Letter XXII

To Jane Talbot

Baltimore, October 31.

You had reason to fear my reproaches; yet you have strangely erred in imagining the cause for which I should blame you. You are never tired, my good friend, of humbling me by injurious suppositions.

I do, indeed, reproach you for conduct that is rash; unjust; hurtful to yourself, to your mother, to me, to the memory of him who, whatever were his faults, has done nothing to forfeit your reverence.

You are charged with the blackest guilt that can be imputed to woman. To know you guilty produces more anguish in the mind of your accuser than any other evil could produce, and to be convinced of your innocence would be to remove the chief cause of her sorrow; yet you are contented to admit the charge; to countenance her error by your silence. By stating the simple truth, circumstantially and fully; by adding earnest and pathetic assurances of your innocence; by showing all the letters that have passed between us, the contents of which will show that such guilt was impossible; by making your girl bear witness to the precaution you used on that night to preclude misconstructions, surely you may hope to disarm her suspicions.

But this proceeding has not occurred to you. You have mistrusted the power of truth, and even are willing to perpetuate the error. And why? Because you will not blast the memory of the dead. The loss of your own reputation, the misery of your mother, whom your imaginary guilt makes miserable, are of less moment in your eyes than--what? Let not him, my girl, who knows thee best, have most reason to blush for thee.

Talbot, you imagine, forged this calumny. It was a wrong thing, and much unhappiness has flowed from it. This calumny you have it, at length, in your power to refute. Its past effects cannot be recalled; but here the evil may end, the mistake may be cleared up, and be hindered from destroying the future peace of your mother.

Yet you forbear from tenderness to his memory, who, if you are consistent with yourself, you must believe to look back on that transaction with remorse, to lament every evil which it has hitherto occasioned, and to rejoice in the means of stopping the disastrous series.

My happiness is just of as little value. Your mother's wishes, though allowed to be irrational and groundless, are to be gratified by the disappointment of mine, which appear to be just and reasonable; and, since one must be sacrificed, that affection with which you have inspired me and those benefits you confess to owe to me, those sufferings believed by you to have been incurred by me for your sake, do not, it seems, entitle me to preference.

On this score, however, my good girl, set your heart at ease. I never assumed the merits you attributed to me. I never urged the claims you were once so eager to admit. I desire not the preference. If, by abjuring me, your happiness could be secured; if it were possible for you to be that cheerful companion of your mother which you seem so greatly to wish; if, in her society, you could stifle every regret, and prevent your tranquillity from being invaded by self-reproach, most gladly would I persuade you to go to her and dismiss me from your thoughts forever.

But I know, Jane, that this cannot be. You never will enjoy peace under your mother's roof. The sighing heart and the saddened features will forever upbraid her, and bickering and repining will mar every domestic scene. Your mother's aversion to me is far from irreconcilable, but that which will hasten reconcilement will be marriage. You cannot forfeit her love as long as you preserve your integrity; and those scruples which no argument will dissipate will yield to reflection on an evil (as she will regard it) that cannot be remedied.

Admitting me, in this respect, to be mistaken, your mother's resentment will ever give you disquiet. True; but will your union with me console you nothing? in pressing the hoped-for fruit of that union to your breast, in that tenderness which you will hourly receive from me, will there be nothing to compensate you for sorrows in which there is no remorse, and which, indeed, will owe their poignancy to the generosity of your spirit?

You cannot unite yourself to me but with some view to my happiness. Will your contributing to that happiness be nothing?

Yet I cannot separate my felicity from yours. I can enjoy nothing at the cost of your peace. In whatever way you decide, may the fruit be content!

I ask you not for proofs of love, for the sacrifice of others to me. My happiness demands it not. It only requires you to seek your own good. Nothing but ceaseless repinings can follow your compliance with your mother's wishes; but there is something in your power to do. You can hide these repinings from her, by living at a distance from her. She may know you only through the medium of your letters, and these may exhibit the brightest side of things. She wants nothing but your divorce from me, and that may take place without living under her roof.

You need not stay here. The world is wide, and she will eagerly consent to the breaking of your shackles by change of residence. Much and the best part of your country you have never seen. Variety of objects will amuse you, and new faces and new minds erase the deep impressions of the past. Colden and his merits may sink into forgetfulness, or be thought of with no other emotion than regret that a being so worthless was ever beloved. But I wander from the true point. I meant not to introduce myself into this letter,--self!--that vile debaser whom I detest as my worst enemy, and who assumes a thousand shapes and practises a thousand wiles to entice me from the right path.

