st letter, the impression
of which still rests on my mind--though, recollecting how quickly you
throw off the forcible feelings of the moment, I flatter myself it has
long since given place to your usual cheerfulness.

Believe me (and my eyes fill with tears of tenderness as I assure you)
there is nothing I would not endure in the way of privation, rather than
disturb your tranquillity.--If I am fated to be unhappy, I will labour to
hide my sorrows in my own bosom; and you shall always find me a faithful,
affectionate friend.

I grow more and more attached to my little girl--and I cherish this
affection without fear, because it must be a long time before it can
become bitterness of soul.--She is an interesting creature.--On
ship-board, how often as I gazed at the sea, have I longed to bury my
troubled bosom in the less troubled deep; asserting with Brutus, "that
the virtue I had followed too far, was merely an empty name!" and
nothing but the sight of her--her playful smiles, which seemed to cling
and twine round my heart--could have stopped me.

What peculiar misery has fallen to my share! To act up to my principles,
I have laid the strictest restraint on my very thoughts--yes; not to
sully the delicacy of my feelings, I have reined in my imagination; and
started with affright from every sensation, (I allude to ----) that
stealing with balmy sweetness into my soul, led me to scent from afar the
fragrance of reviving nature.

My friend, I have dearly paid for one conviction.--Love, in some minds,
is an affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception
(or taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, &c,
alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were,
impalpable--they must be felt, they cannot be described.

Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care
than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind--Aiming
at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my
soul--almost rooted out what renders it estimable--Yes, I have damped
that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into
a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common
enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me
stupid--soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering touch
of disappointment.

I am now endeavouring to recover myself--and such is the elasticity of my
constitution,