I have been in town for this week past, to get help, if I could, from my paralytic complaints; and am in a course for them; which, nevertheless, did not prevent me from making the desired inquiries. This is the result.

You may have a first floor, well furnished, at a mercer's in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, with conveniences for servants; and these either by the quarter or month. The terms according to the conveniences required.

Mrs Doleman has seen lodgings in Norfolk Street and others in Cecil Street; but though the prospects to the Thames and Surrey hills look inviting from both these streets, yet I suppose they are too near the city.

The owner of those in Norfolk Street would have half the house go together. It would be too much for your description therefore; and I suppose, that when you think fit to declare your marriage, you will hardly be in lodgings.

Those in Cecil Street are neat and convenient. The owner is a widow of a good character, and she insists, that you take them for a twelvemonth certain.

You may have good accommodations in Dover Street, at a widow's, the relict of an officer in the guards, who, dying soon after he had purchased his commission, (to which he had a good title by service, and which cost him most part of what he had,) she was obliged to let lodgings.

This may possibly be an objection; but she is very careful, she says, that she takes no lodgers but of figure and reputation. She rents two good houses, distant from each other, only joined by a large handsome passage. The inner-house is the genteelest, and very elegantly furnished; but you may have the use of a very handsome parlour in the outer-house, if you choose to look into the street.

A little garden belongs to the inner-house, in which the old gentlewoman has displayed a true

female fancy, having crammed it with vases, flower-pots, and figures, without number.

As these lodgings seemed to me the most likely to please you, I was more particular in my inquiries about them. The apartments she has to let are in the inner-house; they are a diningroom, two neat parlours, a withdrawing room, two or three handsome bed-chambers, one with a pretty light closet in it, which looks into the little garden, all furnished in taste.

A dignified clergyman, his wife, and maiden daughter, were the last who lived in them. They have but lately quitted them, on his being presented to a considerable church preferment in Ireland. The gentlewoman says, that he took the lodgings but for three months certain, but liked them and her usage so well, that he continued in them two years, and left them with regret, though on so good an account. She bragged, that this was the way of all the lodgers she ever had, who staid with her four times as long as they at first intended.

I had some knowledge of the colonel, who was always looked upon as a man of honour. His relict I never saw before. I think she has a masculine air, and is a little forbidding at first ; but when I saw her behaviour to two agreeable maiden gentlewomen, her husband's nieces, whom, for that reason, she calls doubly hers, and heard their praises of her, I could impute her very bulk to good humour; since we seldom see your sour peevish people plump. She lives reputably, and is, as I find, aforehand in the world.

If these, or any other of the lodgings I have mentioned, be not altogether to your lady's mind, she may continue in them the less while, and choose others for herself.

The widow consents that you shall take them for a month only, and what of them you please. The terms, she says, she will not fall out upon, when she knows what your lady expects, and what her servants are to do, or yours will undertake; for she observed that servants are generally worse to deal with than their masters or mistresses.

The lady may board or not as she pleases. As we suppose you married, but that you have reason, from family differences, to keep it private for the present, I thought it not amiss to hint as much to the widow, (but as uncertainty, however;) and asked her, if she could, in that case, accommodate you and your servants, as well as the lady and hers? She said, she could; and wished, by all means, it were to be so; since the circumstance of a person's being single, if not as well recommended as this lady, was one of her usual exceptions.

If none of these lodgings please, you need not doubt very handsome ones in or near Hanover Square, Soho Square, Golden Square, or in some of the new streets about Grosvenor Square; and

Mrs Doleman, her sister, and myself, most cordially join to offer to your good lady the best accommodations we can make for her at Uxbridge, (and also for you, if you are the happy man we wish you to be,) till she fits herself more to her mind.

Let me add, that the lodgings at the mercer's, those in Cecil Street, those at the widow's in Dover Street, any of them may be entered upon at a day's warning.

I am, my dear Sir, Your sincere and affectionate friend and servant, THO. DOLEMAN.

