unt
and on that of others. I have felt for the honour and credit, and
sufferings, of a person to whom I can only be attached by principle.
For the sentiment of personal affection does not arise for objects
of such inequality. I do not know how to account for it, but I have
had, and still have, such a share of that, as would make one think
that with the air of France and with the language of the country I
had imbibed all the prejudices of their education. My thoughts about
your distress, and of those dear children, which seem to belong as
much to me as to you and Lady C., have really affected me at times
in a manner which would have exposed me anywhere out of my own room,
and to anybody else but to Dr. Ekins, who knows how naturally, and
justly, I feel for you,

I have in the last place been touched, as I must be, with the great
difference of my own circumstances, such as they were and might have
been, and such as they would be if all this impending mischief had
its full effect. The loss of three thousand pounds a year, coming
after debts created by imprudence, and which might otherwise have
been soon liquidated, is a blow which I confess that I was not
prepared for, and if I could not feel it for myself, I must have
felt it for you. Born for your use, as Zanga says, I live but to
oblige you, and as soon as I become unprofitable to you, I shall
feel then the most sensibly, how imprudently I have acted, and how
unjustly I have been dealt with. I have, as I have told you before,
not had yet the courage to look upon that ledger, where I saw once
so fair an account, and where I must now make myself so many
rasures. Stabant tercentum nitidi in praepibus altis. I must now see
myself reduced in comparison to a narrow or at least a circumscribed
plan, and without a possibility of assisting one object of my
affection without hurting another.

However, gloomy as the prospect has been, it may clear up, and I
could, if it was right, encourage hopes and anticipate a perspective
that is not unpleasing to me.

I shall see Lord G(ower)to-day, who will tell me more particularly
how things have been settled since yesterday, when I was with him.
It is an idea of my own that he has contrived an arrangement for
you, which, while it relieves your distress, saves, I hope, your
honour. I have myself as much dreaded as you could do, your being
thought of as an object of mercy, and I trust that so near a
relation will dread that for you, as