but when
they are to do good, they are to require your consent.

How the dear creature's character rises in every line of thy letters!
But it is owing to the uncommon occasions she has met with that she
blazes out upon us with such a meridian lustre. How, but for those
occasions, could her noble sentiments, her prudent consideration, her
forgiving spirit, her exalted benevolence, and her equanimity in view of
the most shocking prospects (which set her in a light so superior to all
her sex, and even to the philosophers of antiquity) have been manifested?

I know thou wilt think I am going to claim some merit to myself, for
having given her such opportunities of signalizing her virtues. But I am
not; for, if I did, I must share that merit with her implacable
relations, who would justly be entitled to two-thirds of it, at least:
and my soul disdains a partnership in any thing with such a family.

But this I mention as an answer to thy reproaches, that I could be so
little edified by perfections, to which, thou supposest, I was for so
long together daily and hourly a personal witness--when, admirable as she
was in all she said, and in all she did, occasion had not at that time
ripened, and called forth, those amazing perfections which now astonish
and confound me.

Hence it is that I admire her more than ever; and that my love for her is
less personal, as I may say, more intellectual, than ever I thought it
could be to a woman.

Hence also it is that I am confident (would it please the Fates to spare
her, and make her mine) I could love her with a purity that would draw on
my own FUTURE, as well as ensure her TEMPORAL, happiness.--And hence, by
necessary consequence, shall I be the most miserable of all men, if I am
deprived of her.

Thou severely reflectest upon me for my levity: the Abbey instance in
thine eye, I suppose. And I will be ingenuous enough to own, that as
thou seest not my heart, there may be passages, in every one of my
letters, which (the melancholy occasion considered) deserve thy most
pointed rebukes. But faith, Jack, thou art such a tragi-comical mortal,
with thy leaden aspirations at one time, and thy flying hour-glasses and
dreaming terrors at another, that, as Prior says, What serious is, thou
turn'st to farce; and it is impossible to keep within the bounds of
decorum or gravity when one reads what thou writest.

But to restrain myself (for my constitutional gayety was ready to run
away w