DEAR SISTER,

Wedn. Morn. Sept. 6.

We have just heard that you are exceeding ly ill. We all loved you as never young creature was loved; you are sensible of that, sister Clary. And you have been very naughty-but we could not be angry always.

We are indeed more afflicted with the news of your being so very ill than I can express; for I see not but, after this separation, (as we understand that your misfortune has been greater than your fault, and that, however unhappy, you have demeaned yourself like the good young creature you used to be,) we shall love you better, if possible, than ever.

Take comfort, therefore, sister Clary, and don't be too much cast down-whatever your mortifications may be from such noble prospects over-clouded, and from the reflections you will have from within, on your faulty step, and from the sullying of such a charming character by it, you will receive none from any of us; and, as an earnest of your papa's and mamma's favour and reconciliation, they assure you by me of their blessing and hourly prayers.

If it will be any comfort to you, and my mother finds this letter is received as we expect, (which we shall know by the good effect it will have upon your health,) she will herself go to town to you. Meantime, the good woman you so dearly love will be hastened up to you; and she writes by this opportunity, to acquaint you of it, and of all our returning love.

I hope you will rejoice at this good news. Pray, let us hear that you do. Your next grateful letter on this occasion, especially if it gives us the pleasure of hearing you are better upon this news, will be received with the same (if not greater) delight, than we used to have in all your prettily-penned epistles. Adieu, my dear Clary!

I am,

Your loving sister, and true friend, ARABELLA HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXCII.

TO HIS DEAR NIECE, MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE. Wednesday, Sept. 6.

WE were greatly grieved, my beloved Miss Clary, at your fault; but we are still more, if possible, to hear you are so very ill; and we are sorry things have been carried so far.

We know your talents, my dear, and how movingly you could write, whenever you pleased; so that nobody could ever deny you anything; and, believing you depended on your pen, and little thinking you were so ill, and that you had lived so regular a life, and were so truly penitent, are much troubled every one of us, your brother and all, for being so severe. Forgive my part in it, my dearest Clary. I am your second papa, you know, and you used to love me.

I hope you'll soon be able to come down, and, after a while, when your indulgent parents can spare you, that you will come to me for a whole month, and rejoice my heart, as you used to do. But if, through illness, you cannot so soon come down as we wish, I will go up to you; for I long to see you. I never more longed to see you in my life; and you was always the darling of my heart, you know.

My brother Antony desires his hearty commendations to you, and joins with me in the tenderest assurance, that all shall be well, and, if possible, better than ever; for we now have been so long without you, that we know the miss of you, and even hunger and thirst, as I may say, to see you, and to take you once more to our hearts; whence, indeed, you was never banished so far as our concern for the unhappy step made us think and you believe you were. Your sister and brother both talk of seeing you in town; so does my dear sister, your indulgent mother.

God restore your health, if it be his will; else, I know not what will become of Your truly loving uncle, and second papa, JOHN HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXCIII.

MR BELFORD TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.

Friday Night, Sept. 8, past Ten.

I WILL now take up the account of our proceedings from my letter of last night, which contained the dying words of this incomparable lady.

As soon as we had seen the last scene closed

(so blessedly for herself!) we left the body to the care of the good women, who, according to the orders she had given them that very night, removed her into that last house which she had displayed so much fortitude in providing.

In the morning, between seven and eight o'

clock, according to appointment, the Colonel came to see me here. He was very much indisposed. We went together, accompanied by Mrs Lovick and Mrs Smith, into the deceased's chamber. We could not help taking a view of the lovely corpse, and admiring the charming serenity of her noble aspect. The women declared they never saw death so lovely before; and that she looked as if in an easy slumber, the colour having not quite left her cheeks and lips.

I unlocked the drawer, in which (as I mentioned in a former*) she had deposited her papers. I told you in mine of Monday last, that she had the night before sealed up, with three black seals, a parcel, inscribed, As soon as I am certainly dead, this to be broke open by Mr Belford. I accused myself for not having done it overnight. But really I was then incapable of anything.

I broke it open accordingly, and found in it no less than eleven letters, each sealed with her own seal, and black-wax, one of which was directed to me.

I will enclose a copy of it.

SIR,

TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Sunday Evening, Sept. 3.

I TAKE this last and solemn occasion to repeat to you my thanks for all your kindness to me at a time when I most needed countenance and protection.

A few considerations I beg leave, as now, at your perusal of this, from the dead, to press upon you, with all the warmth of a sincere friendship.

By the time you will see this, you will have had an instance, I humbly trust, of the comfortable importance of a pacified conscience, in the last hours of one, who, to the last hour, will wish your eternal welfare.

