as I began, and add more preachment to your lively subject, if I had not written more than enough upon it already.

I wish you would let me give you and Mr Hickman joy. Do, my dear. I should take some to myself, if you would.

My respectful compliments to all your friends, as well to those I have the honour to know, as to those I do not know.

I HAVE just now been surprised with a letter from one whom I long ago gave up all thoughts of hearing from.-From Mr Wyerley. I will enclose it. You'll be surprised at it as much as I was. This seems to be a man whom I might have reclaimed. But I could not love him. Yet I hope I never treated him with arrogance. Indeed, my dear, if I am not too partial to myself, I think I refused him with more gentleness, than you retain somebody else. And this recollection gives me less pain than I should have had in the other case, on receiving this instance of a generosity that affects me. I will also enclose the rough draught of my answer, as soon as I have transcribed it.

If I begin another sheet, I shall write to the end of it; wherefore, I will only add my prayers for your honour and prosperity, and for a long, long, happy life; and that, when it comes to be wound up, you may be as calm and as easy at quitting it, as I hope in God I shall be. I am, and will be, to the latest moment, Your truly affectionate and obliged servant, CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXLIV.

MR WYERLEY TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE.

Wednesday, Aug. 23.

DEAREST MADAM, You will be surprised to find renewed, at this distance of time, an address so positively, though so politely discouraged; but, however it may be received, I must renew it. Everybody has heard that you have been vilely treated by a man who, to treat you ill, must be the vilest of men. Every body knows your just resentment of his base treatment; that you are determined never to be reconciled to him; and that you persist in these sentiments against all the entreaties of his noble relations, against all the prayers and repentance of his ignoble self. And all the world that have the honour to know you, or have heard of him, applaud your resolution, as worthy of yourself; worthy of your virtue, and of that strict honour which was always attributed to you by every one who spoke of you.

But, madam, were all the world to have been

of a different opinion, it could never have altered mine. I ever loved you; I ever must love you. Yet have I endeavoured to resign to my hard fate. When I had so many ways, in vain, sought to move you in my favour, I sat down seemingly contented. I even wrote to you that I would sit down contented. And I endeavoured to make all my friends and companions think I But nobody knows what pangs this selfdenial cost me! In vain did the chase, in vain did travel, in vain did lively company, offer themselves, and were embraced in their turn; with redoubled force did my passion for you renew my unhappiness, when I looked into myself, into my own heart; for there did your charming image sit enthroned; and you engrossed me all.

was.

I truly deplore those misfortunes, and those sufferings, for your own sake; which, nevertheless, encourage me to renew my bold hope. I know not particulars. I dare not inquire after them; because my sufferings would be increased with the knowledge of what yours have been. I therefore desire not to know more than what common report wounds my ears with; and what is given me to know, by your absence from your cruel family, and from the sacred place, where I, among numbers of your rejected admirers, used to be twice a-week sure to behold you doing credit to that service of which your example gave me the highest notions. But whatever be those misfortunes, of whatsoever nature those sufferings, I shall bless the occasion for my own sake (though for yours curse the author of them,) if they may give me the happiness to know that this my renewed address may not be absolutely rejected.-Only give me hope, that it may one day meet with encouragement, if in the interim nothing happen, either in my morals or behaviour, to give you fresh offence. Give me but hope of this-not absolutely to reject me, is all the hope I ask for ; and I will love you, if possible, still more than I ever loved you-and that for your sufferings; for well you deserve to be loved, even to adoration, who can, for honour's and for virtue's sake, subdue a passion which common spirits [I speak by cruel experience] find invincible; and this at a time when the black offender kneels and supplicates, as I am well assured he does, (all his friends likewise supplicating for him,) to be forgiven.

That you cannot forgive, not forgive him so as to receive him again to favour, is no wonder. His offence is against virtue; this is a part of your essence. What magnanimity is this! How just to yourself, and to your spotless character! Is it any merit to admire more than ever a lady who can so exaltedly distinguish? It is not. I cannot plead it.

