ACE
THURSDAY, AUG. 24.

I told you, in the letter I wrote to you on Tuesday last,* that you
should have another sent you when I had got into my father's house.

* See her letter, enclosed in Mr. Lovelace's, No. LIV. of Vol. VII.

The reader may observe, by the date of this letter, that it was written
within two days of the allegorical one, to which it refers, and while the
lady was labouring under the increased illness occasioned by the hurries
and terrors into which Mr. Lovelace had thrown her, in order to avoid the
visit he was so earnest to make her at Mr. Smith's; so early written,
perhaps, that she might not be surprised by death into a seeming breach
of her word.

High as her christian spirit soars in this letter, the reader has seen,
in Vol. VIII. Letter LXIV. and in other places, that that exalted spirit
carried her to still more divine elevations, as she drew nearer to her
end.

I presume to say, that I am now, at your receiving of this, arrived
there; and I invite you to follow me, as soon as you are prepared for so
great a journey.

Not to allegorize farther--my fate is now, at your perusal of this,
accomplished. My doom is unalterably fixed; and I am either a miserable
or happy being to all eternity. If happy, I owe it solely to the Divine
mercy; if miserable, to your undeserved cruelty.--And consider not, for
your own sake, gay, cruel, fluttering, unhappy man! consider, whether the
barbarous and perfidious treatment I have met with from you was worthy
the hazard of your immortal soul; since your wicked views were not to be
effected but by the wilful breach of the most solemn vows that ever were
made by man; and those aided by a violence and baseness unworthy of a
human creature.

In time then, once more, I wish you to consider your ways. Your golden
dream cannot long last. Your present course can yield you pleasure no
longer than you can keep off thought or reflection. A hardened
insensibility is the only foundation on which your inward tranquillity
is built. When once a dangerous sickness seizes you; when once effectual
remorse breaks in upon you; how dreadful will be your condition! How
poor a triumph will you then find it, to have been able, by a series of
black perjuries, and studied baseness, under the name of gallantry or
intrigue, to betray poor unexperienced young creatures, who perhaps knew
nothing but their duty till they knew you!--Not one good action in the
hour of languishin