t child. I was
resolved that I would not go to rest till I had acknowledged the favour.

How sweet is the name of father to a young person who, out of near
one-and-twenty years of life, has for more than half the time been
bereaved of hers; and who was also one of the best of men!

You gave me an additional pleasure in causing this remembrance of your
promised paternal goodness to be given me by Mr. Fowler in person. Till
I knew you and him, I had no father, no brother.

How good you are in your apprehensions that there may be a man on whom
your daughter has cast her eye, and who cannot look upon her with the
same distinction--O that I had been near you when you wrote that
sweetly-compassionating, that indulgent passage! I would have wiped the
tears from your eyes myself, and reverenced you as my true father.

You demand of me, as my father, a hint, or half a hint, as you call it,
to be given to my brother Fowler; or if not to him, to you. To him, whom
I call father, I mean all the duty of a child. I call him not father
nominally only: I will, irksome as the subject is, own, without reserve,
the truth to you--[In tenderness to my brother, how could I to him?]--
There is a man whom, and whom only, I could love as a good wife ought to
love her husband. He is the best of men. O my good Sir Rowland
Meredith! if you knew him, you would love him yourself, and own him for
your son. I will not conceal his name from my father: Sir Charles
Grandison is the man. Inquire about him. His character will rise upon
you from every mouth. He engaged first all your daughter's gratitude, by
rescuing her from a great danger and oppression; for he is as brave as he
is good: and how could she help suffering a tenderness to spring up from
her gratitude, of which she was never before sensible to any man in the
world? There is something in the way, my good sir; but not that proceeds
from his slights or contempts. Your daughter could not live, if it were
so. A glorious creature is in the way! who has suffered for him, who
does suffer for him: he ought to be hers, and only hers; and if she can
be recovered from a fearful malady that has seized her mind, he probably
will. My daily prayers are, that God will restore her!

But yet, my dear sir, my friend, my father! my esteem for this noblest of
men is of such a nature, that I cannot give my hand to any other: my
father Meredith would not wish me to give a hand without a heart.

This, sir, is the