Ah, Jane, could thy sagacity discover no other cause of thy mother's error than Talbot's fraud? Could thy heart so readily impute to him so black a treachery? Such a prompt and undoubting conclusion it grieves me to find thee capable of.

How much more likely that Talbot was himself deceived! For it was not by him that thy unfinished letter was purloined. At that moment he was probably some thousands of miles distant. It was five weeks before his return from his Hamburg voyage, when that mysterious incident happened.

Be of good cheer, my sweet girl. I doubt not all will be well. We shall find the means of detecting and defeating this conspiracy, and of re-establishing thee in thy mother's good opinion. At present, I own, I do not see the means; but, to say truth, my mind is clouded by anxieties, enfeebled by watching and fatigue.

You know why I came hither. I found my friend in a very bad way, and have no hope but that his pangs, which must end within a few days, may, for his sake, terminate very soon. He will not part with me, and I have seldom left his chamber since I came.

Your letter has disturbed me much, and I seize this interval, when the sick man has gained a respite from his pain, to tell you my thoughts upon it. I fear I have not reasoned very clearly. Some peevishness, I doubt not, has crept into my style. I rely upon your wonted goodness to excuse it.

I have much to say upon this affecting subject, but must take a future opportunity.

I also have received a letter from Mrs. Fielder, of which I will say no more, since I send you enclosed that, and my answer. I wish it had come at a time when my mind was more at ease, as an immediate reply seemed to be necessary. Adieu.

HENRY GOLDEN.

Letter XXIII

To Mrs. Fielder

Baltimore, November 2.

MADAM:--

It would indeed be needless to apologize for your behaviour to me. I not only acquit you of any enmity to me, but beg leave to return you my warmest thanks for the generous offers which you have made me in this letter.

I should be grossly wanting in that love for Mrs. Talbot which you believe me to possess, if I did not partake in that gratitude and reverence which she feels for one who has performed for her every parental duty. The esteem of the good is only of less value in my eyes than the approbation of my own conscience. There is no price which I would not pay for your good opinion, consistent with a just regard to that of others and to my own.

I cannot be pleased with the information which you give me. For the sake of my friend, I am grieved that you are determined to make her marriage with me the forfeiture of that provision which your bounty has hitherto supplied her.

Forgive me if I say that, in exacting this forfeiture, you will not be consistent with yourself. On her marriage with me, she will stand in much more need of your bounty than at present, and her merits, however slender you may deem them, will then be, at least, not less than they now are.

If there were any methods by which I might be prevented from sharing in gifts bestowed upon my wife, I would eagerly concur in them.

I fully believe that your motive in giving me this timely warning was a generous one. Yet, in justice to myself and your daughter, I must observe that the warning was superfluous, since Jane never concealed from me the true state of her affairs, and since I never imagined you would honour with your gifts a marriage contracted against your will.

Well do I know the influence of early indulgences. Your daughter is a strong example of that influence; nor will her union with me, if by that union she forfeit your favour, be any thing more than a choice among evils all of which are heavy.

My own education and experience sufficiently testify the importance of riches, and I should be the last to despise or depreciate their value. Still, much as habit has endeared to me the goods of fortune, I am far from setting them above all other goods.

You offer me madam, a large alms. Valuable to me as that sum is, and eagerly as I would accept it in any other circumstances, yet at present I must, however reluctantly, decline it. A voyage to Europe and such a sum, if your daughter's happiness were not in question, would be the utmost bound of my wishes.

Shall I be able to compensate her? you ask.

No, indeed, madam; I am far from deeming myself qualified to compensate her for the loss of property, reputation, and friends. I aspire to nothing but to console her under that loss, and to husband as frugally as I can those few meagre remnants of happiness which shall be left to us.

I have seen your late letter to her. I should be less than man if I were not greatly grieved at the contents; yet, madam, I am not cast down below the hope of convincing you that the charge made against your daughter is false. You could not do otherwise than believe it. It is for us to show you by what means you, and probably Talbot himself, have been deceived.

