himsical, humours to contend with,
in the choice she invites you to make of Mr. Hickman. How happy I should
be, to be treated with so much lenity!--I should blush to have my mother
say, that she begged and prayed me, and all in vain, to encourage a man
so unexceptionable as Mr. Hickman.

Indeed, my beloved Miss Howe, I am ashamed to have your mother say, with
ME in her view, 'What strange effects have prepossession and love upon
young creatures of our sex!' This touches me the more sensibly, because
you yourself, my dear, are so ready to persuade me into it.

I should be very blamable to endeavour to hide any the least bias
upon my mind, from you: and I cannot but say--that this man--this
Lovelace--is a man that might be liked well enough, if he bore such
a character as Mr. Hickman bears; and even if there were hopes of
reclaiming him. And further still I will acknowledge, that I believe it
possible that one might be driven, by violent measures, step by step, as
it were, into something that might be called--I don't know what to
call it--a conditional kind of liking, or so. But as to the word
LOVE--justifiable and charming as it is in some cases, (that is to say,
in all the relative, in all the social, and, what is still beyond both,
in all our superior duties, in which it may be properly called divine;)
it has, methinks, in the narrow, circumscribed, selfish, peculiar sense,
in which you apply it to me, (the man too so little to be approved of
for his morals, if all that report says of him be true,) no pretty sound
with it. Treat me as freely as you will in all other respects, I will
love you, as I have said, the better for your friendly freedom. But,
methinks, I could be glad that you would not let this imputation pass so
glibly from your pen, or your lips, as attributable to one of your own
sex, whether I be the person or not: since the other must have a double
triumph, when a person of your delicacy (armed with such contempts of
them all, as you would have one think) can give up a friend, with an
exultation over her weakness, as a silly, love-sick creature.

I could make some other observations upon the contents of your last two
letters; but my mind is not free enough at present. The occasion for the
above stuck with me; and I could not help taking the earliest notice of
them.

Having written to the end of my second sheet, I will close this letter,
and in my next, acquaint you with all that has happened here since