Your uncle’s tenderness for you, on such a prospect, has made him suppress hL inclination to rally you. He professes to pity you, my dear. While, says he, the sweet girl was vaunting herself, and refusing this man; and dismissing that; and imagining herself out of the reach of the deity, to which,

E E 3 sooner or later, all women bow; I spared her not; but now, that I see she is likely to be over head and ears in the passion, and has so much to be said for her excuse if she is caught; and as our side must perhaps be the hoping side, the gentleman’s the triumphant; I pity her too much for what may be the case, to teaze her with my animadversions; es-pecially after what she has suffered from the vile Sir Hargrave.

By several hints in your letters, it is impossible, my dear, that we can be aforehand with your incli-nations. Young women in a beginning love are al ways willing to conceal themselves from themselves; they are desirous to smother the fire, before they will call out for help, till it blazes, and frequently becomes too powerful to be extinguished by any help. They will call the passion by another name; as, gratitude, suppose: but, my Harriet, gratitude so properly founded as yours is can be but another name for love. The object so worthy, your own heart so worthy, consent of minds must bring it to love on one side; perhaps on both, if the half-score of ladies you have heard of are all of them but mere moderns. But that, my dear, is not to be sup-posed; since worthy hearts find out, and assimilate with, each other. Indeed, those ladies may be such as are captivated with outward figure. A handsome man need not to have the great qualities of a Sir Charles Grandison, to engage the hearts of the ge-nerality of our sex. But a good man and a hand — some man, if he has the vivacity that distinguishes Sir Charles, may marry whom he pleases. If we women love a handsome man, for the sake of our eye, we must be poor creatures indeed, if we love not good men for the sake of our hearts.

What makes us apprehensive for you, my Harriet, is this: that we every one of us are in love ourselves

SIK CHARLES GRANDISON. 319 with this fine young gentleman. Your uncle has fallen in with Mr. Dawson, an attorney of Notting-ham, who acts for Sir Charles in some of his affairs; and gives him such a character respecting his goodness to his tenants and dependents only, as will render credible all that even the fondest love, and warmest gratitude, can say in his praise.

We can hardly tell sometimes how to regret (though your accounts of your sufferings and danger cut us to the heart as we read them) the base attempt of Sir Hargrave: were all to end as we wish, we should not regret it: but that, my Harriet, is our fear. What will become of me, said your grand-mamma, if, at last, the darling of my heart should be entangled in a hopeless passion?