To suffer your charge to pass for a moment uncontradicted would be unjust not more to ourselves than to you. The mere denial will not and ought not to change your opinion. It may even tend to raise higher the acrimony of your aversion to me. It must ever be irksome to a generous spirit to deny, without the power of disproving; but a tacit admission of the charge would be unworthy of those who know themselves innocent.

Beseeching your favourable thoughts, and grateful for the good which, but for the interference of higher duties, your heart would prompt you to give and mine would not scruple to accept, I am, &c.

HENRY COLDEN.

Letter XXIV

To Henry Colden

Philadelphia, Nov. 2.

Ah, my friend, how mortifying are those proofs of thy excellence? How deep is that debasement into which I am sunk, when I compare myself with thee!

It cannot be want of love that makes thee so easily give me up. My feeble and jealous heart is ever prone to suspect; yet I ought at length to be above these ungenerous surmises.

My own demerits, my fickleness, my precipitation, are so great, and so unlike thy inflexible spirit, that I am ever ready to impute to thee that contempt for me which I know I so richly deserve. I am astonished that so poor a thing as I am, thus continually betraying her weakness, should retain thy affection; yet at any proof of coldness or indifference in thee do I grow impatient, melancholy; a strange mixture of upbraiding for myself, and resentment for thee, occupies my feelings.

I have read thy letter. I shuddered when I painted to myself thy unhappiness on receiving tidings of my resolution to join my mother. I felt that thy reluctance to part with me would form the strongest obstacle to going; and yet, being convinced that I must go, I wanted thee to counterfeit indifference, to feign compliance.

And such a wayward heart is mine that, now these assurances of thy compliance have come to hand, I am not satisfied! The poor contriver wished to find in thee an affectation of indifference. Her humanity would be satisfied with that appearance; but her pride demanded that it should be no more than a veil, behind which the inconsolable, the bleeding heart should be distinctly seen.

You are too much in earnest in your equanimity. You study my exclusive happiness with too unimpassioned a soul. You are pleased when I am pleased; but not, it seems, the more so from any relation which my pleasure bears to you: no matter what it is that pleases me, so I am but pleased, you are content.

I don't like this oblivion of self. I want to be essential to your happiness. I want to act with a view to your interests and wishes,--these wishes requiring my love and my company for your own sake.

But I have got into a maze again,--puzzling myself with intricate distinctions. I can't be satisfied with telling you that I am not well, but I must be inspecting with these careful eyes into causes, and labouring to tell you of what nature my malady is.

It has always been so. I have always found an unaccountable pleasure in dissecting, as it were, my heart; uncovering, one by one, its many folds, and laying it before you, as a country is shown in a map. This voluble tongue and this prompt, pen! what volumes have I talked to you on that bewitching theme,--myself!

And yet, loquacious as I am, I never interrupted you when you were talking. It was always such a favour when these rigid fibres of yours relaxed; and yet I praise myself for more forbearance than belongs to me. The little impertinent has often stopped your mouth,--at times too when your talk charmed her most; but then it was not with words.

But have I not said this a score of times before? and why do I indulge this prate now?

To say truth, I am perplexed and unhappy. Your letter has made me so. My heart flutters too much to allow me to attend to the subject of your letter. I follow this rambling leader merely to escape from more arduous paths, and I send you this scribble because I must write to you. Adieu.

JANE TALBOT.

Letter XXV

To the Same

Nov. 3.

What is it, my friend, that makes thy influence over me so absolute? No resolution of mine can stand against your remonstrances. A single word, a look, approving or condemning, transforms me into a new creature. The dread of having offended you gives me the most pungent distress. Your "well done" lifts me above all reproach. It is only when you are distant, when your verdict is uncertain, that I shrink from contumely,--that the scorn of the world, though unmerited, is a load too heavy for my strength.

Methinks I should be a strange creature if left to myself. A very different creature, doubtless, I should have been, if placed under any other guidance. So easily swayed am I by one that is lord of my affections. No will, no reason, have I of my own.

Such sudden and total transitions! In solitude I ruminate and form my schemes. They seem to me unalterable: yet a word from you scatters all my laboured edifices, and I look back upon my former state of mind as on something that passed when I was a lunatic or dreaming.

It is but a day since I determined to part with you,--since a thousand tormenting images engrossed my imagination: yet now am I quite changed; I am bound to you by links stronger than ever. No, I will not part with you.