What hope have I left, may it be said, when my address was before rejected, now, that your

sufferings, so nobly borne, have, with all good judges, exalted your character? Yet, madam, I have to pride myself in this, that, while your friends (not looking upon you in the just light I do) persecute and banish you; while your estate is withheld from you, and threatened (as I know) to be withheld, as long as the chicaning law, or rather the chicaneries of its practisers, can keep it from you; while you are destitute of protection; everybody standing aloof, either through fear of the injurer of one family, or of the hard-hearted of the other;-I pride myself, I say, to stand forth, and offer my fortune, and my life, at your devotion. With a selfish hope indeed; I should be too great an hypocrite not to own this! and I know how much you abhor insincerity.

But, whether you encourage that hope or not, accept my best services, I beseech you, madam; and be pleased to excuse me for a piece of honest art, which the nature of the case (doubting the honour of your notice otherwise) makes me choose to conclude with-it is this:

If I am to be still the most unhappy of men, let your pen by one line tell me so. If I am permitted to indulge a hope, however distant, your silence shall be deemed, by me, the happiest indication of it that you can give-except that still happier-(the happiest that can befal me,) a signification that you will accept the tender of that life and fortune, which it would be my pride and my glory to sacrifice in your service, leaving the reward to yourself.

Be your determination as it may, I must for ever admire and love you. Nor will I ever change my condition, while you live, whether you change yours or not; for, having once had the presumption to address you, I cannot stoop to think of any other woman; and this I solemnly declare in the presence of that God, whom I daily pray to bless and protect you, be your determination what it will with regard to, dear est madam,

Your most devoted, and ever affectionate and faithful servant, ALEXANDER WYERLEY.

When that was not permitted me, and I looked round upon the several gentlemen who had been proposed to me, and had reason to believe that there was not one of them against whose morals or principles there lay not some exception, it would not have been much to be wondered at, if FANCY had been allowed to give a preference, where JUDGMENT was at a loss to determine.

Far be it from me to say this with a design to upbraid you, sir, or to reflect upon you. I always wished you well. You had reason to think I did. You had the generosity to be pleased with the frankness of my behaviour to you, as I had with that of yours to me; and I am sorry, very sorry, to be now told that the acquiescence you obliged me with, gave you so much pain.

Had the option I have mentioned been allowed me afterwards, (as I not only wished, but proposed,) things had not happened that did happen. But there was a kind of fatality by which our whole family was impelled, as I may say, and which none of us were permitted to avoid. But this is a subject that cannot be dwelt upon.

As matters are, I have only to wish, for your own sake, that you will encourage and cultivate those good motions in your mind, to which many passages in your kind and generous letter now before me must be owing. Depend upon it, sir, that such motions, wrought into habit, will yield you pleasure at a time when nothing else can; and at present, shining out in your actions and conversation, will commend you to the worthiest of our sex. For, sir, the man who is good upon choice, as well as by education, has that quality in himself which ennobles the human race, and without which, the most dignified by birth or rank are ignoble.

As to the resolution you solemnly make not to marry while I live, I should be concerned at it, were I not morally sure that you may keep it, and yet not to be detrimented by it, since a few, a very few days, will convince you that I am got above all human dependence, and that there is no need of that protection and favour which you so generously offer to, sir, Your obliged well-wisher,

and humble servant,
CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXLVI.

MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Monday Noon, Aug. 28. ABOUT the time of poor Belton's interment last night, as near as we could guess, Lord M., Mowbray, and myself, toasted once, To the memory of honest Tom Belton; and, by a quick transition to the living, Health to Miss Har

But what is the meaning I hear nothing from thee? And why dost thou not let me into the grounds of the sudden reconciliation between my beloved and her friends, and the cause of the generous invitation which she gives me of attending her at her father's some time hence?

Thou must certainly have been let into the secret by this time; and, I can tell thee, I shall be plaguy jealous if there be any one thing pass between my angel and thee that is to be concealed from me. For either I am a principal in this cause, or I am nothing.

