ack?
the devil never trumpt up a friendship between a man and a woman, of any
thing like years, which did not end in matrimony, or in the ruin of their
morals!] Won't it strike out an intimacy between ye, that may enable
thee to gratify me in this particular? A proselyte, I can tell thee, has
great influence upon your good people: such a one is a saint of their own
creation: and they will water, and cultivate, and cherish him, as a plant
of their own raising: and this from a pride truly spiritual!

One of my lovers in Paris was a devotee. She took great pains to convert
me. I gave way to her kind endeavours for the good of my soul. She
thought it a point gained to make me profess some religion. The catholic
has its conveniencies. I permitted her to bring a father to me. My
reformation went on swimmingly. The father had hopes of me: he applauded
her zeal: so did I. And how dost thou think it ended?--Not a girl in
England, reading thus far, but would guess!--In a word, very happily: for
she not only brought me a father, but made me one: and then, being
satisfied with each other's conversation, we took different routes: she
into Navarre; I into Italy: both well inclined to propagate the good
lessons in which we had so well instructed each other.

But to return. One consolation arises to me, from the pretty regrets
which this admirable creature seems to have in indulging reflections on
the people's wedding-day.--I ONCE!--thou makest her break off with
saying.

She once! What--O Belford! why didst thou not urge her to explain what
she once hoped?

What once a woman hopes, in love matters, she always hopes, while there
is room for hope: And are we not both single? Can she be any man's but
mine? Will I be any woman's but her's?

I never will! I never can!--and I tell thee, that I am every day, every
hour, more and more in love with her: and, at this instant, have a more
vehement passion for her than ever I had in my life!--and that with views
absolutely honourable, in her own sense of the word: nor have I varied,
so much as in wish, for this week past; firmly fixed, and wrought into my
very nature, as the life of honour, or of generous confidence in me, was,
in preference to the life of doubt and distrust. That must be a life of
doubt and distrust, surely, where the woman confides nothing, and ties up
a man for his good behaviour for life, taking church-and-state sanctions
in aid of the obligation she impo