ensible, are
not so easily changed. You have always joined with me in remarking, that
he will speak his mind with freedom, even to a degree of unpoliteness
sometimes; and that his very treatment of my family is a proof that he
cannot make a mean court to any body for interest sake--What pity, where
there are such laudable traces, that they should have been so mired, and
choaked up, as I may say!--We have heard, that the man's head is better
than his heart: But do you really think Mr. Lovelace can have a very bad
heart? Why should not there be something in blood in the human
creature, as well as in the ignobler animals? None of his family are
exceptionable--but himself, indeed. The characters of the ladies are
admirable. But I shall incur the imputation I wish to avoid. Yet what a
look of censoriousness does it carry in an unsparing friend, to take one
to task for doing that justice, and making those which one ought without
scruple to do, and to make, in the behalf of any other man living?

He then again pressed me to receive a letter of offered protection from
Lady Betty. He said, that people of birth stood a little too much upon
punctilio; as people of value also did (but indeed birth, worthily lived
up to, was virtue: virtue, birth; the inducements to a decent punctilio
the same; the origin of both one): [how came this notion from him!]
else, Lady Betty would write to me: but she would be willing to be first
apprized that her offer will be well received--as it would have the
appearance of being made against the liking of one part of my family;
and which nothing would induce her to make, but the degree of unworthy
persecution which I actually laboured under, and had reason further to
apprehend.

I told him, that, however greatly I thought myself obliged to Lady Betty
Lawrance, if this offer came from herself; yet it was easy to see to
what it led. It might look like vanity in me perhaps to say, that this
urgency in him, on this occasion, wore the face of art, in order to
engage me into measures from which I might not easily extricate myself.
I said, that I should not be affected by the splendour of even a royal
title. Goodness, I thought, was greatness. That the excellent characters
of the ladies of his family weighed more with me, than the consideration
that they were half-sisters to Lord M. and daughters of an earl: that
he would not have found encouragement from me, had my friends been
consenting to his address, if