The great Duke of Luxemburgh, as I have heard, on his death-bed, declared that he would then much rather have had it to reflect upon, that he had administered a cup of cold water to a worthy poor creature in distress, than that he had won so many battles as he had triumphed for. And, as one well observes, All the sentiments of worldly grandeur vanish at that unavoidable moment which decides the destiny of

men.

If then, sir, at the tremendous hour it be thus with the conquerors of armies, and the subduers of nations, let me in a very few words (many are not needed,) ask, What, at that period, must be the reflections of those, (if capable of reflection,) who have lived a life of sense and offence; whose study and whose pride most ingloriously have

been to seduce the innocent, and to ruin the weak, the unguarded, and the friendless; made still more friendless by their base seductions ?O Mr Belford, weigh, ponder, and reflect upon it, now that, in health, and in vigour of mind and body, the reflections will most avail youwhat an ungrateful, what an unmanly, what a meaner than reptile pride is this!

In the next place, sir, let me beg of you, for my sake, who Aм, or, as now you will best read it, have been, driven to the necessity of applying to you to be the executor of my will, that you will bear, according to that generosity which I think to be in you, with all my friends, and particularly with my brother, (who is really a worthy young man, but perhaps a little too headstrong in his first resentments and conceptions of things,) if anything, by reason of this trust, should fall out disagreeably; and that you will study to make peace, and to reconcile all parties; and more especially, that you, who seem to have a great influence upon your still more headstrong friend, will interpose, if occasion be, to prevent farther mischief-for surely, sir, that violent spirit may sit down satisfied with the evils he has already wrought; and, particularly, with the wrongs, the heinous and ignoble wrongs, he has in me done to my family, wounded in the tenderest part of its honour.

For your compliance with this request I have already your repeated promise. I claim the observance of it, therefore, as a debt from you; and though I hope I need not doubt it, yet was I willing, on this solemn, this last occasion, thus earnestly to re-enforce it.

I have another request to make to you; it is only, that you will be pleased, by a particular messenger, to forward the enclosed letters, as directed.

And now, sir, having the presumption to think that an useful member is lost to society by means of the unhappy step which has brought my life so soon to its period, let me hope that I may be a humble instrument, in the hands of Providence, to reform a man of your abilities; and then I shall think that loss will be more abundantly repaired to the world, while it will be, by God's goodness, my gain; and I shall have this farther hope, that once more I shall have an opportunity, in a blessed eternity, to thank you, as I now repeatedly do, for the good you have done to, and the trouble you have taken for, sir, Your obliged servant, CLARISSA HARLOWE.

THE other letters are directed to her father, to her mother, one to her two uncles, to her brother, to her sister, to her aunt Hervey, to her cousin Morden, to Miss Howe, to Mrs Norton, and, lastly, one to you, in performance of her

promise, that a letter should be sent you when she arrived at her father's house!I will withhold this last till I can be assured that you will be fitter to receive it than Tourville tells me you are at present.

Copies of all these are sealed up, and entitled, Copies of my ten posthumous letters, for J. Belford, Esq.; and put in among the bundle of papers left to my direction, which I have not yet had leisure to open.

No wonder, while able, that she was always writing, since thus only of late could she employ that time, which heretofore, from the long days she made, caused so many beautiful works to spring from her fingers. It is my opinion, that there never was a woman so young, who wrote so much, and with such celerity. Her thoughts keeping pace, as I have seen, with her pen, she hardly ever stopped or hesitated; and very seldom blotted out, or altered. It was a natural talent she was mistress of, among many other extraordinary ones. I gave the Colonel his letter, and ordered Harry instantly to get ready to carry the others. Meantime (retiring into the next apartment) we opened the will. We were both so much affected in perusing it, that at one time the Colonel, breaking off, gave it to me to read on; at another I gave it back to him to proceed with; neither of us being able to read it through without such tokens of sensibility as affected the voices of each.

Mrs Lovick, Mrs Smith, and her nurse, were still more touched, when we read those articles in which they are respectively remembered; but I will avoid mentioning the particulars, (except in what relates to the thread of my narration,) as in proper time I shall send you a copy of it. The Colonel told me, he was ready to account with me for the money and bills he had brought up from Harlowe-Place; which would enable me, as he said, directly to execute the legacy parts of the will; and he would needs at that instant force into my hands a paper relating to that subject. I put it into my pocket-book, without looking into it; telling him, that as I hoped he would do all in his power to promote a literal performance of the will, I must beg his advice and assistance in the execution of it.

Her request to be buried with her ancestors, made a letter of the following import necessary, which I prevailed upon the Colonel to write; being unwilling myself (so early at least,) to appear officious in the eye of a family which probably wishes not any communication with me.

TO JAMES HARLOWE, JUN. ESQ.

