LETTER I.

MISS LUCY SELBY TO MISS HARRIET BYRON.

Ashby-Cannons, Jan. 10.

YOUR resolution to accompany Mrs Reeves to London, has greatly alarmed your three lovers: and two of them, at least, will let you know that it has. Such a lovely girl as my Harriet, must expect to be more accountable for her steps than one less excellent and less attractive. Mr Greville, in his usual resolute way, threatens to follow you to London; and there, he says, he will watch the motions of every man who approaches you; and, if he find reason for it, will early let such man know his pretensions, and the danger he may run into if he pretend to be his competitor. But let me not do him injustice: though he talks of a rival thus harshly, he speaks of you more highly than man ever spoke of woman. Angel and goddess are phrases you have been used to from him; and though spoken in his humorous way, yet I am sure he most sincerely admires you.

Mr Fenwick, in a less determined manner, declares, that he will follow you to town, if you stay there above one fortnight.

The gentle Orme sighs his apprehensions, and wishes you would change your purpose. Though hopeless, he says, it is some pleasure to him that he can think himself in the same county with you; and much more, that he can tread in your footsteps to and from church every Sunday, and behold you there. He wonders how your grandmamma, your aunt, your uncle, can spare you. Your cousins Reeves surely, he says, are very happy in their influences over us all.

Each of the gentlemen is afraid, that, by increasing the number of your admirers, you will increase his difficulties: but what is that to them, I asked, when they already know, that you are not inclined to favour any of the three?

If you hold your resolution, and my cousins Reeves their time of setting out, pray let me know, and I will attend you at my uncle Selby's, to wish you a good journey, much pleasure in town, and a return with a safe and sound heart. My sister, who, poor dear girl, continues extremely weak and low, will spare me for a purpose so indispensable. I will not have you come to us. I know it would grieve you to see her in the way she is in. You too much take to heart the infirmities of your friends which you cannot cure; and as your grandmamma lives upon your smiles, and you rejoice all your friends by your cheerfulness, it would be cruel to make you sad.

MR GREVILLE has just left us. He dropt in upon us as we were going to dinner. My grandmother Selby, you know, is always pleased with his rattling. She prevailed on him to alight, and sit down with us. All his talk was of you. He repeated his former threatenings (as I called them to him) on your going to town. After dinner, he read us a letter from Lady Frampton relating to you. He read us also some passages from the copy of his answer, with design, I believe, that I should ask him to leave it behind him. He is a vain creature, you know, and seemed fond of what he had written. I did ask him. He pretended to make a scruple of your seeing; but it was a faint one. However, he called for pen and ink; and when it was brought him, scratched over two passages, and that with so many little flourishes, (as you will

see,) that he thought they could not be read. But the ink I furnished him with happening to be paler than his, you will find he was not cunning enough. I promised to return it. Send me a line by the bearer, to tell me if your resolution holds as to the day. Adieu, my dearest Harriet. May angels protect and guide you, whithersoever you go! LUCY SELBY.

LETTER II.

MR GREVILLE TO LADY FRAMPTON.

[Enclosed in the preceding.]

Northampton, Jan. 6. YOUR ladyship demands a description of the person of the celebrated Miss Byron in our neighbourhood; and to know, whether, as report tells you, love has listed me in the number of her particular admirers.—Particular admirers you well distinguish, since every one who beholds her admires her.

Your ladyship confines your inquiries to her person, you tell me; and you own that women are much more solicitous about the beauties of that, than of the mind. Perhaps it may be so; and that their envy is much sooner excited by the one than by the other. But who, madam, can describe the person of Miss Harriet Byron, and her person only; animated as every feature is by a mind that bespeaks all human excellence, and dignifies her in every air, in every look, in every motion?

No man living has a greater passion for beauty than I have. Till I knew Miss Byron, I was one of those who regarded nothing else in the sex. Indeed, I considered all intellectual attainments as either useless or impertinent in women. Your ladyship knows what were my free notions on this head, and has rebuked me for them. A wise, a learned lady, I considered as a very unnatural character. I wanted women

to be all love, and nothing else. A very little prudence allowed I to enter into their composition; just enough to distinguish the man of sense from the fool; and that for my own sake. You know I have vanity, madam; but, lovely as Miss Byron's person is, I defy the greatest sensualist on earth not to admire her mind more than her person. What a triumph would the devil have, as I have often thought, when I have stood contemplating her perfections, especially at church, were he able to raise up a man that could lower this angel into woman!—Pardon me!-Your ladyship knows my mad way of saying everything that rises to my thoughts.

