ave gotten, I think, a recruit of strength: spirits, I
bless God, I have not of late wanted.

Let my dearest Miss Howe purchase her wedding-garments--and may all
temporal blessings attend the charming preparation!--Blessings will, I
make no question, notwithstanding the little cloudiness that Mr. Hickman
encounters with now and then, which are but prognostications of a future
golden day to him: for her heart is good, and her head not wrong.--But
great merit is coy, and that coyness had not always its foundation in
pride: but if it should seem to be pride, take off the skin-deep
covering, and, in her, it is noble diffidence, and a love that wants but
to be assured!

Tell Mr. Hickman I write this, and write it, as I believe, with my last
pen; and bid him bear a little at first, and forbear; and all the future
will be crowning gratitude, and rewarding love: for Miss Howe had great
sense, fine judgment, and exalted generosity; and can such a one be
ungrateful or easy under those obligations which his assiduity and
obligingness (when he shall be so happy as to call her his) will lay her
under to him?

As for me, never bride was so ready as I am. My wedding garments are
bought---and though not fine or gawdy to the sight, though not adorned
with jewels, and set off with gold and silver, (for I have no beholders'
eyes to wish to glitter in,) yet will they be the easiest, the happiest
suit, that ever bridal maiden wore--for they are such as carry with them
a security against all those anxieties, pains, and perturbations, which
sometimes succeed to the most promising outsettings.

And now, my dear Mrs. Norton, do I wish for no other.

O hasten, good God, if it be thy blessed will, the happy moment that I am
to be decked out in his all-quieting garb! And sustain, comfort, bless,
and protect with the all-shadowing wing of thy mercy, my dear parents, my
uncles, my brother, my sister, my cousin Morden, my ever-dear and
ever-kind Miss Howe, my good Mrs. Norton, and every deserving person to
whom they wish well! is the ardent prayer, first and last, of every
beginning hour, as the clock tells it me, (hours now are days, nay,
years,) of

Your now not sorrowing or afflicted, but happy,
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER LXIII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
WED. MORN. SEPT. 6, HALF AN HOUR AFTER THREE.

I am not the savage which you and my worst enemies think me. My soul is
too much penetrated by the contents of the lett