 beheld her soul, for it was both visible and audible, Fairfax though you are, the marauder of marriage land and the sworn foe of virginity, even you would have pardoned my tergiversation.
Did you never behold the sun burst forth from behind the riding clouds? The scene that was gloomy, dark and dismal is suddenly illumined; what was obscure becomes conspicuous; the bleak hills smile, the black meadows assume a bright verdure; quaking shadows dare no longer stay, cold damps are dispelled, and in an instant all is visible, clear, and radiant! So vanish doubts when she begins to speak! Thus in her presence

do the feelings glow; and thus is gloom banished from the soul, till all is genial warmth and harmony!
These being my feelings now, when I am escaped, when I am beyond the circle of her sorceries, think, Fairfax, be just and think how seductive, how dangerous an enemy I have to encounter—Listen and judge.
"Oh! Clifton"—She speaks! Listen I say to her spells!—
Oh! Clifton, daily and hourly do I bless this happy accident, this delay! I think, with the heroic archbishop, I could have held my right hand firmly till the flames had consumed it, could I but have brought to pass what this blessed event has already almost accomplished! To behold your mind what

it is and to recollect what it so lately was is bliss unutterable! I consider myself now as destined to be yours: but whether I am or am not is perhaps a thing of little moment. Let self be forgotten, and all its petty interests! What am I? What can I be, compared to what you may become? The patriot, the legislator, the statesman, the reconciler of nations, the dispenser of truth, and the instructor of the human race; for to all these you are equal. As for me, however ardent however great my good-will, I cannot have the same opportunities. Beside I must be just to myself and you, and it delights me to declare I believe you have a mind capable of conceptions more vast than mine, of plans more

daring and systems more deep, and of soaring beyond me. You have the strong memory, the keen sensibility and the rapid imagination which form the poet. It is my glory to repeat that your various powers, when called forth, have as variously astonished me. To bid you persevere were now to wrong you, for I think I dare affirm you cannot retreat. You have at present seen too much, thought too much,
