 to the present, painful, high-wrought, and trying, state of my feelings, which is now become so necessary, I appear neither to hear, nor to comprehend you. I fly from the subject, and thicken the cloud of mystery, of which I have so often, and, I still think, so justly complained.—These are some of the effects of the contradictory systems, that have so long bewildered our principles and conduct. A combination of causes, added to the conflict between a thousand delicate and nameless emotions, have lately conspired to confuse, to weaken, my spirits. You can conceive, that these acute, mental, sensations, must have had a temporary effect on the state of my health. To say truth (and, had I not said it, my countenance would have betrayed me), I have not, for some time past, been so thoroughly disordered.

'Once more, I have determined to rally my strength; for I feel, that a much longer continuance in the situation, in which my mind has been lately involved, would be insupportable:—and I call upon you, now, with a resolution to summon all my fortitude to bear the result, for the written state of your mind, on the topic become so important to my future welfare and usefulness.

'You may suppose, that a mind like mine must have, repeatedly, set itself to examine, on every side, all that could possibly have a relation to a subject affecting it so materially. You have hinted at mysterious obstacles to the wish, in which every faculty of my soul has been so long absorbed—the wish of forming with you, a connection, nearer, and more tender, than that of friendship. This mystery, by leaving room for conjecture (and how frequently have I warned you of this!), left room for the illusions of imagination, and of hope—left room for the suspicion, that you might, possibly, be sacrificing your own feelings as well as mine, to a mistaken principle. Is it possible that you were not aware of this—you, who are not unacquainted with the nature of the mind! Still less were you ignorant of the nature of my mind—which I had so explicitly, so unreservedly, laid open! I had a double claim upon your confidence—a confidence, that I was utterly incapable of abusing, or betraying—a confidence, which must have stopped my mind in its career—which would have saved me the bitter, agonizing, pangs I have sustained. Mine were not common feelings—it is obscurity and mystery which has wrought them up to frenzy—truth and
