, you have sported with its exquisite sensibilities—but it will, still, know how to separate your virtues from your errors.

'You reprove, perhaps justly, my impatience—I can only say, that circumstanced as you were, I should have stolen an hour from rest, from company, from business, however, important, to have relieved and soothed a fellow-creature in a situation, so full of pain and peril. Every thought, during a day scarcely to be recollected without agony, was a two-edged sword—but some hours of profound and refreshing slumber recruited my exhausted spirits, and enabled me, yesterday, to receive my fate, with a fortitude but little hoped for.

'You would oblige me exceedingly by the remarks you allow me to hope for, on my letter of the ——th. You know, I will not shrink from reproof—that letter afforded you the last proof of my affection, and I repent not of it. I loved you, first, for what, I conceived, high qualities of mind—from nature and association, my tenderness became personal—till at length, I loved you, not only rationally and tenderly—but passionately—it became a pervading and a devouring fire! And, yet, I do not blush—my affection was modest, if intemperate, for it was individual—it annihilated in my eyes every other man in the creation. I regret these natural sensations and affections, their forcible suppression injures the mind—it converts the mild current of gentle, and genial sympathies, into a destructive torrent. This, I have the courage to avow it, has been one of the miserable mistakes in morals, and, like all other partial remedies, has increased the evil, it was intended to correct. From monastic institutions and principles have flowed, as from a polluted source, streams, that have at once spread through society a mingled contagion of dissoluteness and hypocrisy.

'You have suddenly arrested my affections in their full career—in all their glowing effervescence—you have taken

"The rose 
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And placed a blister there."
'And, yet, I survive the shock, and determine to live, not for future enjoyment—that is now, for ever, past—but for future usefulness—Is not this virtue?

'I am sorry your attachment has been and I fear is likely to be, protracted—I know, too well, the misery of these situations, and I should, now, feel a melancholy satisfaction in hearing of its completion—In that completion, may you experience no disappointment! I do not wish you to be beloved, as I have loved you; this, perhaps, is unnecessary; such an
