be very thankful that my father has withdrawn that heavy malediction, which affected me so much-A parent's curse, my dear Mrs Norton! What child could die in peace under a parent's curse? so literally fulfilled too as this has been in what relates to this life?

My heart is too full to touch upon the particulars of my sister's letter. I can make but one atonement for my fault. May that be accepted! And may it soon be forgotten, by every dear relation, that there was such an unhappy daughter, sister, or niece, as Clarissa Harlowe !

My cousin Morden was one of those who was so earnest in prayer for my recovery, at nine and eleven years of age, as you mention. My sister thinks he will be one of those who will wish I never had had a being. But pray, when he does come, let me hear of it with the first.

You think that, were it not for that unhappy notion of my moving talent, my mother would relent. What would I give to see her once more, and, although unknown to her, to kiss but the hem of her garment!

Could I have thought that the last time I saw her would have been the last, with what difficulty should I have been torn from her embraced feet! -And when, screened behind the yew-hedge on the 5th of April last,* I saw my father, and my uncle Antony, and my brother and sister, how little did I think that that would be the last time I should ever see them; and, in so short a space, that so many dreadful evils would befal me!

But I can write nothing but what must give you trouble. I will therefore, after repeating my desire that you will not intercede for me but with my previous consent, conclude with the assurance, that I am, and ever will be,

Your most affectionate and dutiful
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER CCLXXXV.

MISS AR. HARLOWE TO MISS CL. HARLOWE.

[In answer to hers of Friday, July 21, Letter CCLXX.]

Thursday, July 27.

O MY UNHAPPY, LOST SISTER! WHAT a miserable hand have you made of your romantic and giddy expedition!—I pity you at my heart.

You may well grieve and repent!-Lovelacehas left you!-In what way or circumstances you know best.

I wish your conduct had made your case more pitiable. But 'tis your own seeking!

God help you!-For you have not a friend will look upon you!-Poor, wicked, undone creature!-Fallen, as you are, against warning, against expostulation, against duty!

But it signifies nothing to reproach you. I weep over you.

My poor mother!-Your rashness and folly have made her more miserable than you can be. Yet she has besought my father to grant your request.

My uncles joined with her; for they thought there was a little more modesty in your letter than in the letters of your pert advocate; and my father is pleased to give me leave to write; but only these words for him, and no more: "That he withdraws the curse he laid upon you, at the first hearing of your wicked flight, so far as it is in his power to do it; and hopes that your present punishment may be all that you will meet with. For the rest, he will never own you, nor forgive you; and grieves he has such a daughter in the world."

All this, and more, you have deserved from him, and from all of us: But what have you done to this abandoned libertine, to deserve what you have met with at his hands ?—I fear, I fear, sister!-But no more!-A blessed four months' work have you made of it.

My brother is now at Edinburgh, sent thither by my father, [though he knows not this to be the motive, that he may not meet your triumphant deluder.

We are told he would be glad to marry you: But why, then, did he abandon you? He had kept you till he was tired of you, no question; and it is not likely he would wish to have you

but upon the terms you have already without all doubt been his.

You ought to advise your friend Miss Howe to concern herself less in your matters than she does, except she could do it with more decency. She has written three letters to me; very insolent ones. Your favourer, poor Mrs Norton, thinks you know nothing of the pert creature's writing. I hope you don't. But then the more impertinent the writer. But, believing the fond woman, I sat down the more readily to answer your letter; and I write with less severity, I can tell you, than otherwise I should have done, if I had answered it at all.

Monday last was your birth-day. Think, poor ungrateful wretch as you are! how we all used to keep it; and you will not wonder to be told, that we ran away from one another that day. But God give you true penitence, if you have it not already! and it will be true, if it be equal to the shame and the sorrow you have given us all.

Your afflicted sister,
ARABELLA HARLOWE.

Your cousin Morden is every day expected in England. He, as well as others of the family, when he comes to hear what a blessed piece of work you have made of it, will wish you never had had a being.

LETTER CCLXXXVI.

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE.

Sunday, July 30.

You have given me great pleasure, my dear. est friend, by your approbation of my reasonings, and of my resolution founded upon them, never to have Mr Lovelace. This approbation is so right a thing, give me leave to say, from the nature of the case, and from the strict honour and true dignity of mind, which I always admired in my Anna Howe, that I could hardly tell to what, but to my evil destiny, which of late would not let me please anybody, to attri bute the advice you gave me to the contrary.