SIR, THE letter which the bearer of this brings with him, will, I presume, make it unnecessary to acquaint you and my cousins with the death of the most excellent of women. But I am re

quested by her executor, who will soon send you a copy of her last will, to acquaint her father (which I choose to do by your means,) that in it she earnestly desires to be laid in the familyvault, at the feet of her grandfather.

If her father will not admit of it, she has directed her body to be buried in the churchyard of the parish where she died.

I need not tell you, that a speedy answer to this is necessary.

Her beatification commenced yesterday afternoon, exactly at forty minutes after six. I can write no more, than that I am Yours, &c.

Friday Morn. Sept. 8.

WM. MORDEN.

By the time this was written, and by the Colonel's leave transcribed, Harry came booted and spurred, his horse at the door; and I delivered him the letters to the family, with those to Mrs Norton and Miss Howe, (eight in all,) together with the above of the Colonel to Mr James Harlowe; and gave him orders to use the utmost dispatch with them.

The Colonel and I have bespoke mourning for ourselves and servants.

LETTER CCCXCIV.

MR BELFORD TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.

Sat. Ten o'clock. POOR Mrs Norton is come. She was set down at the door; and would have gone up stairs directly. But Mrs Smith and Mrs Lovick being together and in tears, and the former hinting too suddenly to the truly-venerable woman the fatal news, she sunk down at her feet in fits; so that they were forced to breath a vein to bring her to herself, and to a capacity of exclamation; and then she ran on to Mrs Lovick and me, who entered just as she recovered, in praise of the lady, in lamentations for her, and invectives against you; but yet so circumscribed were her invectives, that I could observe in them the woman well educated, and in her lamentations the passion christianized, as I may say.

She was impatient to see the corpse. The women went up with her. But they owned that they were too much affected themselves on this occasion to describe her extremely-affecting behaviour.

With trembling impatience she pushed aside the coffin-lid. She bathed the face with her tears, and kissed her cheeks and forehead, as if she were living. It was she indeed! she said; her sweet young lady! her very self! Nor had death, which changed all things, a power to alter her lovely features! She admired the serenity of her aspect. She no doubt was happy, she said, as she had written to her she should be; but

how many miserable creatures had she left behind her! The good woman lamenting that she herself had lived to be one of them.

It was with difficulty they prevailed upon her to quit the corpse; and when they went into the next apartment, I joined them, and acquainted her with the kind legacy her beloved young lady had left her; but this rather augmented than diminished her concern. She ought, she said, to have attended her in person. What was the world to her, wringing her hands, now the child of her bosom, and of her heart, was no more! Her principal consolation, however, was, that she should not long survive her. She hoped, she said, that she did not sin, in wishing she might not.

It was easy to observe, by the similitude of sentiments shewn in this and other particulars, that the divine lady owed to this excellent woman many of her good notions.

I thought it would divert the poor gentlewoman, and not altogether unsuitably, if I were to put her upon furnishing mourning for herself; as it would rouse her, by a seasonable and necessary employment, from that dismal lethargy of grief, which generally succeeds the too violent anguish with which a gentle nature is accustomed to be torn upon the first communication of the unexpected loss of a dear friend. I gave her, therefore, the thirty guineas bequeathed to her and to her son for mourning; the only mourning which the testatrix has mentioned; and desired her to lose no time in preparing her own, as I doubted not she would accompany the corpse, if it were permitted to be carried down. The Colonel proposes to attend the hearse, if his kindred give him not fresh cause of displeasure; and will take with him a copy of the will. And being intent to give the family some favourable impressions of me, he desired me to permit him to take with him the copy of the posthumous letter to me; which I readily granted. He is so kind as to promise me a minute account of all that shall pass on the melancholy occasion. And we have begun a friendship and settled a correspondence, which but one incident can possibly happen to interrupt to the end of our lives. And that I hope will not happen.

But what must be the grief, the remorse, that will seize upon the hearts of this hitherto inexorable family, on the receiving of the posthumous letters, and that of the Colonel apprizing them of what has happened! I have given requisite orders to an undertaker, on the supposition that the body will be permitted to be carried down; and the women intend to fill the coffin with aromatic herbs.

The Colonel has obliged me to take the bills and draughts which he brought up with him, for the considerable sums accrued since the grandfather's death from the lady's estate.

I could have shewn to Mrs Norton the copies of the two letters which she missed by coming

up. But her grief wants not the heightenings which the reading of them would have given her.

I HAVE been dipping into the copies of the posthumous letters to the family, which Harry has carried down. Well may I call this lady divine. They are all calculated to give comfort rather than reproach, though their cruelty to her merited nothing but reproach. But were I in any of their places, how much rather had I, that she had quitted scores with me by the most severe recriminations, than that she should thus nobly triumph over me by a generosity that has no example! I will enclose some of them, which I desire you to return as soon as you can.

