it was Lucy's; another time it was Emily's; and at another time Lady Clementina's!-I was fond of it beyond expression.

I again dreamed I was married: Sir Charles again was the man. He did not love me. My grandmamma and aunt, on their knees, and with tears, besought him to love their child; and pleaded to him my love of him of long standing, begun in gratitude; and that he was the only man I ever loved. Ó how I wept in my dream! My face and bosom were wet with my real tears. My sobs, and my distress and theirs, awakened me; but I dropt asleep, and fell into the very same reverie. He upbraided me with being the cause that he had not Lady Clementina. He said, and so sternly! I am sure he cannot look so sternly, that he thought me a much better creature than I proved to be; yet methought, in my own heart, I was not altered. I fell down at his feet. I called it my misfortune that he could not love me: I would not say it was his fault. It might, perhaps, be his misfortune too! -And then I said, love and hatred are not always in one's power. If you cannot love the poor creature who kneels before you, that shall be a cause sufficient with me for a divorce: I desire not to fasten myself on the man who can not love me. Let me be divorced from you, sir -You shall be at liberty to assign any cause for the separation but crime. I will bind myself never, never to marry again; but you shall be free-And God bless you, and her you can love better than your poor Harriet !-Fool! I weep as I write!-What a weak creature I am, since I have not been well!

In another part of my reverie he loved me dearly; but when he nearly approached me, or I him, he always became a ghost, and flitted from me. Scenes once changed from England to Italy, from Italy to England: Italy, I thought, was a dreary wild, covered with snow, and pinched with frost: England, on the contrary, was a country glorious to the eye; gilded with a sun not too fervid; the air perfumed with odours wafted by the most balmy zephyrs from orangetrees, citrons, myrtles, and jessamines. In Italy, at one time, Jeronymo's wounds were healed; at another, they were breaking out afresh. Mr Lowther was obliged to fly the country: Why, did not appear. There was a fourth brother, I thought; and he taking part with the cruel Laurana, was killed by the General. Father Marescotti was at one time a martyr for his religion; at another, a cardinal; and talked of for pope. . But still, what was more shocking, and which so terrified me that I awoke in a horror which put an end to all my reveries (for I slept no more that night)-Sir Charles, I thought, was assassinated by Greville. Greville fled his country for it, and became a vagabond, a Cain, the accursed, I thought, of God and man-I, your poor Harriet, a widow; left in the most calamitous circumstance that a woman can be in

Good Heaven!-But, avaunt, recollection!-Painful, most painful, recollection of ideas so terrible! none of your intrusions

No more of these horrid, horrid incongruities, will I trouble you with! How have they run away with me! I am hardly now recovered from the tremblings into which they threw me ! What, my dear, is the reason, that though we know these dreams, these fleeting shadows of the night, to be no more than dreams, illusions of the working mind, fettered and debased as it is by the organs through which it conveys its confined powers to the grosser matter, body, then sleeping inactive, as in the shades of death; yet that we cannot help being strongly impressed by them, and meditating interpretation of the flying vapours, when reason is broad awake, and tells us, that it is weakness to be disturbed at them?-But superstition is, more or less, I believe, in every mind, a natu ral defect. Happily poised is that mind, which, on the one hand, is too strong to be affected by the slavish fears it brings with it; and, on the other, runs not into the contrary extreme, scepticism, the parent of infidelity.

You cannot imagine, my dear, the pleasure I had, the more for my various dream, when your brother, so amiably serene-love, condescension, affability, shining in his manly countenancealighted, as I saw him through my window, at the same time I had the call to breakfast-Dear sir! I could have said, Have not you been disturbed by cruel, perplexing, contradictory visions? Souls may be near, when bodies are distant. But are we not one soul? Could yours be unaffected when mine was so much disturbed? But, thank God, you are come! Come safe, unhurt, pleased with me! My fond arms, were the ceremony passed, should welcome you to your Harriet. I would tell you all my disturbances from the absurd illusions of the past night, and my mind should gather strength from the confession of its weakness.

He talked of setting out early to-morrow morning. His first visit, he said, should be to Sir Harry Beauchamp; his next to Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. Poor Sir Harry! he said, and sighed for him.

