e I have pleased you with my dispatch. I wish I had been able to
please you with my requested advice.

You have given new beauties to the charming Ode which you have
transmitted to me. What pity that the wretches you have to deal with,
put you out of your admirable course; in the pursuit of which, like the
sun, you was wont to cheer and illuminate all you shone upon!

LETTER XIII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 26.

How soothing a thing is praise from those we love!--Whether conscious
or not of deserving it, it cannot but give us great delight, to see
ourselves stand high in the opinion of those whose favour we are
ambitious to cultivate. An ingenuous mind will make this farther use of
it, that if he be sensible that it does not already deserve the charming
attributes, it will hasten (before its friend finds herself mistaken) to
obtain the graces it is complimented for: and this it will do, as well
in honour to itself, as to preserve its friend's opinion, and justify
her judgment. May this be always my aim!--And then you will not only
give the praise, but the merit; and I shall be more worthy of that
friendship, which is the only pleasure I have to boast of.

Most heartily I thank you for the kind dispatch of your last favour. How
much am I indebted to you! and even to your honest servant!--Under what
obligations does my unhappy situation lay me!

But let me answer the kind contents of it, as well as I may.

As to getting over my disgusts to Mr. Solmes, it is impossible to
be done; while he wants generosity, frankness of heart, benevolence,
manners and every qualification that distinguishes the worthy man. O my
dear! what a degree of patience, what a greatness of soul, is required
in the wife, not to despise a husband who is more ignorant, more
illiterate, more low-minded than herself!--The wretch, vested with
prerogatives, who will claim rule in virtue of them (and not to permit
whose claim, will be as disgraceful to the prescribing wife as to the
governed husband); How shall such a husband as this be borne, were he,
for reasons of convenience and interest, even to be our CHOICE? But,
to be compelled to have such a one, and that compulsion to arise from
motives as unworthy of the prescribers as of the prescribed, who can
think of getting over an aversion so justly founded? How much easier to
bear the temporary persecutions I labour under, because temporary, than
to resolve to b