LETTER CCCXCV.

TO THE EVER-HONOURED JAS. HARLOWE, SEN.

MOST DEAR SIR,

ESQ.

WITH exulting confidence now does your emboldened daughter come into your awful presence by these lines, who dared not, but upon this occasion, to look up to you with hopes of favour and forgiveness; since, when this comes to your hands, it will be out of her power ever to offend you more.

And now let me bless you, my honoured papa, and bless you, as I write, upon my knees, for all the benefits I have received from your indulgence; for your fond love to me in the days of my prattling innocence; for the virtuous education you gave me; and for, the crown of all, the happy end, which, through divine grace, by means of that virtuous education, I hope, by the time you will receive this, I shall have made. And let me beg of you, dear, venerable sir, to blot from your remembrance, if possible, the last unhappy eight months; and then I shall hope to be remembered with advantage for the pleasure you had the goodness to take in your Clarissa.

Still on her knees, let your poor penitent implore your forgiveness of all her faults and follies; more especially of that fatal error which threw her out of your protection.

When you know, sir, that I have never been faulty in my will; that ever since my calamity became irretrievable, I have been in a state of preparation; that I have the strongest assurance that the Almighty has accepted my unfeigned repentance; and that by this time you will (as I humbly presume to hope,) have been the means of adding one to the number of the blessed; you will have reason, for joy rather than sorrow. Since, had I escaped the snares by which I was entangled, I might have wanted those exercises

which I look upon now as so many mercies dispensed to wean me betimes from a world that presented itself to me with prospects too alluring; and in that case (too easily satisfied with worldly felicity) I might not have attained to that blessedness, in which now, on your reading of this, I humbly presume, (through the divine goodness,) I am rejoicing.

That the Almighty, in his own good time, will bring you, sir, and my ever-honoured mother, after a series of earthly felicities, of which may my unhappy fault be the only interruption, (and very grievous I know that must have been,) to rejoice in the same blessed state, is the repeated prayer of, sir,

Your now happy daughter,

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXCVI.

TO THE EVER-HONOURED MRS HARLOWE.

HONOURED MADAM,

THE last time I had the boldness to write to you, it was with all the consciousness of a selfconvicted criminal, supplicating her offended judge for mercy and pardon. I now, by these lines, approach you with more assurance; but nevertheless with the highest degree of reverence, gratitude, and duty. The reason of my assurance, my letter to my papa will give; and as I humbly on my knees implored his pardon, so now, in the same dutiful manner, do I supplicate yours, for the grief and trouble I have given you.

Every vein of my heart has bled for an unhappy rashness; which, (although involuntary as to the act,) from the moment it was committed, carried with it its own punishment; and was accompanied with a true and sincere peni

comforts, of my papa!-May my sister's continued, and, if possible, augmented duty, happily make up to you the loss you have sustained in me! And whenever my brother and she change their single state, may it be with such satisfaction to you both as may make you forget my offence; and remember me only in those days in which you took pleasure in me! And, at last, may a happy meeting with your forgiven penitent, in the eternal mansions, augment the bliss of her, who, purified by sufferings already, when this salutes your hands, presumes she shall be The happy and for ever happy

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER CCCXCVII.

TO JAMES HARLOWE, JUN. ESQ.
SIR,

THERE was but one time, but one occasion, after the rash step I was precipitated upon, that I could hope to be excused looking up to you in the character of a brother and a friend. And NOW is that time, and THIS the occasion. NOW, at reading this, will you pity your late unhappy sister! NOW will you forgive her faults, both supposed and real! And NOW will you afford to her memory that kind concern which you refused to her before!

I write, my brother, in the first place, to beg your pardon for the offence my unhappy step gave to you, and to the rest of a family so dear

to me.

Virgin purity should not so behave as to be suspected; yet, when you come to know all my story, you will find farther room for pity, if not for more than pity, for your late unhappy sister!

O that passion had not been deaf! That misconception would have given way to inquiry! That your rigorous heart, if it could not itself be softened (moderating the power you had obtained over every one) had permitted other hearts more indulgently to expand!

But I write not to give pain. I had rather you should think me faulty still, than take to yourself the consequence that will follow from acquitting me.

Abandoning therefore a subject which I had not intended to touch upon, (for I hope, at the writing of this, I am above the spirit of recrimination,) let me tell you, sir, that my next motive for writing to you in this last and most solemn manner, is, to beg of you to forego any active resentments (which may endanger a life so precious to all your friends) against the man to whose elaborate baseness I owe my worldly ruin.

For ought an innocent man to run an equal risk with a guilty one?-A more than equa risk, as the guilty one has been long inured to