You will easily guess, my dear, when you have read the letter, which lodgings I made choice of. But first, to try him, (as in so material a point I thought I could not be too circumspect,) I seemed to prefer those in Norfolk Street, for the very reason the writer gives why he thought I would not; that is to say, for its neighbourhood to a city so well governed as London is said to be. Nor should I have disliked a lodging in the heart of it, having heard but indifferent accounts of the liberties sometimes taken at the other end of the town.Then seeming to incline to the lodgings in Cecil Street-Then to the mercer's. But he made no visible preference; and when I asked his opinion as to the widow-gentlewoman's, he said he thought those the most to my taste and convenience; but as he hoped that I would think lodgings necessary but for a very little while, he knew not which to give his vote for.

I then fixed upon the widow's; and he has written accordingly to Mr Doleman, making my compliments to his lady and sister for their kind

offer.

I am to have the dining-room, the bed-chamber with the light closet, (of which, if I stay any time at the widow's, I shall make great use,) and a servant's room; and we propose to set out on Saturday morning. As for a maidservant, poor Hannah's illness is a great disappointment to me; but, as he observes, I can make the widow satisfaction for one of hers, till I can get a servant to my mind. And you know I want not much attendance.

MR LOVELACE has just now, of his own accord, given me five guineas for poor Hannah. I send them inclosed. Be so good as to cause them to be conveyed to her, and to let her know from whom they came.

He has obliged me much by this little mark of his considerateness. Indeed I have had the better opinion of him ever since he proposed her return to me.

I HAVE just now another instance of his considerateness. He came to me, and said, that, on

second thoughts, he could not bear that I should go up to town without some attendant, were it but for the look of the thing to the London widow and her nieces, who, according to his friend's account, lived so genteelly; and especially as I required him to leave me soon after I arrived there, and so would be left alone among strangers. He therefore thought that I might engage Mrs Sorlings to lend me one of her two maids, or let one of her daughters go up with me, and stay till I were provided; and if the latter, the young gentlewoman, no doubt, would be glad of so good an opportunity to see the curiosities of the town, and would be a proper attendant on the same occasions.

I told him, as I had done before, that the two young gentlewomen were so equally useful in their way, and servants in a busy farm were so little to be spared, that I should be loath to take them off their laudable employments. Nor should I think much of diversions for one while;

and so the less want an attendant out of doors.

And now, my dear, lest anything should happen, in so variable a situation as mine, to overcloud my prospects, (which at present are more promising than ever yet they have been since I quitted Harlowe Place,) I will snatch the opportunity to subscribe myself

Your not unhoping, and

ever-obliged friend and servant, CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XXXVIII.

MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Thursday, April 20.

He begins with communicating to him the letter he wrote to Mr Doleman, to procure suitable lodgings in town, and which he sent away by the Lady's approbation; and then gives him a copy of the answer to it (see p. 74.) upon which he thus expresses himself:

THOU knowest the widow; thou knowest her nieces; thou knowest the lodgings: and didst thou ever read a letter more artfully couched than this of Tom Doleman? Every possible objection anticipated! Every accident provided against! Every tittle of it plot-proof!

Who could forbear smiling, to see my charmer, like a farcical dean and chapter, choose what was before chosen for her; and sagaciously, (as they go in form to prayers, that Heaven would direct their choice,) pondering upon the different proposals, as if she would make me believe she had a mind for some other? The dear sly rogue looking upon me, too, with a view to discover some emotion in me. Emotions I had; but I can tell her that they lay deeper than her eye could reach, though it had been a sunbeam.

No confidence in me, fair one! None at all, 'tis plain. Thou wilt not, if I were inclined to change my views, encourage me by a generous reliance on my honour!-And shall it be said that I, a master of arts in love, shall be overmatched by so unpractised a novice?

But to see the charmer so far satisfied with my contrivance as to borrow my friend's letter, in order to satisfy Miss Howe likewise!

Silly little rogues! to walk out into bye-paths on the strength of their own judgment!-When nothing but experience can enable them to disappoint us, and teach them grandmother-wisdom! When they have it indeed, then may they sit down, like so many Cassandras, and preach caution to others; who will as little mind them as they did their instructresses, whenever a fine, handsome, confident young fellow, such a one as thou knowest who, comes across them.