But let not the ill state of my health, and what that may naturally tend to, sadden you. I have told you, that I will not run away from life, nor avoid the means that may continue it, if God see fit; and if He do not, who shall repine at his will!

If it shall be found that I have not acted unworthy of your love, and of my own character, in my greater trials, that will be a happiness to both on reflection.

The shock which you so earnestly advise me to try to get above, was a shock, the greatest that I could receive. But, my dear, as it was not occasioned by my fault, I hope I am already got above it. I hope I am.

I am more grieved (at times, however) for others, than for myself. And so I ought. For as to myself, I cannot but reflect that I have had an escape, rather than a loss, in missing Mr Lovelace for a husband-even had he not committed the vilest of all outrages.

Let any one, who knows my story, collect his character from his behaviour to me before that outrage; and then judge whether it was in the least probable that such a man should make me happy. But to collect his character from his principles with regard to the sex in general, and from his enterprizes upon many of them, and to consider the cruelty of his nature, and the sport iveness of his invention, together with the high opinion he has of himself, it will not be doubted that a wife of his must have been miserable; and more miserable if she loved him, than she could have been were she to be indifferent to him.

A twelvemonth might very probably have put a period to my life; situated as I was with my friends; persecuted and harassed as I had been by my brother and sister; and my very heart torn in pieces by the wilful, and (as it is now apparent) premeditated suspenses of the man, whose gratitude I wished to engage, and whose protection I was the more entitled to expect, as he had robbed me of every other, and reduced me to an absolute dependence upon himself. In deed I once thought that it was all his view to bring me to this, (as he hated my family,) and uncomfortable enough for me, if it had been all.

Can it be thought, my dear, that my heart was not more than half broken (happy as I was before I knew Mr Lovelace) by such a grievous change in my circumstances?-Indeed it was. Nor perhaps was the wicked violence wanting to have cut short, though possibly not so very short, a life that he has sported with.

Had I been his but a month, he must have possessed the estate on which my relations had set their hearts; the more to their regret, as they hated him as much as he hated them.

Have I not reason, these things considered, to think myself happier without Mr Lovelace than I could have been with him ?-My will too unviolated; and very little, nay, not anything as to him, to reproach myself with?

But with my relations it is otherwise. indeed deserve to be pitied. They are, doubt will long be, unhappy.

They

and no

To judge of their resentments, and of their conduct, we must put ourselves in their situation:-and while they think me more in fault than themselves, (whether my favourers are of their opinion or not,) and have a right to judge for themselves, they ought to have great allowances made for them; my parents especially. They stand at least self-acquitted, (that I cannot;) and the rather, as they can recollect, to their pain, their past indulgences to me, and their unquestionable love.

Your partiality for the friend you so much

value, will not easily let you come into this way of thinking. But only, my dear, be pleased to consider the matter in the following light :

"Here was my мOTHER, one of the most prudent persons of her sex, married into a family, not perhaps so happily tempered as herself; but every one of which she had the address, for a great while, absolutely to govern as she pleased by her directing wisdom, at the same time that they knew not but her prescriptions were the dictates of their own hearts; such a sweet art had she of conquering by seeming to yield. Think, my dear, what must be the pride and the pleasure of such a mother, that in my brother she could give a son to the family she distinguished with their love, not unworthy of their wishes; a daughter, in my sister, of whom she had no reason to be ashamed; and in me a second daughter, whom everybody complimented (such was their partial favour to me) as being the still more immediate likeness of herself! How, self-pleased, could she smile round upon a family she had so blessed! What compliments were paid her upon the example she had given us, which was followed with such hopeful effects! With what a noble confidence could she look upon her dear Mr Harlowe, as a person made happy by her; and he delighted to think that nothing but purity streamed from a fountain so pure!

"Now, my dear, reverse, as I daily do, this charming prospect. See my dear mother, sorrowing in her closet; endeavouring to suppress her sorrow at her table, and in those retirements where sorrow was before a stranger; hanging down her pensive head; smiles no more beaming over her benign aspect; her virtue made to suffer for faults she could not be guilty of; her patience continually tried (because she has more of it than any other) with repetitions of faults she is as much wounded by, as those can be from whom she so often hears of them; taking to herself, as the fountain-head, a taint which only had infected one of the under-currents; afraid to open her lips (were she willing) in my favour, lest it should be thought she has any bias in her own mind to failings that never could have been suspected in her; robbed of that pleasing merit, which the mother of well-nurtured and hopeful children may glory in: every one who visits her, or is visited by her, by dumb show, and looks that mean more than words can express, condoling where they used to congratulate; the affected silence wounding; the compassionating look reminding; the half-suppressed sigh in them, calling up deeper sighs from her; and their averted eyes, while they endeavour to restrain the rising tear, provoking tears from her, that will not be restrained.

