e addressed with the
air of a person who presumes that he is about to confer a favour, rather
than to receive one. I ever loved to mortify proud and insolent spirits.
What, think you, makes me bear Hickman near me, but that the man is
humble, and knows and keeps his distance?

As to your question, Why your elder sister may not be first provided
for? I answer, Because she must have no man, but one who has a great and
clear estate; that's one thing. Another is, Because she has a younger
sister. Pray, my dear, be so good as to tell me, What man of a great and
clear estate would think of that eldest sister, while the younger were
single?

You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by
the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who
know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are
they) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable?--Is
true happiness any part of your family view?--So far from it, that none
of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let
them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what
ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the
cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up, till Death, as greedy an
accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner.

Well then once more I say, do you, my dear, tell me what you know of
their avowed and general motives; and I will tell you more than you will
tell me of their failings! Your aunt Hervey, you say,* has told you: Why
must I ask you to let me know them, when you condescend to ask my advice
on the occasion?

* See Letter VIII.

That they prohibit your corresponding with me, is a wisdom I neither
wonder at, nor blame them for: since it is an evidence to me, that they
know their own folly: And if they do, is it strange that they should be
afraid to trust one another's judgment upon it?

I am glad you have found out a way to correspond with me. I approve
it much. I shall more, if this first trial of it prove successful. But
should it not, and should it fall into their hands, it would not concern
me but for your sake.

We have heard before you wrote, that all was not right between your
relations and you at your coming home: that Mr. Solmes visited you, and
that with a prospect of success. But I concluded the mistake lay in the
person; and that his address was to Miss Arabella. And indeed had she
b