teem
for Philander, as well as his daughter, that he can never consent
we should marry each other; when (as he terms it) we may both do so
much better. It must indeed be confessed, that two gentlemen of
considerable fortunes, made their addresses to me last winter, and
Philander (as I have since learned) was offered a young heiress
with L15,000, but it seems we could neither of us think, that
accepting those matches would be doing better than remaining
constant to our first passion. Your thoughts upon the whole may
perhaps have some weight with my father, who is one of your
admirers, as is

"Your humble Servant,
"SYLVIA.

"P.S. You are desired to be speedy, since my father daily presses
me to accept of what he calls an 'advantageous offer.'"

There is no calamity in life that falls heavier upon human nature than a
disappointment in love, especially when it happens between two persons
whose hearts are mutually engaged to each other. It is this distress
which has given occasion to some of the finest tragedies that were ever
written, and daily fills the world with melancholy, discontent, frenzy,
sickness, despair, and death. I have often admired at the barbarity of
parents, who so frequently interpose their authority in this grand
article of life. I would fain ask Sylvia's father, whether he thinks he
can bestow a greater favour on his daughter, than to put her in a way to
live happily? Whether a man of Philander's character, with L500 per
annum, is not more likely to contribute to that end, than many a young
fellow whom he may have in his thoughts with so many thousands? Whether
he can make amends to his daughter by any increase of riches, for the
loss of that happiness she proposes to herself in her Philander? Or
whether a father should compound with his daughter to be miserable,
though she were to get L20,000 by the bargain? I suppose he would have
her reflect with esteem on his memory after his death: and does he think
this a proper method to make her do so, when, as often as she thinks on
the loss of her Philander, she must at the same time remember him as the
cruel cause of it? Any transient ill-humour is soon forgotten; but the
reflection of such a cruelty must continue to raise resentments as long
as life itself; and by this one piece of barbarity, an