dedicate to you, out of the very many in the writing way, in which your goodness has indulged me, because you saw I took delight in it.

But yet think not, oh best beloved of my heart! that I have any boon to beg, any favour to ask, either for myself, or for my friends, or so much as the continuance of your favour to the one or the other. As to them, you have prevented and exceeded all my wishes: As to myself, if it please God to spare me, I know I shall always be rewarded. beyond my desert, let my deservings be what they will. I have only, therefore, to acknowledge, with the deepest sense of your goodness to me, and with the most heartaffecting gratitude, that from the happy, the thrice happy hour that you so generously made me yours, till this moment, you have not left me one thing on my own part to wish for, but the continuance and increase of your felicity, and that I might be worthier and worthier of the unexampled goodness, tenderness, and condescension, wherewith you have always treated me.

No, my dearest, my best beloved master, friend, husband, my first, my last, and only love! believe me, I have nothing to wish for but your honour and felicity, temporary and eternal; and I make no doubt that God, in His infinite goodness and mercy, will perfect His own good work, begun in your dear heart; and whatever may now happen, give us a happy meeting, never more to part from one another. For, although, as you were pleased to question t'other day, when you were resolving some of my doubts-(and, oh! what a sweet expositor have you been to me upon all those occasions, on which my diffident mind led me to you for information and direction !)-whether the happiness of the blessed was not too exalted a happiness to be affected with the poor ties of relationship and sense, which now delight and attach so much to them our narrow minds and conceptions; yet cannot I willingly give up the pleasing, the charming hope, that I shall one day rejoice, distinguishingly rejoice, in the society of my best beloved husband and friend, and in that of my dear parents: And I will

VOL. III.

I

keep and encourage this dear hope, so consolatory to me in the separation which dearest friends must experience, so long as it can stand me in any stead; and till I shall be all intellect, and above the soothing impressions which are now so agreeable to sense, and to conjugal and filial piety.

Let me then beg of you, my dearest protector and best friend, to pardon all my imperfections and defects; and if, ever since I have had the honour to be yours, I have in looks, or in word, or in deed, given you cause to wish me other than I was, that you will kindly put it to the score of natural infirmity (for, in thought or intention, I can truly boast I have never wilfully erred). Your tenderness for me, and your generous politeness to me, always gave me apprehension that I was not what you wished me to be, because you would not find fault with me so often as I fear I deserved: And this makes me beg of you to do, as I hope God Almighty will, pardon all my involuntary errors and omissions.

You have enabled me, sir, to do all the good to my poor neighbours, and to distressed objects, which was in my own heart to do; and I hope I have made use of the power you have so generously entrusted me with, in a manner that may show I had a regard to your honour, and to the exigency of the particular cases recommended to me, without extravagance or vanity. But yet, as it is necessary I should render some account of my stewardship, in relation to the large sums you have put into my hands for charitable uses, you will find, my beloved master and best friend, your poor steward's accounts of everything, in the cabinet that was my honoured lady's, till your goodness made it mine, in a vellum book,* on the first leaf of which is written, title-page-wise, Humble RETURNS for DIVINE MERCIES; and you will see a balance struck, down to this very day, and the little surplus in the green purse upon the book. And if you will be pleased, sir, to perfect, by your generosity, the happiness of the cases I * See vol. ii. p. 126.

have marked with a star [thus *], which are such as are not fully recovered, and will be so good as to keep up my little school, I dare ask no more; for, my dearest Mr. B- if I should be called from your service to my new place, your next steward (and long, I hope, for your honourable family's sake, you will not be without one), may find out another and better method for your honour and her own, to dispense your bounty, than that I have taken.

The rich jewels and equipage with which your generous goodness adorned my unworthiness, will be found in the same cabinet, in the private drawer: And if I may be pardoned for one extravagant wish (your circumstances, dear sir, are very great! and your future lady will not wear anything that was mine), it is, that my dear Miss Darnford may be desired, as the effect of your own goodness and generous consideration for my memory, to wear the diamond necklace which I know she admires; but is far from wishing for it, or expecting it, if the neck that it was given to adorn, and to make more worthy of you, should be laid low by the irresistible leveller.