Tender-hearted man! as Clementina often called your brother: he pitied Lady Beauchamp. His poor Beauchamp !-The loss of a father, he said, where a great estate was to descend to the son, was the test of a noble heart. He could answer for the sincerity of his Beauchamp's grief, on this trying occasion. Of what joy, said he,

sitting between two of the best of women, equally fond of him, speaking low, was I, was my father deprived! He had allowed me to think of returning to the arms of his paternal love. I make no doubt, but on looking into his affairs, (his son, perhaps his steward,) he would have done for his daughters, what I have done for my sisters. We should both of us have had

a new life to begin and pursue; a happy one, from my duty and his indulgence, it must have been. I had planned it out.-With all humility I would, by degrees, have laid it before him, first one part, then another, as his condescension would have countenanced me.

Vile, vile reveries!-Must not this young man be the peculiar care of Heaven? How could my disturbed imagination terrify me but in a dream, that the machinations of the darkest mind (as his must be [Greville is not so bad a man] who could meditate violence against virtue so sacredly guarded) could be permitted to prevail against his life!

My grandmamma once, with tears in her eyes, as he talked of taking leave, laid her hand upon his, and instantly withdrew it, as if she thought the action too free. He took her hand, and with both his, lifted it to his lips-Venerable goodness! he called her. She looked so proud, and 80 comforted! every one so pleased!—It is a charming thing to see blooming youth fond of declining age!

They dropped away one by one, and I found myself left alone with him. Sweetly tender was his address to me !-How shall I part with my Harriet? said he. My eyes were ready to overflow. By a twinkling motion, I thought to disperse over the whole eye the self-felt too-ready tear my upper lip had the motion in it, throbbing, like the pulsation which we call the lifeblood-I was afraid to speak, for fear of bursting into a fit of tenderness; yet was conscious that my very silence was more expressive of tenderness than speech could have been. With what delight did his eager eye (as mine, now and then glancing upward, discovered) meditate my downcast face, and silent concern! Yet such was his delicacy, that he took not that notice of it, in words, which, if he had, would have added to my confusion: it was enough for him that he saw it. As he was contented silently to enjoy it, I am sorry he did see it. He merited even open and unreserved assurances of love. But I the sooner recovered my spirits, for his delicate non-observance. I could not, circumstanced as we were, say I wished for his ⚫ speedy return; yet, my dear, my purest wishes were, that he would not be long absent. My grandmamma pleases herself with having the dear man for her inmate, on his return; there is therefore no need, for the sake of the world's speech, to abridge my month; yet ought we to be shy of giving consequence to a man, who, through delicacy, is afraid to let us see that he assumes consequence from our speechless tenderness for him?-He restored me to speech, by a change of subject.

Two melancholy offices shall I have to perform, said he, before I have the honour to attend again my dearest Miss Byron: What must be the heart that melts not at another's woe !

As to Sir Hargrave, I don't apprehend that he is near his end, as is the case of poor Sir Harry. Sir Hargrave labours under bodily pains, from the attack made upon him in France, and from a constitution ruined, perhaps, by riot; and having nothing of consolation to give himself from reflections on his past life, (as we see by his letter,) his fears are soo strong for his hopes. But shall I tell him, if I find it will give him comfort, that you wish his recovery, and are sorry for his indisposition? Small crevices let in light, sometimes upon a benighted imagination. He must consider his attempt upon your free will (though not meant upon your honour) as one of the enormities of his past life.

I was overpowered with this instance of his generous goodness. Teach me, sir, to be good, to be generous, to be forgiving-like you!—Bid me do what you think proper for me to doSay to the poor man, whose insults upon you in his challenge were then my terror, (0, how much my terror!) in my name, say all that you think will tend to give him consolation.

Sweet excellence! Did I ever hope to meet in woman with such an enlargement of heart!— Clementina only, of all the women I ever knew, can be set in comparison with you; and had she been granted to me, the union of minds between us, from difference of religion, could not have been so perfect as yours and mine must be.

Greatly gratified as I was by the compliment, I was sorry, methought, that it was made me at the expense of my sex. His words, "Did I ever hope to meet in woman with such an enlargement of heart!" piqued me a little. Are not women as capable as men, thought I, of enlarged sentiments?

The leave he took of me was extremely tender. I endeavoured to check my sensibility. He departed with the blessings of the whole family, as well as mine. I was forced to go up to my closet: I came not down till near dinner-time; I could not; and yet my uncle accompanied my cousin James to Northampton: so that I had no apprehensions of his raillery. One wants trials sometimes, I believe, to make one support one's self with some degree of outward fortitude, at least. Had my uncle been at home, I should not have dared to have given so much way to my concern; but soothing and indulgence, sometimes, I believe, add to our imbecility of mind, instead of strengthening our reason.

