I hope you are indeed more solicitous to get it revoked for their sakes
than for your own. It is for them to be penitent, who hurried you into
evils you could not well avoid. You are apt to judge by the unhappy
event, rather than upon the true merits of your case. Upon my honour, I
think you faultless almost in every step you have taken. What has not
that vilely-insolent and ambitious, yet stupid, brother of your's to
answer for?--that spiteful thing your sister too!

But come, since what is past cannot be helped, let us look forward. You
have now happy prospects opening to you: a family, already noble,
prepared to receive you with open arms and joyful heart; and who, by
their love to you, will teach another family (who know not what an
excellence they have confederated to persecute) how to value you. Your
prudence, your piety, will crown all. You will reclaim a wretch that,
for an hundred sakes more than for his own, one would wish to be
reclaimed.

Like a traveller, who has been put out of his way, by the overflowing of
some rapid stream, you have only had the fore-right path you were in
overwhelmed. A few miles about, a day or two only lost, as I may say,
and you are in a way to recover it; and, by quickening your speed, will
get up the lost time. The hurry upon your spirits, mean time, will be
all your inconvenience; for it was not your fault you were stopped in
your progress.

Think of this, my dear; and improve upon the allegory, as you know how.
If you can, without impeding your progress, be the means of assuaging the
inundation, of bounding the waters within their natural channel, and
thereby of recovering the overwhelmed path for the sake of future
passengers who travel the same way, what a merit will your's be!

I shall impatiently expect your next letter. The young ladies proposed
that you should put yourself, if in town, or near it, into the Reading
stage-coach, which inns somewhere in Fleet-street: and, if you give
notice of the day, you will be met on the road, and that pretty early in
your journey, by some of both sexes; one of whom you won't be sorry to
see.

Mr. Hickman shall attend you at Slough; and Lady Betty herself, and one
of the Miss Montagues, with proper equipages, will be at Reading to
receive you; and carry you directly to the seat of the former: for I have
expressly stipulated, that the wretch himself shall not come into your
presence till your nuptials are to be solemnized,