er features, can. These
sea-prospered gentlemen, as my uncle has often made me think, not used
to any but elemental controul, and even ready to buffet that, bluster
often as violently as the winds they are accustomed to be angry at.

I believe Mr. Solmes will look as much like a fool as I shall do, if it
be true, as my uncle Harlowe writes, and as Betty often tells me, that
he is as much afraid of seeing me, as I am of seeing him.

Adieu, my happy, thrice-happy Miss Howe, who have no hard terms fixed
to your duty!--Who have nothing to do, but to fall in with a choice your
mother has made for you, to which you have not, nor can have, a just
objection: except the frowardness of our sex, as our free censurers
would perhaps take the liberty to say, makes it one, that the choice was
your mother's, at first hand. Perverse nature, we know, loves not to
be prescribed to; although youth is not so well qualified, either by
sedateness or experience, to choose for itself.

To know your own happiness, and that it is now, nor to leave it to after
reflection to look back upon the preferable past with a heavy and self
accusing heart, that you did not choose it when you might have chosen
it, is all that is necessary to complete your felicity!--And this power
is wished you by

Your CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER XXX

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SATURDAY, APRIL 2.

I ought yesterday to have acknowledged the receipt of your parcel. Robin
tells me, that the Joseph Leman, whom you mention as the traitor, saw
him. He was in the poultry-yard, and spoke to Robin over the bank
which divides that from the green-lane. 'What brings you hither, Mr.
Robert?--But I can tell. Hie away, as fast as you can.'

No doubt but their dependence upon this fellow's vigilance, and upon
Betty's, leaves you more at liberty in your airings, than you would
otherwise be. But you are the only person I ever heard of, who in such
circumstances had not some faithful servant to trust little offices to.
A poet, my dear, would not have gone to work for an Angelica, without
giving her her Violetta, her Cleante, her Clelia, or some such
pretty-named confidant--an old nurse at the least.

I read to my mother several passages of your letters. But your last
paragraph, in your yesterday's quite charmed her. You have won her heart
by it, she told me. And while her fit of gratitude for it lasted, I was
thinking to make my proposal, and to press it with all the e