pposed to owe it to her claim.

* Henry VII.

You have chidden me, and again will, I doubt not, for the liberties I
take with some of your relations. But my dear, need I tell you, that
pride in ourselves must, and for ever will, provoke contempt, and bring
down upon us abasement from others?--Have we not, in the case of a
celebrated bard, observed, that those who aim at more than their due,
will be refused the honours they may justly claim?--I am very much loth
to offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations, as well as
of others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise, is the reward
or punishment which the world confers or inflicts on merit or
demerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound them in the
application. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed I do: and as
for her--but I will spare the good lady for your sake--and one
argument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the present
contention--she who has for so many years, and with such absolute
resignation, borne what she has borne to the sacrifice of her own will,
may think it an easier task than another person can imagine it, for her
daughter to give up hers. But to think to whose instigation all this is
originally owing--God forgive me; but with such usage I should have been
with Lovelace before now! Yet remember, my dear, that the step which
would not be wondered at from such a hasty-tempered creatures as me,
would be inexcusable in such a considerate person as you.

After your mother has been thus drawn in against her judgment, I am the
less surprised, that your aunt Hervey should go along with her; since
the two sisters never separate. I have inquired into the nature of the
obligation which Mr. Hervey's indifferent conduct in his affairs has
laid him under--it is only, it seems, that your brother has paid off
for him a mortgage upon one part of his estate, which the mortgagee was
about to foreclose; and taken it upon himself. A small favour (as he has
ample security in his hands) from kindred to kindred: but such a one, it
is plain, as has laid the whole family of the Herveys under obligation
to the ungenerous lender, who has treated him, and his aunt too (as
Miss Dolly Hervey has privately complained), with the less ceremony ever
since.

Must I, my dear, call such a creature your brother?--I believe I
must--Because he is your father's son. There is no harm, I hope, in
saying that.

I am concerned