lready part of you,)--_would_ you,
being able to speak _so_, only say _that you_ desire not to put 'more
sadness than I was born to,' into my life?--that you 'could give me
only what it were ungenerous to give'?

Have I your meaning here? In so many words, is it on my account that
you bid me 'leave this subject'? I think if it were so, I would for
once call my advantages round me. I am not what your generous
self-forgetting appreciation would sometimes make me out--but it is
not since yesterday, nor ten nor twenty years before, that I began to
look into my own life, and study its end, and requirements, what would
turn to its good or its loss--and I _know_, if one may know anything,
that to make that life yours and increase it by union with yours,
would render me _supremely happy_, as I said, and say, and feel. My
whole suit to you is, in that sense, _selfish_--not that I am ignorant
that _your_ nature would most surely attain happiness in being
conscious that it made another happy--but _that best, best end of
all_, would, like the rest, come from yourself, be a reflection of
your own gift.

Dearest, I will end here--words, persuasion, arguments, if they were
at my service I would not use them--I believe in you, altogether have
faith in you--in you. I will not think of insulting by trying to
reassure you on one point which certain phrases in your letter might
at first glance seem to imply--you do not understand me to be living
and labouring and writing (and _not_ writing) in order to be
successful in the world's sense? I even convinced the people _here_
what was my true 'honourable position in society,' &c. &c. therefore I
shall not have to inform _you_ that I desire to be very rich, very
great; but not in reading Law gratis with dear foolish old Basil
Montagu, as he ever and anon bothers me to do;--much less--enough of
this nonsense.

'Tell me what I have a claim to hear': I can hear it, and be as
grateful as I was before and am now--your friendship is my pride and
happiness. If you told me your love was bestowed elsewhere, and that
it was in my power to serve you _there_, to serve you there would
still be my pride and happiness. I look on and on over the prospect of
my love, it is all _on_wards--and all possible forms of unkindness ...
I quite laugh to think how they are _behind_ ... cannot be encountered
in the route we are travelling! I submit to you and will obey you
implicitly--obey what I am able to conceive o