meekness and superior greatness of soul have now made me most
heartily ashamed, I beseech you, my dearest creature, to believe me to be

Your truly sympathising,
and unalterable friend,
ANNA HOWE.

LETTER LXXII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
MONDAY, JULY 10.

I now, my dearest friend, resume my pen, to obey my mother, in giving you
her opinion upon your unhappy story.

She still harps upon the old string, and will have it that all your
calamities are owing to your first fatal step; for she believes, (what I
cannot,) that your relations had intended after one general trial more,
to comply with your aversion, if they had found it to be as riveted a
one, as, let me say, it was a folly to suppose it would not be found to
be, after so many ridiculously-repeated experiments.

As to your latter sufferings from that vilest of miscreants, she is
unalterably of opinion that if all be as you have related (which she
doubts not) with regard to the potions, and to the violences you have
sustained, you ought by all means to set on foot a prosecution against
him, and against his devilish accomplices.

She asks, What murderers, what ravishers, would be brought to justice, if
modesty were to be a general plea, and allowable, against appearing in a
court to prosecute?

She says, that the good of society requires, that such a beast of prey
should be hunted out of it: and, if you do not prosecute him, she thinks
you will be answerable for all the mischiefs he may do in the course of
his future villanous life.

Will it be thought, Nancy, said she, that Miss Clarissa Harlowe can be in
earnest, when she says, she is not solicitous to have her disgraces
concealed from the world, if she be afraid or ashamed to appear in court,
to do justice to herself and her sex against him? Will it not be rather
surmised, that she may be apprehensive that some weakness, or lurking
love, will appear upon the trial of the strange cause? If, inferred she,
such complicated villany as this (where perjury, potions, forgery,
subornation, are all combined to effect the ruin of an innocent creature,
and to dishonour a family of eminence, and where the very crimes, as may
be supposed, are proofs of her innocence) is to go off with impunity,
what case will deserve to be brought into judgment? or what malefactor
ought to be hanged?

Then she thinks, and so do I, that the vile creatures, his accomplices,
ought, by all means, to be brought to co