My uncle made it near eleven at night before he returned with my cousin James. Not one of the company, at his quitting it, seemed inclinable to move. He praised the elegance of the entertainment, and the ease and cheerfulness, even to vivacity, of Sir Charles. How could he be so lively!-How many ways have men to divert themselves when anything arduous attacks

them!-While we poor women!-But your town diversions-Your Ranelaghs, Vauxhalls -bid fair to divert such of us as can carry ourselves out of ourselves! Yet are we likely to pay dear for the privilege, since we thereby render our sex cheap in the eyes of men, harden our fronts, and are in danger of losing that modesty, at least of outward behaviour, which is the characteristic of women!

Saturday Morning.

He is gone: gone, indeed! Went early this morning. Every mouth was, last night, it seems, full of his praises: the men admire him as much as the women. I am glad of it, methinks, since that is an indirect confession that there are few among them like him. Not so much superiority over our sex, therefore, in the other, in general, with their enlarged hearts. Have not we a Clementina, a Mrs Shirley, and a long &c.?-I praise not you, my dear Lady L- and Lady G, to your faces; so I leave the &c. untranslated.

We do so look upon one another here! Are so unsatisfied with ourselves! We are not half so good company as we were before Sir Charles came among us. How can that be? But my grandmamma has left us too!-that's one thing. She is retired to Shirley-Manor, to mortify, after so rich a regale: those were her words.

I hope your brother will write to us. Should I not have asked him? To be sure he will; except his next letters from Italy should be-But no doubt he will write to us. Mr Greville vows to my uncle, he will not come near me. He can less and less, he says, bear to think of my marrying, though he does what he can to comfort himself with reflecting on the extraordinary merit of the man, who alone, he says, can deserve me. He wishes the day was over; and the d-l's in him, he adds, if the irrevocableness of the event does not cure him. Mr Fenwick had yesterday his final answer from Lucy, and he is to set out on Monday for Carlisle. He declares, that he will not return without a wife; so, thank Heaven, his heart is whole, notwith standing his double disappointment.

BUT my heart is set on hearing how the excellent Clementina takes the news of your brother's actual address, and probability of succeeding. I should not think it at all surprising, if, urged as she is, to marry a man indifferent to her, (the lord of her heart unmarried,) she should retract-O my Charlotte!-What a variety of strange, strange, what shall I call them? would result from such a retraction and renewal of claim! I never thought myself superstitious; but the happiness before me is so

much beyond my merit, that I can hardly flatter myself, at times, that it will take place.

WHAT think you, my dear, made me write so apprehensively?-My aunt had just shewn me a letter she had written to you-desiring you-to exercise for us your fancy, your judgment. I have no affectation on this subject-I long ago gave affectation to the winds-But so hasty! So undoubting!-Are there not many possibilities, and some probabilities, against us? Something presumptuous !-Lord bless me, my dear, should anything happen-Jewels bought, and already presented-Apparel-How would all these preparations aggravate! My aunt says, he shall be obliged: Lucy, Nancy, the Misses Holles, join with her. They long to be exercising their fancies upon the patterns, which they suppose your ladyship and Lady L- will send down. My uncle hurries my aunt. So as something is going forward, he says, he shall be easy. There is no resisting so strong a tide: so let them take their course. They are all in haste, my dear, to be considered as relations of your family, and to regard all yours as kindred of ours. Happy, happy, the band, that shall tie both families together!

HARRIET BYRON.

LETTER CCXXXV.

SIR CHARLES GRANDISON TO MISS BYRON.

London, Monday Night, Oct. 30. YOUR humanity, my dear and ever dear Miss Byron, was so much engaged by the melancholy letter of Sir Hargrave to Dr Bartlett, which I communicated to you, and by the distress of my Beauchamp, on the desperate state of his father's health, that I know you will be pleased to hear that I have been enabled to give some consolation to both.

Sir Harry, who is in town, wanted to open his mind to me with regard to some affairs which made him extremely uneasy, and which, he said, he could not reveal to anybody else. He shewed some reluctance to entrust the secrets to my bosom. There shall they ever rest. He has found himself easier since. He rejoiced to me on the good understanding subsisting, and likely to subsist, between his lady and son. He desired me to excuse him for joining me with them, without asking my leave, in the trusts created by his will; and on this occasion, sending for his lady, he put her hand in mine, and recommended her, and her interests, as those of the most obliging of wives, to my care. I found Sir Hargrave at his house in Čavendish Square. He is excessively low-spirited.

