Pure and noble as your heart is, it is misleading you: Oh, my Harriet, into what a labyrinth! Have you kept a copy, my dear, of your last letter to me? It is all amiable, all yourself But it is Harriet Byron again, in need of a rescuer Shall I, my child, save you from being run away with by these tyrannous over-refinements? Yes, you will say, could I do it disinterestedly . Well, I will, if I can, imagine myself quite disinterested; suppose my son out of the case. And since I have told you, more than once, that I cannot allow the sacredness young people are apt to imagine in a first love; I must, you know, take it for granted, that even his to you is not absolutely unconquerable.

Let us then consider a little the bright fairy schemes, for so I must call them, which you have formed in the letter that lies before me*. Do not your excellent grandmamma and aunt see them in the same light? I dare say they do: but to one I love so dearly, how can I omit to oifer my hand to extricate her out of a maze of bewildering fancy, in which she may else tread many a weary step, that ought to be advancing forward in the paths of happiness and duty?

Think but, what fortitude of soul, what strength even of constitution, you answer for, when you talk of living happy in a friendship with two persons, when they are united by indissoluble ties, the very thought of whose union makes your cheek fade, and your health languish. Ah, my beloved Harriet 1 is not this a fairy-scheme?

This letter appears Dot. M 2

Mistake me not; I do not suspect that your sen-timents would want any thing of the purity, the generosity, the true heroism required in the idea of a friendship, like that you talk of. 1 suspect not in the noble pair [Does that phrase hurt you, my Miss Byron? Think then how your heart would suffer in the lasting conflict that must accompany the situ-ation which you have proposed to yourself] I sus — pect not, in either of them, sentiments or behaviour unsuitable to your excellence: yet let me ask you one thing: Would not the example of such an at-tachment subsisting between persons known to have once had different views, and tender affections, mislead less delicate and less guarded minds into allowances dangerous to them; and subject souls, less great than Clementina, to jealousies, whether warrantable or not, of friendships that should plead yours for a precedent?