ire and love you.
Nor will I ever change my condition, while you live, whether you change
your's or not: for, having once had the presumption to address you, I
cannot stoop to think of any other woman: and this I solemnly declare in
the presence of that God, whom I daily pray to bless and protect you, be
your determination what it will with regard to, dearest Madam,

Your most devoted and ever affectionate
and faithful servant,
ALEXANDER WYERLEY.

LETTER XXXV

MISS CL. HARLOWE, TO ALEX. WYERLEY, ESQ.
SAT. AUG. 26.

SIR,

The generosity of your purpose would have commanded not only my notice,
but my thanks, although you had not given me the alternative you are
pleased to call artful. And I do therefore give you my thanks for your
kind letter.

At the time you distinguished me by your favourable opinion, I told you,
Sir, that my choice was the single life. And most truly did I tell you
so.

When that was not permitted me, and I looked round upon the several
gentlemen who had been proposed to me, and had reason to believe that
there was not one of them against whose morals or principles there lay
not some exception, it would not have been much to be wondered at, if
FANCY had been allowed to give a preference, where JUDGMENT was at a loss
to determine.

Far be it from me to say this with a design to upbraid you, Sir, or to
reflect upon you. I always wished you well. You had reason to think I
did. You had the generosity to be pleased with the frankness of my
behaviour to you; as I had with that of your's to me; and I am sorry,
very sorry, to be now told, that the acquaintance you obliged me with
gave you so much pain.

Had the option I have mentioned been allowed me afterwards, (as I not
only wished, but proposed,) things had not happened that did happen. But
there was a kind of fatality by which our whole family was impelled, as I
may say; and which none of us were permitted to avoid. But this is a
subject that cannot be dwelt upon.

As matters are, I have only to wish, for your own sake, that you will
encourage and cultivate those good motions in your mind, to which many
passages in your kind and generous letter now before me must be owing.
Depend upon it, Sir, that such motions, wrought into habit, will yield
you pleasure at a time when nothing else can; and at present, shining out
in your actions and conversation, will commend you to the worthiest of
our sex. For, Sir, the man who is so good