Do not be impatient, my dear; I have a great deal more to say. This friendship, what is it to be? Not more than friendship, disguised under the name of it: for how can that consist with your peace of mind, your submission to the dictates of reason, your resignation to the will of Providence? If then it be only friendship, how is it inconsistent with your forming an attachment of a nearer kind with a person of merit, who approves of, and will join in it? What think you, my dear, is that love which we vow at the altar? Surely, not adoration: not a preference of that object absolutely, as in excellence superior to every other imaginable being. No more, surely, in most cases, than such a preferable choice (all circum-stances considered) as shall make us with satisfaction of mind, and with an affectionate and faithful heart, unite ourselves for life with a man whom we esteem; who we think is no disagreeable companion, but deserves our grateful regard; that his interest from henceforth should be our own, and his happiness our study. And is not this very consistent, with admiring and loving the excellence of angels; and even with seeing and pitying, in this partner of our lives, such imperfections as make him evidently their inferior? Inferior even to such human angels, as you and I have in our heads at this moment.

Observe, my dear, I say only that such friendship is very consistent with being more nearly united to one who knows and approves it: for concealment of any thought, that much effects the heart, is, I think, in such a case (with very few exceptions from very particular circumstances) utterly unallowable, and blameably indelicate.

You are, I will not offend you, by saying to what degree, a reasonable and prudent young woman; pious, dutiful, and benevolent. Consider then, how much better you would account for the talents committed to you; how much more joy you would give to the best of friends; how much more good you would do to your fellow creatures, by permitting yourself to be called out into active life, with all its variety of relations, than you can while you continue obstinately in a single state, on purpose to indulge a remediless sorrow. The domestic connexions would engage you in a thousand, not unpleasing, new cares and attentions, that must inevitably wear out, in time, impressions which you would feel it unfit to indulge. All that is generous, grateful, reasonable, in your very just attachment, would remain; every-thing that passion and imagination have added, every unreasonable, every painful emotion, would be banished; and the friendship between the two families become a source of lasting happiness to both.

Adieu, my Harriet! I am afraid of being tedious on. an unpleasing subject. If I have omitted any-m 3 thing material in this argument, the excellent parents you are with can abundantly supply it from their own reason, and experience of the world. Assure them of my unfeigned regard; and believe me, my dear child, with a degree of esteem, that no young creature ever merited half so well,