But, Belford, didst thou not mind that sly rogue Doleman's naming Dover Street for the widow's place of abode?-What dost think could be meant by that?-'Tis impossible thou shouldst guess, so, not to puzzle thee about it, suppose the Widow Sinclair's in Dover Street should be inquired after by some officious person, in order to come at characters [Miss Howe is as sly as the devil, and as busy to the full, and neither such a name, nor such a house can be found in that street, nor a house to answer the description; then will not the keenest hunter in England be at a fault?

But how wilt thou do, methinks thou askest, to hinder the lady from resenting the fallacy, and mistrusting thee the more on that account, when she finds it out to be in another street?

Pho! never mind that; either I shall have a way for it, or we shall thoroughly understand one another by that time; or if we don't, she'll know enough of me, and not wonder at such a peccadillo.

But how wilt thou hinder the lady from apprizing her friend of the real name?

She must first know it herself, monkey, must she not?

Well, but how wilt thou do to hinder her from knowing the street, and her friend from directing letters thither, which will be the same thing as if the name were known?

Let me alone for that too.

If thou farther objectest, that Tom Doleman is too great a dunce to write such a letter in answer to mine:-Canst thou not imagine, that, in order to save honest Tom all this trouble, I, who know the town so well, could send him a copy of what he should write, and leave him nothing to do but transcribe?

What now sayest thou to me, Belford? And suppose I had designed this task of inquiry for thee; and suppose the lady excepted against thee for no other reason in the world, but because of my value for thee? What sayest thou to the lady, Jack?

This it is to have leisure upon my hands!What a matchless plotter thy friend!-Stand by, and let me swell!-I am already as big as an elephant, and ten times wiser !---Mightier too by far! Have I not reason to snuff the moon with my proboscis ?-Lord help thee for a poor, for a very poor, creature!-Wonder not that I despise thee heartily; since the man who is disposed immoderately to exalt himself, cannot do it but by despising every body else in proportion.

I shall make good use of the Dolemanic hint of being married. But I will not tell thee all at once. Nor, indeed, have I thoroughly digested that part of my plot. When a general must regulate himself by the motions of a watchful adversary, how can he say beforehand what he will, or what he will not do?

Widow SINCLAIR, didst thou not say, Lovelace?

Ay, SINCLAIR, Jack!-Remember the name! SINCLAIR, I repeat. She has no other. And her features being broad and full-blown, I will suppose her to be of Highland extraction, as her husband the colonel [mind that too] was a Scot, as brave as honest.

I never forget the minutiae in my contrivances. In all matters that admit of doubt, the minutia, closely attended to and provided for, are of more service than a thousand oaths, vows, and protestations made to supply the neglect of them, especially when jealousy has made its way in the working mind.

Thou wouldst wonder if thou knewest one half of my providences. To give thee but oneI have already been so good as to send up a list of books to be procured for the lady's closet, mostly at second hand. And thou knowest that the women there are all well read. But I will not anticipate-Besides, it looks as if I were afraid of leaving any thing to my old friend CHANCE, which has many a time been an excellent second to me, and ought not to be affronted or despised, especially by one who has the art of making unpromising incidents turn out in his favour.

LETTER XXXIX.

MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE.

Wednesday, April 19. I HAVE a piece of intelligence to give you, which concerns you much to know.

Your brother, having been assured that you are not married, has taken a resolution to find you out, waylay you, and carry you off. A friend of his, a captain of a ship, undertakes to get you on ship-board, and to sail away with you, either to Hull or Leith, in the way to one of your brother's houses.

They are very wicked; for in spite of your

virtue they conclude you to be ruined. But if ney can be assured when they have you that you are not, they will secure you till they can bring you out Mrs Solmes. Meantime, in order to give Mr Lovelace full employment, they talk of a prosecution which will be set up against him, for some crime they have got a notion of, which they think, if it do not cost him his life, will make him fly his country.