Yet how shall I excuse my non-compliance to my mother? I have told her that I would come to her, that I waited only for her directions as to the disposal of her property. What will be her disappointment when I tell her that I will not come!--when she finds me, in spite of her remonstrances, still faithful to my engagements to thee!

Is there no method of removing this aversion? of outrooting this deadly prejudice? And must I, in giving myself to thee, forfeit her affection?

And now--this dreadful charge! no wonder that her affectionate heart was sorely wounded by such seeming proofs of my wickedness.

I thought at first--shame upon my inconsistent character, my incurable blindness! I should never have doubted the truth of my first thoughts, if you had not helped me to a more candid conjecture. I was unjust enough to load him with the guilt of this plot against me, and imagined there was duty in forbearing to detect it.

Now, by thy means, do I judge otherwise. Yet how, my friend, shall I unravel this mystery? My heart is truly sad. How easily is my woman's courage lowered, and how prone am I to despond!

Lend me thy aid, thy helping hand, my beloved. Decide and act for me, and be my weakness fortified, my hope restored, by thee. Let me lose all separate feelings, all separate existence, and let me know no principle of action but the decision of your judgment, no motive or desire but to please, to gratify you.

Our marriage, you say, will facilitate reconcilement with my mother. Do you think so? Then let it take place, my dear Hal. Heaven permit that marriage may tend to reconcile! but, let it reconcile or not, if the wish be yours it shall occupy the chief place in my heart. The time, the manner, be it yours to prescribe. My happiness, on that event, will surely want but little to complete it; and, if you bid me not despair of my mother's acquiescence, I will not despair.

I am to send your letter, after reading, to my mother, I suppose. I have read it, Hal, more than once. And for my sake thou declinest her offers! When you thus refuse no sacrifice on my account, shall I hesitate when it becomes my turn? Shall I ever want gratitude, thinkest thou? Shall I ever imagine that I have done enough to evince my gratitude?

But how do I forget thy present situation! Thy dying friend has scarcely occurred to me. Thy afflictions, thy fatigues, are absorbed in my own selfish cares.

I am very often on the brink of hating myself. So much thoughtlessness of others; such callousness to sorrows not my own: my hard heart has often reproached thee for sparing a sigh or a wish from me; that every gloom has not been dispelled by my presence, was treason, forsooth, against my majesty, and the murmurs that delighted love should breathe, to welcome thy return, were changed into half-vindictive reluctance,--not quite a frown,--and upbraidings, in which tenderness was almost turned out of door by anger.

In the present case, for instance, I have scarcely thought of thy dying friend once. How much thy disquiets would be augmented by the letters which I sent thee, never entered my thoughts. To hide our sorrows from those who love us seems to be no more than generous. Yet I never hid any thing from thee. All was uttered that was felt. I considered not attending circumstances. The bird, as soon as it was scared, flew into the bosom that was nearest, and, merely occupied with dangers of its own, was satisfied to find a refuge there.

And yet--See now, Vanity, the cunning advocate, entering with his And yet. Would I listen to him, what a world of palliations and apologies would he furnish! How would he remind me of cases in which my sympathy was always awakened with attention! How often--But I will not listen to the flatterer.

And, now I think of it, Hal, you differ from me very much in that respect. Every mournful secret must be wrung from you. You hoard up all your evil thoughts, and brood over them alone. Nothing but earnest importunity ever got from you any of your griefs.

Now, this is cruel to yourself and unjust to me. It is denying my claim to confidence. It is holding back from me a part of yourself. It is setting light by my sympathy.

And yet--the prater Vanity once more, you see: but I will let him speak out this time. Here his apology is yours, and myself am only flattered indirectly.

And yet, when I have extorted from you any secret sorrow, you have afterwards acknowledged that the disclosure was of use:--that my sympathizing love was grateful to you, and my counsel of some value; that you drew from my conduct on those occasions new proofs of my strength of mind, and of my right--a right which my affection for you gave me--to share with you all your thoughts.

Yet, on the next occasion that offers, you are sure to relapse into your habitual taciturnity, and my labours to subdue it are again to be repeated. I have sometimes been tempted to retaliate, and convince you, by the effects of my concealments upon you, of the error of your own scheme.

But I never could persist in silence for five minutes together. Shut up as the temple of my heart is to the rest of mankind, all its doors fly open of their own accord when you approach.