"When I consider these things, and, added to these, the pangs that tear in pieces the stronger heart of my FATHER, because it cannot relieve itself by those tears which carry the torturing

grief to the eyes of softer spirits; the overboiling tumults of my impatient and uncontrollable BROTHER, piqued to the heart of his honour, in the fall of a sister, in whom he once gloried; the pride of an ELDER SISTER, who had given unwilling way to the honours paid over her head to one born after her; and lastly, the dishonour I have brought upon two UNCLES, who each contended which should most favour their then happy niece:-When, I say, I reflect upon my fault in these strong, yet just lights, what room can there be to censure anybody but my unhappy self? and how much reason have I to say, If I justify myself, mine own heart shall condemn me: if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse!"

Here permit me to lay down my pen for a few

moments.

You are very obliging to me, intentionally, I know, when you tell me, it is in my power to hasten the day of Mr Hickman's happiness. But yet, give me leave to say, that I admire this kind assurance less than any other paragraph of your letter.

In the first place, you know it is not in my power to say when I can dismiss my physician; and you should not put the celebration of a marriage intended by yourself, and so desirable to your mother, upon so precarious an issue. Nor will I accept of a compliment, which must mean a slight to her.

If anything could give me a relish for life, after what I have suffered, it would be the hopes of the continuance of the more than sisterly love, which has, for years, uninterruptedly bound us together as one mind.-And why, my dear, should you defer giving (by a tie still stronger) another friend to one who has so few?

I am glad you have sent my letter to Miss Montague. I hope I shall hear no more of this unhappy man.

I had begun the particulars of my tragical story; but it is so painful a task, and I have so many more important things to do, and, as I apprehend, so little time to do them in, that, could I avoid it, I would go no farther in it.

Then, to this hour, I know not by what means several of his machinations to ruin me were brought about; so that some parts of my sad story must be defective, if I were to sit down to write it. But I have been thinking of a way that will answer the end wished for by your mother and you full as well, perhaps better.

Mr Lovelace, it seems, has communicated to his friend Mr Belford all that has passed between himself and me, as he went on. Mr Belford has not been able to deny it. So that (as we may observe by the way) a poor young creature, whose indiscretion has given a libertine power over her, has a reason she little thinks of, to regret her folly; since these wretches, who have no more

honour in one point than in another, scruple not to make her weakness a part of their triumph to their brother libertines.

I have nothing to apprehend of this sort, if I have the justice done me in his letters which Mr Belford assures me I have; and therefore the particulars of my story, and the base arts of this vile man, will, I think, be best collected from those very letters of his, (if Mr Belford can be prevailed upon to communicate them ;) to which I dare appeal with the same truth and fervour as he did, who says-O that one would hear me! and that mine adversary had written a book!— Surely, I would take it upon my shoulders, and bind it to me as a crown: for I covered not my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine iniquity in my bosom!

There is one way which may be fallen upon to induce Mr Belford to communicate these letters, since he seems to have (and declares he always had) a sincere abhorrence of his friend's baseness to me; but that you'll say, when you hear it, is a strange one. Nevertheless, I am very earnest upon it at present.

It is no other than this :

I think to make Mr Belford the executor of my last will: [don't be surprised and with this view I permit his visits with the less scruple; and every time I see him, from his concern for me, am more and more inclined to do so. If I hold in the same mind, and if he accept the trust, and will communicate the materials in his power, those, joined with what you can furnish, will answer the whole end.

I know you will start at my notion of such an executor: but pray, my dear, consider, in my present circumstances, what I can do better, as I am empowered to make a will, and have considerable matters in my own disposal.

Your mother, I am sure, would not consent that you should take this office upon you. It might subject Mr Hickman to the insults of that violent man. Mrs Norton cannot, for several reasons respecting herself. My brother looks upon what I ought to have as his right. My uncle Harlowe is already one of my trustees (as my cousin Morden is the other) for the estate my grandfather left me; but you see I could not get from my own family the few guineas I left behind me at Harlowe-Place; and my uncle Antony once threatened to have my grandfather's will controverted. My father?-To be sure, my dear, I could not expect that my father would do all I wish should be done; and a will to be executed by a father for a daughter, (parts of it, perhaps, absolutely against his own judgment,) carries somewhat daring and prescriptive in the