In the lowest drawer on the left hand of the cabinet, you will find, sir, all my unfinished scribble; and amongst the rest, a little parcel, indorsed, 'Mr. H. and P. Barlow.' The title will surprise you; but as I know not what may happen to make doubts and puzzles in the affair mentioned in those papers, when I cannot explain them, I thought it was best to give a brief history of it in writing, with his letter to me on the occasion; and I humbly beg the whole may be kept within your own breast, unless that vile affair, which has much disturbed me, should be revived: although I have no reason to apprehend it will, because the poor girl, I hope, is sincerely penitent; and Mr. H— himself seems in another way of thinking as to her.

Will you be pleased, sir, to bestow on my dearest Miss Goodwin, as a remembrance of her aunt's true love, the diamond solitaire, and the second pair of ear-rings? Perhaps my dearest Lady Davers will not disdain to wear, as a

present from her beloved brother, my best diamond ring. And if my most beloved and most valued ring of all, the dear first pledge of my happiness, were, for the first time since I was honoured with it, by your own putting it on, taken from my finger and enamelled, it would be a mournful, yet a pleasing token for my poor mother, and a sweet memento of your bounty to them, and of your inexpressible goodness and favour to her poor daughter!-But how I presume! And yet just now I said, I had nothing to

ask!

Now I am, unawares to myself, upon the subject of petitioning, how it would please me, could I know it, if the dear child I have just named were given to the care and example of my excellent Miss Darnford, if she would be pleased to accept of the trust; and if Lady Davers has no objection, and would not choose to take the pretty soul under her own wing.

I had once great pleasure in the hope of having this dear child committed to my care.-But what pleasures, what happiness, have I not had crowded into this last, and this first happy, thrice happy year-even more than most of my sex have had to boast of, and those not unhappy neither, in a long, long life! Every day has brought with it some new felicity, some new happiness, as unlooked for as undeserved; for, oh! best beloved of my heart! how have you always met me in your comings-in, left me at your goings-out, with smiles and complacency; the latter only distinguished from the former by a kind regret, as the other was from that, by a joy, next. to transport, when all your dear generous heart appeared in your noble countenance, and set my faithful one into responsive flutters, to meet and receive it with all the grateful emotions that the chastest conjugal flame could inspire!

But I must not dwell upon these charming, charming reflections My present doubts will not permit me to indulge them! For, if I were-how would my desires be rivetted to this earth!-With what regard should I transfer my thoughts to a still more important and more necessary

subject! and with what ingratitude look up to a diviner, and still more noble master, who ought to be the ultimate of all our wishes and desires! And who has given me you, my dearest Mr. B—, and with you, all that this world can make desirable!-and has therefore a right to take away what He has given !—And if I now die, what a glory will it be to me, to be permitted to discharge part of my obligations to the worthiest of gentlemen, by laying down my life in the service of his honourable family!

But let me say one word for my dear worthy Mrs. Jervis. Her care and fidelity will be very necessary for your affairs, dear sir, while you remain single, which I hope will not be long. But whenever, sir, you make a second choice, be pleased to allow her such an annuity as may make her independent, and pass away the remainder of her life with ease and comfort. And this I the rather presume to request, as my late honoured lady* once intimated the same thing to you. If I were to name what that may be, it would not be with the thought of heightening, but of limiting rather, the natural bounty of your heart; and fifty pounds a year would be a rich provision, in her opinion, and will entail upon you, dear sir, the blessings of one of the faithfullest. and worthiest hearts in the kingdom.

Nor will Christian charity permit me to forget the once wicked, but now penitent Jewkes. I understand by Miss Darnford, that she begs for nothing but to have the pleasure of dying in your service, and of having, by that means, an opportunity given her of atoning for some small slips and mistakes in her accounts, which she had made formerly, as she accuses herself; for she will have it that Mr. Longman has been better to her than she deserved, in passing onet account particularly, to which he had, with too much reason, objected: do, dear sir, if your future happy lady has no great dislike to the poor woman, be pleased to grant her request, except her own mind should alter, and she desire her dismission: And be pleased to present her with my little book of select devotions, with my notes in the interSee vol. ii. p. 334. + See, for a hint of this, vol. i. p. 73.