Dr Bartlett visited him at Windsor, several times. The Doctor prevailed on him to retain a worthy clergyman, as his chaplain.

The poor man asked after you, madam. He had heard, he said, that I was soon likely to be the happiest of men: Was it so? He wept at my answer; lamented the wretched hand, as he called it, that he had made of it, blessed as he was with such prosperous circumstances, in the prime of youth, and wished he had his days to come over again, and his company to choose. Unhappy man! he was willing to remove from himself the load which lay upon him. No doubt but this was the recourse of his companions, likewise, in extremity. He blessed my dearest Miss Byron, when I told him she pitied him. He called himself by harsh, and even shocking names, for having been capable of offending so much goodness.

What subjects are these, to entertain my angel with!-But though we should not seek, yet we ought not perhaps to shun them, when they naturally, as I may say, offer themselves to our knowledge.

But another subject calls for the attention of my dearest, loveliest of women; a subject that will lay a still stronger claim to it than either of the solemn ones I have touched upon. I enclose the letter which contains it. You will be so good as to read it in English to such of our friends as read not Italian. This letter was left to Mrs Beaumont to dispatch to me; whence its unwished-for delay: for she detained it, to send with it an equally-obliging one of her own. The contents of this welcome letter, my dearest Miss Byron, will render it unnecessary to wait for an answer to my last to Signor Jeronymo, in which I acquaint him with my actual address, and the hopes I presume to flatter myself with. I humbly hope you will think so.

I am not afraid that one of the most generous of women will be affected with the passage in which Signor Jeronymo expresses his pity for her, because of the affection, he says, I must ever retain for his noble sister. He says right. And it is my happiness, that you, the sisterexcellence of the admirable Clementina, will allow me to glory in my gratitude to her. You will still more readily allow me so to do, when you have perused this letter. Shall not the man who hopes to be qualified for the supreme love, of which the purest earthly is but a type, and who aims at an universal benevolence, be able to admire, in the mind of Clementina, the same great qualities which shine out with such lustre in that of Miss Byron?

With what pride do I look forward to the visit that several of this noble family intend to make us, because of the unquestionable assurance that they will rejoice in my happiness,

See p. 639.

and admire the angel who is allowed to take place in my affections of the angel who would not have scrupled to accept of my vows, had it not been, as she expresses herself,† for the intervention of invincible obstacles!

Mrs Beaumont, in her letter, gives me the particulars of the conversation between her and Clementina, almost in the same words with those of Jeronymo, in the letter enclosed. She makes no doubt that Lady Clementina will, in time, yield to the entreaties of her friends in favour of a man, against whom, if she can be prevailed upon to forego her wishes to assume the veil, she can have no one objection. You will see, madam, by the enclosed, what they hope for in Italy from us; what Clementina, what Jeronymo, what a whole excellent family, hope for. You know how ardently my own family wish you to accelerate the happy day: yours refer themselves wholly to you-Pardon me, my dearest Miss Byron, I will tell you what are my hopes -They are, that when I am permitted to return to Northamptonshire, the happy day shall not be postponed three.

And now, loveliest and dearest of women! allow me to expect the honour of a line, to let me know how much of the tedious month, from last Thursday, you will be so good as to abate. Permit me to say, that I can have nothing that needs to detain me from the beloved of my heart, after Friday next.

If, madam, you insist upon the whole month, I beg to know, out of what part of our nuptial life, the LAST or the FIRST, (happy, as I hope it will be,) you would be willing to deduct the week, the fortnight, that will be carried into the blank space of courtship, by the delay? I hope, my dear Miss Byron, that I shall be able to tell you, years and years after we are ONE, that there is not an hour of those past, or of those to come, that I would abate, or wish to throw into that blank. Permit me so to call it. The days of courtship cannot be our happiest. Who celebrates the day of their first acquaintance, though it may be remembered with pleasure?-Do not the happy pair date their happiness from the day of marriage? How justly then, when hearts are assured, when minds cannot alter, are those which precede it, to be deemed a blank!

