nstead of a reformer, an
imitator of him?--For who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?

'Let me then repeat, that I truly despise this man! If I know my own
heart, indeed I do!--I pity him! beneath my very pity as he is, I
nevertheless pity him!--But this I could not do, if I still loved him:
for, my dear, one must be greatly sensible of the baseness and
ingratitude of those we love. I love him not, therefore! my soul
disdains communion with him.

'But, although thus much is due to resentment, yet have I not been so
far carried away by its angry effects as to be rendered incapable of
casting about what I ought to do, and what could be done, if the
Almighty, in order to lengthen the time of my penitence, were to bid
me to live.

'The single life, at such times, has offered to me, as the life, the
only life, to be chosen. But in that, must I not now sit brooding over
my past afflictions, and mourning my faults till the hour of my release?
And would not every one be able to assign the reason why Clarissa Harlowe
chose solitude, and to sequester herself from the world? Would not the
look of every creature, who beheld me, appear as a reproach to me? And
would not my conscious eye confess my fault, whether the eyes of others
accused me or not? One of my delights was, to enter the cots of my poor
neighbours, to leave lessons to the boys, and cautions to the elder
girls: and how should I be able, unconscious, and without pain, to say
to the latter, fly the delusions of men, who had been supposed to have
run away with one?

'What then, my dear and only friend, can I wish for but death?--And what,
after all, is death? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life: 'tis but the
finishing of an appointed course: the refreshing inn after a fatiguing
journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the
beginning of a life of immortal happiness.

'If I die not now, it may possibly happen that I may be taken when I am
less prepared. Had I escaped the evils I labour under, it might have
been in the midst of some gay promising hope; when my heart had beat high
with the desire of life; and when the vanity of this earth had taken hold
of me.

'But now, my dear, for your satisfaction let me say that, although I wish
not for life, yet would I not, like a poor coward, desert my post when I
can maintain it, and when it is my duty to maintain it.

'More than once, indeed, was I urged by thoughts so sinful: but then it