Sweetness of temper must make plain features glow what an effect must it then have upon fine ones! Never was there a sweetertempered woman. Indeed, from sixteen to twenty, all the sex (kept in humour by their hopes, and by their attractions) are said to be good-tempered; but she is remarkably so. She is just turned of twenty, but looks not more than seventeen. Her beauty, hardly yet in its full blow, will last longer, I imagine, than in earlier blossom. Yet the prudence visible in her whole aspect, gave her a distinction, even at twelve, that promised what she would be at a riper age.

Yet, with all this reigning good-nature visible in her face and manner, there is such a native dignity in all she says, in all she does, (though mingled with a frankness that shews her mind's superiority to the minds of almost all other women,) that it damps and suppresses, in the most audacious, all imaginations of bold familiarity.

I know not, by my soul, how she does this neither; yet so it is. She jests, she rallies; but I cannot rally her again. Love, it is said, dignifies the adored object. Perhaps it is that which awes me.

And now will your ladyship doubt of an affirmative answer to your second question, Whether love has listed me in the number of her particular admirers?

Fen

He has and the devil take me if I can help myself; and yet I have no encouragement-nor anybody else; that's my consolation. wick is deeper in, if possible, than I. We had at our first acquaintance, as you have heard, a tilting-bout on the occasion; but we are sworn friends now; each having agreed to try his fortune by patience and perseverance; and being assured that the one has no more of her favour to boast of, than the other. "We have indeed blustered away between us half a score more of her admirers. Poor whining Orme, however, perseveres. But of him we make no account: he has a watery head; and though he finds a way, by his sister, who visits at Mr Selby's, and is much esteemed there, to let Miss Byron know his passion for her, notwithstanding the negative he has received; yet doubt we not that she is safe from a flame that he will quench with his tears, before it can rise to a head to disturb

us.

"You ladies love men should whine after you; but never yet did I find, that where a blustering fellow was a competitor, the lady married the milksop."

But let me in this particular do Miss Byron justice: how she manages it, I can't tell ; but she is courteous to all; nor could ever any man

and such ivory and even teeth, must give beauty to a mouth less charming than hers.

Her nose adds dignity to her other features. Her chin is sweetly turned, and almost imperceptibly dimpled.

Her eyes;-ay, madam, her eyes!-Good Heaven! what a lustre ! yet not a fierce, but a mild lustre. How have I despised the romancing poets for their unnatural descriptions of the eyes of their heroines! But I have thought those descriptions, though absurd enough in conscience, less absurd, (allowing something for poetical licence,) ever since I beheld those of Miss Harriet Byron.

Her hair is a real and unlaboured ornament to her. All natural its curls; art has no share in the lustre it gives to her other beauties.

I mentioned her neck-here I dare not trust myself-Inimitable creature! All-attracting loveliness!

Her arm-your ladyship knows my passion for a delicate arm-by my soul, madam, your own does not exceed it.

Her hands are extremely fine. Such fingers! and they accustomed to the pen, to the needle, to the harpsichord; excelling in all-O madam! women have souls. I now am convinced they have. I dare own to your ladyship, that once I doubted it, on a supposition that they were given us for temporary purposes only.And have I not seen her dance! have I not heard her sing!-But indeed, mind and person, she is all harmony.

Then for reading, for acquired knowledge, what lady so young-but you know the character of her grandfather Shirley. He was a man of universal learning, and, from his public employments abroad, as polite as learned. This girl, from seven years of age, when he came to settle in England, to fourteen, when she lost him, was his delight; and her education and instruction the amusement of his vacant hours. This is the period, he used to say, in which the foundations of all female goodness are to be laid, since so soon after fourteen they leap into women. The dead languages he aimed not to teach her, lest he should overload the young mind; but in the Italian and French he made her an adept.

Nor were the advantages common ones which she received from his lady, her grandmother, and from her aunt Selby, her father's sister, a woman of equal worthiness. Her grandmother, particularly, is one of the most pious, yet most cheerful, of women. She will not permit her daughter Byron, she says, to live with her, for both their sakes-for the girl's sake, because there is a greater resort of company at Mr Selby's, than at Shirley Manor; and she is afraid, as her grandchild has a serious turn, that her own contemplative life may make her more grave than she wishes so young a woman to be. Youth, she says, is the season for cheerfulness

For her own sake, because she looks upon her Harriet's company as a cordial too rich to be always at hand; and when she has a mind to regale, she will either send for her, fetch her, or visit her at Mr Selby's. One of her letters to Mrs Selby I once saw. It ran thus:" You must spare me, my Harriet. I am in pain. My spirits are not high. I would not have the undecayed mind yield, for want of using the means, to the decaying body. One happy day with our child, the true child of the united minds of her late excellent parents, will, I hope, effect the cure: If it do not, you must spare her

to me two."

