MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TUESDAY, APRIL 25.

Be comforted; be not dejected; do not despond, my dearest and
best-beloved friend. God Almighty is just and gracious, and gives not
his assent to rash and inhuman curses. Can you think that Heaven will
seal to the black passions of its depraved creatures? If it did, malice,
envy, and revenge would triumph; and the best of the human race, blasted
by the malignity of the worst, would be miserable in both worlds.

This outrageousness shows only what manner of spirit they are of, and
how much their sordid views exceed their parental love. 'Tis all owing
to rage and disappointment--disappointment in designs proper to be
frustrated.

If you consider this malediction as it ought to be considered, a person
of your piety must and will rather pity and pray for your rash father,
than terrify yourself on the occasion. None bug God can curse; parents
or others, whoever they be, can only pray to Him to curse: and such
prayers can have no weight with a just and all-perfect Being, the
motives to which are unreasonable, and the end proposed by them cruel.

Has not God commanded us to bless and curse not? Pray for your father,
then, I repeat, that he incur not the malediction he has announced on
you; since he has broken, as you see, a command truly divine; while you,
by obeying that other precept which enjoins us to pray for them that
persecute and curse us, will turn the curse into a blessing.

My mother blames them for this wicked letter of your sister; and she
pities you; and, of her own accord, wished me to write to comfort you,
for this once: for she says, it is pity your heart, which was so noble,
(and when the sense of your fault, and the weight of a parent's curse
are so strong upon you,) should be quite broken.

Lord bless me, how your aunt writes!--Can there be two rights and two
wrongs in palpable cases!--But, my dear, she must be wrong: so they all
have been, justify themselves now as they will. They can only justify
themselves to themselves from selfish principles, resolving to acquit,
not fairly to try themselves. Did your unkind aunt, in all the tedious
progress of your contentions with them, give you the least hope of their
relenting?--Her dark hints now I recollect as well as you. But why was
any thing good or hopeful to be darkly hinted?--How easy was it for her,
who pretended always to love you; for her, who can give such flowing
license to her pen for yo