I have dispatched Will to know the reason of thy neglect.

But let me whisper a word or two in thy ear. I begin to be afraid, after all, that this letter was a stratagem to get me out of town, and for nothing else; for, in the first place, Tourville, in a letter I received this morning, tells me, that the lady is actually very ill! [I am sorry for it, with all my soul! This, thou'lt say, I may think a reason why she cannot set out as yet; but then I have heard, on the other hand, but last night, that the family is as implacable as ever; and my lord and I expect this very afternoon a visit from Colonel Morden, who undertakes, it seems, to question me as to my intention with regard to his cousin.

This convinces me, that, if she has apprized her friends of my offers to her, they will not believe me to be in earnest, till they are assured that I am so from my own mouth. But then I understand that the intended visit is an officiousness of Morden's own, without the desire of any of her friends.

Now, Jack, what can a man make of all this? My intelligence as to the continuance of her family's implacableness, is not to be doubted; and yet, when I read her letter, what can one say? Surely, the dear little rogue will not lie!

I never knew her dispense with her word but once, and that was, when she promised to forgive me after the dreadful fire that had like to have happened at our mother's, and yet would not see me the next day, and afterwards made her escape to Hampstead, in order to avoid forgiving me; and as she severely smarted for this departure from her honour given, (for it is a sad thing for good people to break their word when it is in their power to keep it,) one would not expect that she should set about deceiving again, more especially by the premeditation of

writing. Thou, perhaps, wilt ask, what honest man is obliged to keep his promise with a highwayman? for well I know thy unmannerly way of making comparisons; but I say, every honest man is--and I will give thee an illustration.

Here is a marauding varlet, who demands your money, with a pistol at your breast. You have neither money nor valuable effects about you, and promise solemnly, if he will spare your life, that you will send him an agreed-upon sum, by such a day, to such a place.

The question is, if your life is not in the fellow's power?

How he came by the power, is another question, for which he must answer with his life when caught so he runs risk for risk.

Now, if he give you your life, does he not give, think you, a valuable consideration for the money you engage your honour to send him? If not, the sum must be exorbitant, or your life is a very paltry one, even in your own opinion.

I need not make the application, and I am sure that even thou thyself, who never sparest me, and thinkcst thou knowest my heart by thy own, canst not possibly put the case in a stronger light against me.

Then, why do good people take upon themselves to censure, as they do, persons less scrupulous than themselves? Is it not because the latter allow themselves in any liberty, in order to carry a point? And can my not doing my duty, warrant another for not doing his ?Thou wilt not say it can.

And how would it sound, to put the case as strongly once more, as my greatest enemy would put it, both as to fact and in words-here has that profligate wretch Lovelace broken his vow with, and deceived, Miss Clarissa Harlowe.A vile fellow! would an enemy say, but it is like him. But when it comes to be said that the pious Clarissa has broken her word with, and deceived Lovelace; Good Lord! would every one say; sure it cannot be !

Upon my soul, Jack, such is the veneration I have for this admirable woman, that I am shocked barely at putting the case, and so wilt thou, if thou respectest her as thou oughtest; for thou knowest that men and women, all the world over, form their opinions of one another by each person's professions and known practices. In, this lady, therefore, it would be as unpardonable to tell a wilful untruth, as it would be strange if I kept my word-in love cases, I mean; for, as to the rest, I am an honest, moral man, as all who know me can testify.

And what, after all, would this lady deserve, if she has deceived me in this case? For, did she not set me prancing away, upon Lord M.'s

best nag, to Lady Sarah's, and to Lady Betty's, with an erect and triumphing countenance, to shew them her letter to me?

And let me tell thee, that I have received their congratulations upon it: Well, and now, cousin Lovelace, cries one; Well, and now, cousin Lovelace, cries t'other, I hope you will make the best of husbands to so excellent and so forgiving a lady!—And now we shall soon have the pleasure of looking upon you as a reformed man, added one! And now we shall see you in the way we have so long wished you to be in, cried out the other!

