contrive to mingle it with his thoughts, and entangle it with his associations? Ah! did he but know my tenderness—the desire of being beloved, of inspiring sympathy, is congenial to the human heart—why should I hesitate to inform him of my affection—why do I blush and tremble at the mere idea? It is a false shame! It is a pernicious system of morals, which teaches us that hypocrisy can be virtue! He is well acquainted with the purity, and with the sincerity, of my heart—he will at least regard me with esteem and tender pity—and how often has 'pity melted the soul to love!' The experiment is, surely, innocent, and little hazardous. What I have to apprehend? Can I distrust, for a moment, those principles of rectitude, of honour, of goodness, which gave birth to my affection? Have I not witnessed his humanity, have I not experienced his delicacy, in a thousand instances? Though he should be obliged to wound, he is incapable of insulting, the heart that loves him; and that, loving him, believed, alas! for a long time, that it loved only virtue! The morning of our separation, at last, arrived. My friend, too much indisposed to attend the breakfast table, took leave of her son in her own apartment. I awaited him, in the library, with a beating heart, and, on his departure, put into his hands a paper.— 'Read it not,' said I, in a low and almost inarticulate tone of voice, 'till arrived at the end of your journey; or, at least, till you are ten miles from hence.' He received it in silence; but it was a silence more expressive than words. CONTENTS 5 6 'Suffer me,' it said, 'for a few moments, to solicit your candour and attention. You are the only man in the world, to whom I could venture to confide sentiments, that to many would be inconceivable; and by those, who are unacquainted with the human mind, and the variety of circumstances by which characters are variously impressed and formed—who are accustomed to consider mankind in masses—who have been used to bend implicitly, to custom and prescription—the deviation of a solitary individual from rules sanctioned by usage, by prejudice, by expediency, would be regarded as romantic. I frankly avow, while my cheeks glow with the blushes of modesty, not of shame, that your virtues and
Prev.
Back
Top