This is very early news. Miss Bell told it in confidence, and with mighty triumph over Lovelace, to Miss Lloyd, who is at present her favourite, though as much your admirer as ever. Miss Lloyd, being very apprehensive of the mischief which might follow such an attempt, told it to me, with leave to apprize you privately of it-and yet neither she nor I would be sorry, perhaps, if Lovelace were to be fairly hanged -that is to say, if you, my dear, had no objection to it. But we cannot bear that such an admirable creature should be made the tennis-ball of two violent spirits-much less that you should be seized, and exposed to the brutal treatment of wretches who have no bowels.

If you can engage Mr Lovelace to keep his temper upon it, I think you should acquaint him with it, but not mention Miss Lloyd. Perhaps his wicked agent may come at the intelligence, and reveal it to him. But I leave it to your own discretion to do as you think fit in it. All my concern is, that this daring and foolish project, if carried on, will be a mean of throwing you more into his power than ever. But as it will convince you that there can be no hope of a reconciliation, I wish you were actually married, let the cause for the prosecution hinted at be what it will, short of murder or a rape.

Your Hannah was very thankful for your kind present. She heaped a thousand blessings upon you for it. She has Mr Lovelace's too by this time.

I am pleased with Mr Hickman, I can tell you; for he has sent her two guineas by the person who carries Mr Lovelace's five, as from an unknown hand; nor am I, or you, to know it. But he does a great many things of this sort, and is as silent as the night in his charities; for nobody knows of them till the gratitude of the benefited will not let them be concealed. He is now and then my almoner, and, I believe, always adds to my little benefactions.

But his time is not come to be praised to his face for these things, nor does he seem to want that encouragement.

The man has certainly a good mind. Nor can we expect in one man every good quality. But he is really a silly fellow, my dear, to trouble his head about me, when he sees how much I despise his whole sex; and must of course make a common man look like a fool, were he not to make himself look like one, by wishing to pitch his tent so oddly. Our likings and dislikings, as I have often thought, are seldom go

verned by prudence, or with a view to happiness. The eye, my dear, the wicked eye, has such a strict alliance with the heart-and both have such enmity to the judgment!-What an unequal union, the mind and body! All the senses, like the family at Harlowe Place, in a confederacy against that which would animate, and give honour to the whole, were it allowed its proper precedence.

Permit me, I beseech you, before you go to London, to send you forty-eight guineas. I mention that sum to oblige you, because, by accepting back the two to Hannah, I will hold you indebted to me fifty. Surely this will induce you! You know that I cannot want the money. I told you that I have near double that sum, and that the half of it is more than my mother knows I am mistress of. You are afraid that my mother will question me on this subject, and then you think I must own the truth; but little as I love equivocation, and little as you would allow of it in your Anna Howe, it is hard if I cannot (were I to be put to it ever so closely,) find something to say that would bring me off, and not impeach my veracity. With so little money as you have, what can you do at such a place as London ?-You don't know what occasion you may have for messengers, intelligence, and such like. If you don't oblige me, I shall not think your stomach so much down as you say it is, and as, in this one particular, I think it ought to be.

As to the state of things between my mother and me, you know enough of her temper, not to need to be told that she never espouses or resents with indifference. Yet will she not remember that I am her daughter. No, truly, I am all my papa's girl.

She was very sensible, surely, of the violence of my poor father's temper, that she can so long remember that, when acts of tenderness and affection seem quite forgotten. Some daughters would be tempted to think, that controul sat very heavy upon a mother, who can endeavour to exert the power she has over a child, and regret, for years after death, that she had not the same over a husband.

If this manner of expression becomes not me of my mother, the fault will be somewhat extenuated by the love I always bore to my father, and by the reverence I shall ever pay to his memory; for he was a fond father, and perhaps would have been as tender a husband, had not my mother and he been too much of a temper to agree.

The misfortune was, in short, that when one was out of humour, the other would be so too; yet neither of their tempers comparatively bad. Notwithstanding all which, I did not imagine, girl as I was in my father's lifetime, that my mother's part of the yoke sat so heavy upon her neck as she gives me room to think it did, whenever she is pleased to disclaim her part of me.

Both parents, as I have often thought, should be very careful, if they would secure to themselves the undivided love of their children, that, of all things, they should avoid such durable contentions with each other, as should distress their children in choosing their party, when they would be glad to reverence both as they ought."

