of excellence." I perceive it, with pain—and if obliged to retract my judgment on some parts of his character—I retract it with agonizing reluctance! But I could trace the sources of his errors, and candour and self-abasement imperiously compel me to a mild judgment, to stifle the petulant suggestions of a wounded spirit.

'Ought not our principles, my friend, to soften the asperity of our censures?—Could I have won him to my arms, I thought I could soften, and even elevate, his mind—a mind, in which I still perceive a great proportion of good. I weep for him, as well as for myself. He will, one day, know my value, and feel my loss. Still, I am sensible, that, by my extravagance, I have given a great deal of vexation (possibly some degradation), to a being, whom I had no right to persecute, or to compel to chuse happiness through a medium of my creation. I cannot exactly tell the extent of the injury I may have done him. A long train of consequences succeed, even, our most indifferent actions.—Strong energies, though they answer not the end proposed, must yet produce correspondent effects. Morals and mechanics are here analogous. No longer, then, distress me by the repetition of a question I ought not to answer. I am content to be the victim—Oh! may I be the only victim—of my folly!

'One more observation allow me to make, before I conclude. That we can "admire, esteem, and love," an individual—(for love in the abstract, loving mankind collectively, conveys to me no idea)—which must be, in fact, depending upon that individual for a large share of our felicity, and not lament his loss, in proportion to our apprehension of his worth, appears to me a proposition, involving in itself an absurdity; therefore demonstrably false.

'Let me, my friend, see you ere long—your remonstrance has affected me—save me from myself!'

TO THE SAME.
[In continuation.]

'My letter having been delayed a few days, through a mistake—I resume my pen; for, running my eye over what I had written, I perceive (confounded by the force of your expressions) I have granted you too much. My conduct was not, altogether, so insane as I have been willing to allow. It is certain, that could I have attained the end proposed, my happiness had been encreased. "It is necessary for me to love and admire, or I sink into sadness.