s a lover; she resolved, if necessary, to own to him the
tenderness with which you had inspired her, to entreat from his esteem,
from his compassion, a release from engagements which made her
wretched.

My heart burns with the love of virtue, I am tremblingly alive to
fame: what bitterness then must have been my portion had I first seen
you when the wife of another!

Such is the powerful sympathy that unites us, that I fear, that
virtue, that strong sense of honor and fame, so powerful in minds most
turned to tenderness, would only have served to make more poignant the
pangs of hopeless, despairing love.

How blest am I, that we met before my situation made it a crime to
love you! I shudder at the idea how wretched I might have been, had I
seen you a few months later.

I am just returned from a visit at a few miles distance. I find a
letter from my dear Bell, that she will be here to-morrow; how do I
long to see her, to talk to her of my Rivers!

I am interrupted.

Adieu! Yours,
Emily Montague.

LETTER 182.

To Mrs. Temple.

Rose-hill, Sept. 18, Morning.

I have this moment, my dear Mrs. Temple's letter: she will imagine
my transport at the happy event she mentions; my dear Rivers has, in
some degree, sacrificed even filial affection to his tenderness for me;
the consciousness of this has ever cast a damp on the pleasure I should
otherwise have felt, at the prospect of spending my life with the most
excellent of mankind: I shall now be his, without the painful
reflection of having lessened the enjoyments of the best parent that
ever existed.

I should be blest indeed, my amiable friend, if I did not suffer
from my too anxious tenderness; I dread the possibility of my becoming
in time less dear to your brother; I love him to such excess that I
could not survive the loss of his affection.

There is no distress, no want, I could not bear with delight for
him; but if I lose his heart, I lose all for which life is worth
keeping.

Could I bear to see those looks of ardent love converted into the
cold glances of indifference!

You will, my dearest friend, pity a heart, whose too great
sensibility wounds itself: why should I fear? was ever tenderness equal
to that of my Rivers? can a heart like his change from caprice? It
shall be the business of my life to merit his tenderness.

I will not give way to fears which injure him, and, indulged, would
destroy all my happiness.

I expect