But here is the thing; there is not a better manager of affairs in the sex than my mother; and I believe a notable wife is more impatient of controul than an indolent one. An indolent one, perhaps, thinks she has something to compound for; while women of the other character, I suppose, know too well their own significance to think highly of that of anybody else. All must be their own way. In one word, because they are useful, they will be more than useful.

I do assure you, my dear, were I a man, and a man who loved my quiet, I would not have one of these managing wives on any consideration. I would make it a matter of serious inquiry beforehand, whether my mistress's qualifications, if I heard she was notable, were masculine or feminine ones. If indeed I were an indolent supine mortal, who might be in danger of becoming the property of my steward, I would then perhaps choose to marry for the qualifications of a steward.

But, setting my mother out of the question, because she is my mother, have I not seen how Lady Hartley pranks up herself above all her sex, because she knows how to manage affairs that do not belong to her sex to manage?-Affairs that do no credit to her as a woman to understand; practically, I mean; for the theory of them may not be amiss to be known.

Indeed, my dear, I do not think a man-woman a pretty character at all; and, as I said, were I a man, I would sooner choose a dove, though it were fit for nothing but, as the play says, to go tame about the house, and breed, than a wife who is setting at work (my insignificant self present perhaps,) every busy hour my neverresisting servants, those of the stud not excepted; and who, with a besom in her hand, as I may say, would be continually filling me with apprehensions that she wanted to sweep me out of my own house as useless lumber.

Were indeed the mistress of a family (like the wonderful young lady I so much and so justly admire) to know how to confine herself within her own respectable rounds of the needle, the pen, the housekeeper's bills, the dairy for her amusement; to see the poor fed from superfluities that would otherwise be wasted, and exert herself in all the really useful branches of domestic management; then would she move in her proper sphere; then would she render herself amiably useful, and respectably necessary; then would she become the mistress-wheel of the family, whatever you think of your Anna Howe, I would not have her be the masterwheel, and every body would love her; as

every body did you, before your insolent brother came back, flushed with his unmerited acquirements, and turned all things topsy-turvy.

If you will be informed of the particulars of our contention, after you have known in general that your unhappy affair was the subject, why then, I think I must tell you.

Yet how shall I ?-I feel my cheek glow with mingled shame and indignation.—Know then, my dear,-that I have been-as I may say that I have been beaten-indeed 'tis true. My mother thought fit to slap my hands to get from me a sheet of a letter she caught me writing to you; which I tore, because she should not read it, and burnt it before her face.

I know this will trouble you; so spare your◄ self the pains to tell me it does.

Mr Hickman came in presently after. I would not see him. I am either too much a woman to be beat, or too much a child to have an humble servant so I told my mother. What can one oppose but sullens, when it would be unpardonable so much as to think of lifting up a finger?

In the Harlowe style, She will be obeyed, she says: and even Mr Hickman shall be forbid the house, if he contributes to the carrying on of a correspondence which she will not suffer to be continued.

Poor man! He stands a whimsical chance between us. But he knows he is sure of my mother; but not of me. 'Tis easy then for him to choose his party, were it not his inclination to serve you, as it surely is. And this makes him a merit with me, which otherwise he would not have had; notwithstanding the good qualities which I have just now acknowledged in his favour. For, my dear, let my faults in other respects be what they may, I will pretend to say, that I have in my own mind those qualities which I praised him for. And if we are to come together, I could for that reason better dispense with them in him.-So, if a husband, who has a

bountiful-tempered wife, is not a niggard, nor seeks to restrain her, but has an opinion of all she does, that is enough for him: as, on the contrary, if a bountiful-tempered husband has a frugal wife, it is best for both. For one to give, and the other to give, except they have prudence, and are at so good an understanding with each other as to compare notes, they may, perhaps, put it out of their power to be just. Good frugal doctrine, my dear! But this way of putting it is middling the matter between what I have learnt of my mother's over-prudent and your enlarged notions.-But from doctrine to fact.

I shut myself up all that day; and what little I did eat, eat alone. But at night she sent up Kitty with a command, upon my obedience, to attend her at supper.

I went down; but most gloriously in the sullens. YES, and NO, were great words with me, to every thing she asked, for a good while.