nanimate, which so many years' growth have confirmed, and
which are considerably tightened for the moment by the very idea
of separation. I know that the apprehension of being forced to quit
Mansfield will for a time be arming you against him. I wish he had not
been obliged to tell you what he was trying for. I wish he had known you
as well as I do, Fanny. Between us, I think we should have won you. My
theoretical and his practical knowledge together could not have failed.
He should have worked upon my plans. I must hope, however, that time,
proving him (as I firmly believe it will) to deserve you by his steady
affection, will give him his reward. I cannot suppose that you have not
the _wish_ to love him--the natural wish of gratitude. You must have
some feeling of that sort. You must be sorry for your own indifference."

"We are so totally unlike," said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, "we
are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that
I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy
together, even if I _could_ like him. There never were two people more
dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable."

"You are mistaken, Fanny. The dissimilarity is not so strong. You are
quite enough alike. You _have_ tastes in common. You have moral and
literary tastes in common. You have both warm hearts and benevolent
feelings; and, Fanny, who that heard him read, and saw you listen to
Shakespeare the other night, will think you unfitted as companions? You
forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow.
He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will
support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy
difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract
this. He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will
be a constant support to you. Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not
in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness
together: do not imagine it. I am myself convinced that it is rather a
favourable circumstance. I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers
had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in
the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the
propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay. Some
opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial
happiness. I exclude ex