Did I not tell you, madam, that it was very difficult to describe the person only of this admirable young lady-But I stop here. A horrid apprehension comes across me!-How do I know but I am praising another man's future wife, and not my own? Here is a cousin of hers, a Mrs Reeves, a fine lady from London, come down under the cursed influence of my evil stars, to carry this Harriet away with her into the gay world, Woman! woman!-I beg your ladyship's pardon; but what angel of twenty is proof against vanity? The first hour she appears, she will be a toast; stars and titles will crowd about her; and who knows how far a paltry coronet may dazzle her who deserves an imperial crown? But woe to the man, whoever he be, whose pretensions dare to interfere (and have any assurance of success) with those of

If I had not had reasons before to avoid a more than neighbourly civility to him, he has now furnished me with very strong ones. The threatening lover must certainly make a tyrant husband. Don't you think so, Lucy?-But make not supposals of lover or husband to him: these bold men will turn shadows into substance in their own favour.

A woman who is so much exalted above what she can deserve, has reason to be terrified, were she to marry the complimenter, (even could she suppose him so blinded by his passion as not to be absolutely insincere,) to think of the height she must fall from in his opinion, when she has put it in his power to treat her but as what she

is.

Indeed I both despise and fear a very high complimenter.-Despise him for his designing flattery, supposing him not to believe himself, or, if he mean what he says, for his injudiciousness. I fear him, lest he should (as in the former case he must hope) be able to raise a vanity in me, that would sink me beneath his meanness, and give him cause to triumph over my folly, at the very time that I am full of my own wisdom.

High-strained compliments, in short, always pull me down; always make me shrink into myself. Have I not some vanity to guard against? I have no doubt but Mr Greville wished I should see this letter; and this gives me some little indignation against myself; for does it not look as if, from some faults in my conduct, Mr Greville had formed hopes of succeeding by treating me like a fool?

I hope these gentlemen will not follow me to town, as they threaten. If they do, I will not see them, if I can any way avoid it. Yet, for me to appear to them solicitous on this head, or to desire them not to go, will be in some measure to lay myself under an obligation to their acquiescence. It is not therefore for me to hope to influence them in this matter, since they expect too much in return for it from me; and since they will be ready to found a merit in their passion even for disobliging me.

I cannot bear, however, to think of their dangling after me wherever I go. These men, my dear, were we to give them importance with us, would be greater infringers of our natural free dom, than the most severe parents; and for their own sakes: whereas parents, if ever so despotic, (if not unnatural ones indeed,) mean solely our good, though headstrong girls do not always think so. Yet such, even such, can be teazed out of their wills, at least out of their duty, by the men who style themselves lovers, when they are invincible to all the entreaties and commands of their parents.

O that the next eight or ten years of my life, if I find not in the interim a man on whom my whole undivided heart can fix, were happily over! As happily as the last alike impor

tant four years! To be able to look down from the elevation of thirty years, my principles fixed, and to have no capital folly to reproach myself with, what a happiness would that be!

;

My cousin Reeves's time of setting out holds the indulgence of my dearest friends continues; and my resolution holds. But I will see my Nancy before I set out. What! shall I enter upon a party of pleasure, and leave in my heart room to reflect, in the midst of it, that there is a dear suffering friend who had reason to think I was afraid of giving myself pain, when I might, by the balm of true love and friendly soothings, administer comfort to her wounded heart No, my Lucy, believe me, if I have not generosity enough, I have selfishness enough, to make me avoid a sting so severe as this would be to your HARRIET BYRON.

LETTER IV.

MISS BYRON TO MISS SELBY.

Grosvenor-Street, Tuesday, Jan. 24. We are just arrived. We had a very agreeable journey. I need not tell you that Mr Greville and Mr Fenwick attended us to our first baiting, and had a genteel dinner ready provided for us: the gentlemen will tell you this, and all particulars.

They both renewed their menaces of following me to London, if I staid above one month. They were so good as to stretch their fortnight to a month.

Mr Fenwick, in very pathetic terms, as he found an opportunity to engage me alone for a few minutes, besought me to love him. Mr Greville was as earnest with me to declare that I hated him. Such a declaration, he said, was all he at present wished for. It was strange, he told me, that he neither could prevail on me to encourage his love, nor to declare my hatred. He is a whimsical creature.

I rallied him with my usual freedom; and told him, that if there were one person in the world that I was capable of hating, I could make the less scruple to oblige him. He thanked me for that.

The two gentlemen would fain have proceeded farther; but as they are never out of their way, I dare say they would have gone to London; and there have dangled on till we should not have got rid of them, for my whole time of being in town.

I was very gravely earnest with them to leave us, when we stept into the coach in order to proceed. Fenwick, you dog, said Mr Greville, we must return; Miss Byron looks grave. Gravity and a rising colour in the finest face in the world, indicate as much as the frowns of other beauties. And in the most respectful manner