shall deposit this the first thing. When you have it, lose no time, I
pray you, to advise (lest it be too late)

Your ever obliged CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SATURDAY, MARCH 25.

What can I advise you to do, my noble creature? Your merit is your
crime. You can no more change your nature, than your persecutors can
theirs. Your distress is owing to the vast disparity between you and
them. What would you have of them? Do they not act in character?--And to
whom? To an alien. You are not one of them. They have two dependencies
in their hope to move you to compliance.--Upon their impenetrableness
one [I'd give it a more proper name, if I dared]; the other, on the
regard you have always had for your character, [Have they not heretofore
owned as much?] and upon your apprehensions from that of Lovelace, which
would discredit you, should you take any step by his means to extricate
yourself. Then they know, that resentment and unpersuadableness are not
natural to you; and that the anger they have wrought you up to, will
subside, as all extraordinaries soon do; and that once married, you will
make the best of it.

But surely your father's son and eldest daughter have a view (by
communicating to so narrow a soul all they know of your just aversion to
him) to entail unhappiness for life upon you, were you to have the man
who is already more nearly related to them, than ever he can be to you,
although the shocking compulsion should take place.

As to that wretch's perseverance, those only, who know not the man,
will wonder at it. He has not the least delicacy. His principal view in
marriage is not to the mind. How shall those beauties be valued, which
cannot be comprehended? Were you to be his, and shew a visible want of
tenderness to him, it is my opinion, he would not be much concerned at
it. I have heard you well observe, from your Mrs. Norton, That a person
who has any over-ruling passion, will compound by giving up twenty
secondary or under-satisfactions, though more laudable ones, in order to
have that gratified.

I'll give you the substance of a conversation [no fear you can be made
to like him worse than you do already] that passed between Sir Harry
Downeton and this Solmes, but three days ago, as Sir Harry told it but
yesterday to my mother and me. It will confirm to you that what your
sister's insolent Betty reported he should say, of governing by fear,
was not of her own h