After all, your cheerful compliance with my wishes, is the great desirable. Whatever shall be your pleasure, must determine me. My utmost gratitude will be engaged by the condescension, whenever you shall distinguish the day of the year, distinguished as it will be to the end of my life, that shall give me the greatest blessing of it, and confirm me For ever yours,

CHARLES GRANDISON.

+ See p. 641.

LETTER CCXXXVI.

SIGNOR JERONYMO DELLA PORRETTA TO SIR CHARLES GRANDISON.

[Enclosed in the preceding.]

Bologna, Oct. 18, N. S.

I GAVE you, my dear Grandison, in mine of the 5th, the copy of a paper written by my sister, which filled us with hopes of her compliance with the wishes of all her family. She took time for deliberation; time was given her; but still she insisted on receiving your next let ters before she came to any resolution. Mrs Beaumont herself was of opinion, that the dear creature only meditated delay: that also was ours. What, invincibly determined as she is, to adhere to the resolution she has so greatly taken, can she hope for (said we among ourselves) from the expected letters? For she had declared herself to be so determined, to my brother Giacomo, who actually assured her of all our consents to an alliance with you, if she repented of that resolution.

All this time we offered not to introduce, nor even to name, to her the Count of Belvedere. Awed by her former calamity, and by an excursiveness of imagination, which at times shewed itself in her words and behaviour, we avoided saying or doing anything that was likely to disturb her. Giacomo himself, though he wanted to return to Naples, had patience with her pretty trifling, beyond our expectation. At last arrived yours of the 29th of September,* kindly enclosing a copy of yours to her, of the same date. We question not but your reply to mine of the 5th current, is on the road; nor that the contents will be such as we may hope for, from considerations of our happiness and your own; ⚫ but these, we thought, without waiting for that, would answer the desired end. I will tell you what was said by every one, on the perusal of both.

Is this the man, said the General, whom I sometimes so rudely treated? I rejoice that we were reconciled before he left us. I had formed a notion to his disadvantage, that he was capable of art, and hoped to keep his hold in my sister's affections, in view of some turn in his favour: but he is the most single-hearted of men. These two letters will strengthen our arguments. Clementina, who has more than once declared that she wishes him married to an Englishwoman, cannot now, that she will see there is a woman with whom he thinks he can be happy, wish to stand in his way. These will furnish us with means to attack her in her

strongest hold; in her generosity, her delicacy; and will bring to the test her veracity. The contents of these letters will confirm her before half-taken resolution, as in her paper, to oblige us. Let Laurana, as the chevalier says, go into a nunnery: Clementina will marry, or she is a false girl, and the Sforza women will be disappointed.

My mother applauded you, and rejoiced to hear that there is a woman of your own nation who is capable of making you more happy than her daughter could.

What difficulties, said the young Marchioness, (ever your friend,) must a situation so critical have laid him under! A man so humane! And what farther difficulties must he have to surmount, in offering to a woman, whom even Olivia, as he says, admires, a hand that has been refused by another? May this admired woman be propitious to his suit!

She must, she must, said the Bishop. If she has a heart disengaged, she cannot refuse a man so accomplished. Jeronymo, hasten to be well. If she favour him, we will all go over, and congratulate them both.

I, for my part, said I, would give up years of life to see my friend as happy in marriage as he deserves to be.

We must tell Clementina, said my father, as our Giacomo has hinted, that it will not become her generosity to stand in the way of the chevalier's happiness.

We sent up your letter to our sister, by Camilla. She was busy (Mrs Beaumont sitting by her at work) in correcting the proportion which once you found fault with, in a figure in her piece of Noah's ark, and the rising deluge. A letter, madam, from the chevalier-To me! said she; and overturned the table on which her materials lay, in haste to take it.

When we thought she had had time to consider of the contents, we sent up to request the favour of speaking with Mrs Beaumont. We owned to her, that we had a copy of your letter to Clementina; and asked, what the dear creature said to the contents of it?

She read it, answered Mrs Beaumont in her own closet. I thought that she was too long by herself. I went to her. She was in tears. O Mrs Beaumont! as soon as she saw me, holding out the letter-See here!-The chevalier is against me!-Cruel, I could almost say, cruel Grandison!-He turns my own words upon me. I have furnished him with arguments against myself What shall I do?-I have for many days past repented that I gave, under my hand, reason to my friends to expect my compliance. I cannot, cannot, confirm the hopes I gave !What shall I do?

I took it, read it, continued Mrs Beaumont,

Ib. Letter CCXXI. p. 589.