My cousins Montague also have been ever since rejoicing in the new relationship. Their charming cousin, and their lovely cousin, at every word! And how dearly they will love her! What lessons they will take from her! And yet Charlotte, who pretends to have the eye of an eagle, was for finding out some mystery in the style and manner, till I overbore her, and laughed her out of it.

As for Lord M., he has been in hourly expectation of being sent to with proposals of one sort or other, from the Harlowes; and still we have it, that such proposals will be made by Colonel Morden when he comes, and that the Harlowes only put on a face of irreconcilableness, till they know the issue of Morden's visit, in order to make the better terms with us.

Indeed, if I had not undoubted reason, as I said, to believe the continuance of their antipathy to me, and implacableness to her, I should be apt to think there might be some foundation for my lord's conjecture, for there is a cursed deal of low cunning in all that family, except in the angel of it, who has so much generosity of soul, that she despises cunning, both name and thing.

What I mean by all this, is, to let thee see what a stupid figure I shall make to all my own family, if my Clarissa has been capable, as Gulliver in his abominable Yahoo story phrases it, of saying the thing that is not. By my soul, Jack, if it were only that I should be outwitted by such a novice at plotting, and that it would make me look silly to my kinswomen here, who know I value myself upon my contrivances, it would vex me to the heart, and I would instantly clap a feather-bed into a coach-and-six, and fetch her away, sick or well, and marry her at my leisure.

But Colonel Morden is come, and I must break off.

LETTER CCCLXVII.

MR BELFORD TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.

Monday Night, Aug. 28.

I DOUBT You will be all impatience that you have not heard from me since mine of Thurs

day last. You would be still more so, if you knew that I had by me a letter ready written.

I went early yesterday morning to Epsom, and found everything disposed according to the directions I had left on Friday, and at night the solemn office was performed. Tourville was there, and behaved very decently, and with greater concern than I thought he would ever have expressed for anybody.

Thomasine, they told me, in a kind of disguise, was in an obscure pew, out of curiosity (for it seems she was far from shewing any tokens of grief) to see the last office performed for the man whose heart she had so largely contributed to break.

I was obliged to stay till this afternoon, to settle several necessary matters, and to direct inventories to be taken, in order for appraisement, for everything is to be turned into money, by his will. I presented his sister with the hundred guineas the poor man left me as his executor, and desired her to continue in the house, and take the direction of everything, till I could hear from his nephew at Antigua, who is heir at law. He had left her but fifty pounds, although he knew her indigence, and that it was owing to a vile husband, and not to herself, that she was indigent.

The poor man left about two hundred pounds in money, and two hundred pounds in two EastIndia bonds; and I will contrive, if I can, to make up the poor woman's fifty pounds, and my hundred guineas, two hundred pounds to her, and then she will have some little matter coming in certain, which I will oblige her to keep out of the hands of a son, who has completed that ruin which his father had very nearly effected.

I gave Tourville his twenty pounds, and will send you and Mowbray yours by the first order. And so much for poor Belton's affairs till I see you.

I got to town in the evening, and went directly to Smith's. I found Mrs Lovick and Mrs Smith in the back-shop, and I saw they had been both in tears. They rejoiced to see me, however, and told me that the doctor and Mr Goddard were but just gone, as was also the worthy clergyman, who often comes to pray by her, and all three were of opinion that she would hardly live to see the entrance of another week. I was not so much surprised as grieved, for I had feared as much when I left her on Saturday. I sent up my compliments, and she returned, that she would take it for a favour if I would call upon her in the morning by eight o'clock. Mrs Lovick told me that she had fainted away on Saturday, while she was writing, as she had done likewise the day before; and having received benefit then by a little turn in a chair, she was carried abroad again. She returned somewhat better, and wrote till late, yet had a pretty good night, and went to Covent-Garden

Church in the morning, but came home so ill that she was obliged to lie down.

