s suppose it. Indeed I cannot! such a mind as your's was not
vested in humanity to be snatched away from us so soon. There must still
be a great deal for you to do for the good of all who have the happiness
to know you.

You enumerate in your letter of Thursday last,* the particulars in which
your situation is already mended: let me see by effects that you are in
earnest in that enumeration; and that you really have the courage to
resolve to get above the sense of injuries you could not avoid; and then
will I trust to Providence and my humble prayers for your perfect
recovery: and glad at my heart shall I be, on my return from the little
island, to find you well enough to be near us according to the proposal
Mr. Hickman has to make to you.

* See Vol. VII. Letter XXV.

You chide me in your's of Sunday on the freedom I take with your
friends.*

* Ibid. Letter XLII.

I may be warm. I know I am--too warm. Yet warmth in friendship, surely,
cannot be a crime; especially when our friend has great merit, labours
under oppression, and is struggling with undeserved calamity.

I have no opinion of coolness in friendship, be it dignified or
distinguished by the name of prudence, or what it will.

You may excuse your relations. It was ever your way to do so. But, my
dear, other people must be allowed to judge as they please. I am not
their daughter, nor the sister of your brother and sister--I thank
Heaven, I am not.

But if you are displeased with me for the freedoms I took so long ago as
you mention, I am afraid, if you knew what passed upon an application I
made to your sister very lately, (in hopes to procure you the absolution
your heart is so much set upon,) that you would be still more concerned.
But they have been even with me--but I must not tell you all. I hope,
however, that these unforgivers [my mother is among them] were always
good, dutiful, passive children to their parents.

Once more forgive me. I owned I was too warm. But I have no example to
the contrary but from you: and the treatment you meet with is very little
encouragement to me to endeavour to imitate you in your dutiful meekness.

You leave it to me to give a negative to the hopes of the noble family,
whose only disgrace is, that so very vile a man is so nearly related to
them. But yet--alas! my dear, I am so fearful of consequences, so
selfishly fearful, if this negative must be given--I don't know what I
should say--but giv