Now am I got into my usual strain; in which I could persevere forever.--No wonder it charms me so much, since, while thus pursuing it, I lose all my cares in a sweet oblivion; but I must stop at last, and recall my thoughts to a less welcome subject.

Painful as it is, I must write to my mother. I will do it now, and send you my letter. I will endeavour, hereafter, to keep alive a salutary distrust of myself, and do nothing without your approbation and direction. Such submission becomes thy

JANE.

Letter XXVI

To Mrs. Fielder

Philadelphia, November 4.

I tremble thus to approach my honoured mother once more, since I cannot bring into her presence the heart that she wishes to find. Instead of acknowledgment of faults, and penitence suitable to their heinous nature, I must bring with me a bosom free from self-reproach, and a confidence, which innocence only can give, that I shall be some time able to disprove the charge brought against me.

Ah, my mother! could such guilt as this ever stain a heart fashioned by your tenderest care? Did it never occur to you that possibly some mistake might have misled the witness against me?

The letter which you sent me is partly mine. All that is honest and laudable is mine, but that which confesses dishonour has been added by another hand. By whom my handwriting was counterfeited, and for what end, I know not. I cannot name any one who deserves to be suspected.

I might proceed to explain the circumstances attending the writing and the loss of this letter, so fatal to me; but I forbear to attempt to justify myself by means which, I know beforehand, will effect nothing, unless it be to aggravate, in your eyes, my imaginary guilt.

If it were possible for you to suspend your judgment; if the most open, and earnest, and positive averments of my innocence could induce you, not to reverse, but merely to postpone, your sentence, you would afford me unspeakable happiness.

You tell me that the loss of your present bounty will be the consequence of my marriage. My claims on you are long ago at an end. Indeed, I never had any claims. Your treatment of me has flown from your unconstrained benevolence. For what you have given, for the tenderness which you continually bestowed on me, you have received only disappointment and affliction.

For all your favours I seem to you ungrateful; yet long after that conduct was known which, to you, proves my unworthiness, your protection has continued, and you are so good as to assure me that it shall not be withdrawn as long as I have no protector but you.

Dear as my education has made the indulgences of competence to me, I hope I shall relinquish them without a sigh. Had you done nothing more than screen my infancy and youth from hardship and poverty, than supply the mere needs of nature, my debt to you could never be paid.

But how much more than this have you done for me! You have given me, by your instructions and example, an understanding and a heart. You have taught me to value a fair fame beyond every thing but the peace of virtue; you have made me capable of a generous affection for a benefactor equal to yourself; capable of acting so as at once to deserve and to lose your esteem; and enabled me to relinquish cheerfully those comforts and luxuries which cannot be retained but at the price of my integrity.

I look forward to poverty without dismay. Perhaps I make light of its evils because I have never tried them. I am indeed a weak and undiscerning creature. Yet nothing but experience will correct my error, if it be an error.

So sanguine am I that I even cherish the belief that the privation of much of that ease which I have hitherto enjoyed will strengthen my mind, and somewhat qualify me for enduring those evils which I cannot expect always to escape.

You know, my mother, that the loss of my present provision will not leave me destitute. If it did, I know your generosity too well to imagine that you would withdraw from me all the means of support.

Indeed, my own fund, slender as it is in comparison with what your bounty supplies me, is adequate to all my personal wants: I am sure it would prove so on the trial. So that I part with your gifts with less reluctance, though with no diminution of my gratitude.

If I could bring to you my faith unbroken, and were allowed to present to you my friend, I would instantly fly to your presence; but that is a felicity too great for my hope. The alternative, however painful, must be adopted by

Your ever-grateful

JANE.

Letter XXVII

To Mrs. Talbot

Baltimore, November 5.

I highly approve of your letter. It far exceeded the expectations I had formed of you. You are indeed a surprising creature.

One cannot fail to be astonished at the differences of human characters; at the opposite principles by which the judgments of men are influenced.

Experience, however, is the antidote of wonder. There was a time when I should have reflected on the sentiments of your mother with a firm belief that no human being could be practically influenced by them.