When she arose, seeing how much grieved Mrs Lovick and Mrs Smith were for her, she made apologies for the trouble she gave them You were happy, said she, before I came hither. It was a cruel thing in me to come among honest strangers, and to be sick, and die with

you.

When they touched upon the irreconcilableness of her friends, I have had ill offices done me to them, said she, and they do not know how ill I am, nor will they believe anything I should write. But yet I cannot sometimes forbear thinking it a little hard, that, out of so many near and dear friends as I have living, not one of them will vouchsafe to look upon me. No old servant, no old friend, proceeded she, to be permitted to come near me, without being sure of incurring displeasure! And to have such a great work to go through by myself, a young creature as I am, and to have everything to think of as to my temporal matters, and to order, to my very interment! No dear mother, said the sweet sufferer, to pray by me and bless me !-No kind sister to sooth and comfort me !-But come, recollected she, how do I know but all is for the best, if I can but make a right use of my discomforts?-Pray for me, Mrs Lovick-pray for me, Mrs Smith, that I may-I have great need of your prayers.-This cruel man has discomposed me. His persecutions have given me a pain just here, putting her hand to her heart.] What a step has he made me take to avoid him! Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled? He has made a bad spirit take possession of me, I think-broken in upon all my duties-and will not yet, I doubt, let me be at rest. Indeed he is very cruel-but this is one of my trials, I believe. By God's grace, I shall be easier to-morrow, and especially if I have no more of his tormentings, and if I can get a tolerable night. And I will sit up till eleven, that I may.

She said, that, though this was so heavy a day with her, she was at other times, within these few days past especially, blessed with bright hours; and particularly that she had now and then such joyful assurances, (which she hoped were not presumptuous ones,) that God would receive her to his mercy, that she could hardly contain herself, and was ready to think herself above this earth while she was in it.And what, inferred she to Mrs Lovick, must be the state itself, the very aspirations after which have often cast a beamy light through the thickest darkness, and, when I have been at the lowest ebb, have dispelled the black clouds of despondency?-As I hope they soon will this spirit of repining.

She had a pretty good night, it seems, and

this morning went in a chair to St Dunstan's Church.

The chairmen told Mrs Smith, that after prayers (for she did not return till between nine and ten) they carried her to a house in FleetStreet, whither they never waited on her before. And where dost think this was?-Why, to an undertaker's!-Good Heaven!-What a woman is this! She went into the back-shop, and talked with the master of it about half an hour, and came from him with great serenity, he waiting upon her to her chair with a respectful countenance, but full of curiosity and seri

ousness.

'Tis evident that she then went to bespeak her house that she talked of.* As soon as you can, sir, were her words to him as she got into the chair. Mr Smith told me this with the same surprise and grief that I heard it.

She was very ill in the afternoon, having got cold either at St Dunstan's or at chapel, and sent for the clergyman to pray by her; and the women, unknown to her, sent both for Dr H. and Mr Goddard, who were just gone, as I told you, when I came to pay my respects to her this evening.

And thus have I recounted from the good women what passed to this night, since my ab

I WAS at Smith's at half an hour after seven. They told me that the lady was gone in a chair to St Dunstan's, but was better than she had been in either of the two preceding days, and that she said to Mrs Lovick and Mrs Smith, as she went into the chair, I have a good deal to answer for to you, my good friends, for my vapourish conversation of last night.

If, Mrs Lovick, said she, smiling, I have no new matters to discompose me, I believe my spirits will hold out purely.

She returned immediately after prayers.

Mr Belford, said she, as she entered the backshop where I was, (and upon my approaching her,) I am very glad to see you. You have been performing for your poor friend a kind last office. 'Tis not long ago since you did the same for a near relation. Is it not a little bard upon you, that these troubles should fall so thick to your lot? But they are charitable offices, and it is a praise to your humanity, that poor dying people know not where to choose so well.

I told her I was sorry to hear she had been so ill since I had the honour to attend her, but rejoiced to find that now she seemed a good deal better.