 you have emerged from the shade of fanciful vanity. For although, to adopt your own phrase, I cease to style myself your lover, among the number of your friends I am happy to be reckoned. As such, let me conjure you, by all that is dear and desirable, both in this life and another, to adhere with undeviating exactness to the paths of rectitude and innocence, and to improve the noble talents which Heaven has liberally bestowed upon you in rendering yourself amiable and, useful to your friends. Thus will you secure your own, while you promote the happiness of all around you.

I shall ever cherish sentiments of kindness towards you, and with gratitude remember your condescension in the testimony of regard which you have given me in your last letter.

I hope soon to hear that your heart and hand are bestowed on some worthy man, who deserves the happiness you are formed to communicate. Whatever we may have called errors will, on my part, be forever buried in oblivion; and for your own peace of mind I entreat you to forget that any idea of a connection between us ever existed.

I shall always rejoice at the news of your welfare, and my ardent prayers will daily arise for your temporal and eternal felicity.

J. BOYER.

LETTER XLVIII.

TO MRS. LUCY SUMNER.

HARTFORD.

Health, placid serenity, and every domestic pleasure are the lot of my friend; while I, who once possessed the means of each, and the capacity of tasting them, have been tossed upon the waves of folly, till I am shipwrecked on the shoals of despair.

O my friend, I am undone. I am slighted, rejected, by the man who once sought my hand, by the man who still retains my heart. And what adds an insupportable poignancy to the reflection is self-condemnation. From this inward torture where shall I flee? Where shall I seek that happiness which I have madly trifled away?

The enclosed letters[A] will show you whence this tumult of soul arises. But I blame not Mr. Boyer. He has acted nobly. I approve his conduct, though it operates my ruin.

He is worthy of his intended bride, and she is—-what I am not—worthy of him. Peace and joy be their portion both here and hereafter. But what are now my prospects? What are to be the future enjoyments of my life?

O that I had not written to Mr. Boyer! By confessing my faults, and by avowing my partiality to him, I have given him the power of triumphing in my distress; of returning
