though I hope I need not doubt it, yet was I willing, on this solemn,
this last occasion, thus earnestly to re-inforce it.

I have another request to make to you; it is only, that you will be
pleased, by a particular messenger, to forward the enclosed letters as
directed.

And now, Sir, having the presumption to think that an useful member is
lost to society by means of the unhappy step which has brought my life so
soon to its period, let me hope that I may be an humble instrument, in
the hands of Providence, to reform a man of your abilities; and then I
shall think that loss will be more abundantly repaired to the world,
while it will be, by God's goodness, my gain; and I shall have this
farther hope, that once more I shall have an opportunity in a blessed
eternity to thank you, as I now repeatedly do, for the good you have done
to, and the trouble you will have taken for, Sir,

Your obliged servant,
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

***

The other letters are directed to her father, to her mother, one to her
two uncles, to her brother, to her sister, to her aunt Hervey, to her
cousin Morden, to Miss Howe, to Mrs. Norton, and lastly one to you, in
performance of her promise, that a letter should be sent you when she
arrived at her father's house!----I will withhold this last till I can
be assured that you will be fitter to receive it than Tourville tells me
you are at present.

Copies of all these are sealed up, and entitled, Copies of my ten
posthumous letters, for J. Belford, Esq.; and put in among the bundle of
papers left to my direction, which I have not yet had leisure to open.

No wonder, while able, that she was always writing, since thus only of
late could she employ that time, which heretofore, from the long days she
made, caused so many beautiful works to spring from her fingers. It is
my opinion, that there never was a woman so young, who wrote so much, and
with such celerity. Her thoughts keeping pace, as I have seen, with her
pen, she hardly ever stopped or hesitated; and very seldom blotted out,
or altered. It was a natural talent she was mistress of, among many
other extraordinary ones. I gave the Colonel his letter, and ordered
Harry instantly to get ready to carry the others. Mean time (retiring
into the next apartment) we opened the will. We were both so much
affected in perusing it, that at one time the Colonel, breaking off, gave
it to me to read on; at another I gave it back to him to proceed