She offers, and surely with sincerity, to divide her large property with you; to give away half her estate during her own life, and while, indeed, she is yet in her prime: and to whom give it? To one who has no natural relation to her; who is merely an adopted child; who has acted for several years in direct repugnance to her will, in a manner she regards as not only indiscreet, but flagrantly criminal. Whom one guilty act has (so it must appear to your mamma) involved in a continued series of falsehoods and frauds.

She offers this immense gift to you, on no condition but a mere verbal promise to break off intercourse with the man you love? and with whom you have been actually criminal.

She seems not aware how easily promises are made that are not designed to be performed; how absurd it would be to rely upon your integrity in this respect, when you have shown yourself (so it must appear to her) grossly defective in others of infinitely greater moment. How easily might a heart like yours be persuaded to recall its promises, or violate this condition, as soon as the performance of her contract has made you independent of her and of the world!

You promise--it is done in half a dozen syllables--that you will see the hated Colden no more. All that you promise, you intend. To-morrow she enriches you with half her fortune. Next day the seducer comes, and may surely expect to prevail on you to forget this promise, since he has conquered your firmness in a case of unspeakably greater importance.

This offer of hers surely indicates not only love for you, but reverence for your good faith inconsistent with the horrid imputation she has urged against you.

As to me, what a portrait does her letter exhibit! And yet this scoffer at the obligation of a promise is offered four or five thousand dollars on condition that he plights his word to embark for England and to give up all his hopes of you.

Villain as he is; a villain not by habit or by passion, but by principle; a cool-blooded, systematic villain; yet she will give him affluence and the means of depraving thousands by his example and his rhetoric, on condition that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of his discourse, all the practical and speculative turpitude which he has to impart.

This conduct might be considered only as proving her aversion to me. So strong is it as to impel her to indiscreet and self-destructive expedients; and so I should likewise reason if these very expedients did not argue a confidence in my integrity somewhat inconsistent with the censure passed on my morals.

After all, is there not reason to question the sincerity of her hatred? Is not thy mother a dissembler, Jane? Does she really credit the charge she makes against thee? Does she really suppose me that insane philosopher which her letter describes?

Yet this is only leaping from a ditch into a quicksand. It is quite as hard to account for her dissimulation as for her sincerity. Why should she pretend to suspect you of so black a deed, or me of such abominable tenets?

And yet, an observer might say, it is one thing to promise and another to perform, in her case as well as in ours. She tells us what she will do, provided we enter into such engagements; but, if we should embrace her offers, is it certain that she would not hesitate, repent, and retract?

Passion may dictate large and vehement offers upon paper, which deliberating prudence would never allow to be literally adhered to.

Besides, may not these magnificent proposals be dictated by a knowledge of our characters, which assured her that they would never be accepted? But, with this belief, why should the offers be made?

The answer is easy. These offers, by the kindness and respect for us which they manifest, engage our esteem and gratitude, and, by their magnitude, show how deeply she abhors this connection, and hence dispose us to do that, for pity's sake, which mere lucre would never recommend.

And here is a string of guesses to amuse thee, Jane. Their truth or falsehood is of little moment to us, since these offers ought not to influence our conduct.

One thing is sure; that is, thy mother's aversion to me. And yet I ought not to blame her. That I am an atheist in morals, the seducer of her daughter, she fully believes; and these are surely sufficient objections to me. Would she be a discerning friend or virtuous mother if she did not, with this belief, remonstrate against your alliance with one so wicked?

The fault lies not with her. With whom, then, does it lie? Or, what only is important, where is the remedy? Expostulation and remonstrance will avail nothing. I cannot be a hypocrite: I cannot dissemble that I have once been criminal, and that I am, at present, conscious of a thousand weaknesses and self-distrusts. There is but one meagre and equivocal merit that belongs to me. I stick to the truth; yet this is a virtue of late growth. It has not yet acquired firmness to resist the undermining waves of habit, or to be motionless amidst the hurricane of passions.

You offer me yourself. I love you. Shall I not then accept your offer? Shall my high conception of your merits, and my extreme contempt and distrust of myself, hinder me from receiving so precious a boon? Shall I not make happy by being happy? Since you value me so much beyond my merits; since my faults, though fully disclosed to you, do not abate your esteem, do not change your views in my favour, shall I withhold my hand?

I am not obdurate. I am not ungrateful. With you I never was a hypocrite. With the rest of the world I have ceased to be so. If I look forward without confidence, I look back with humiliation and remorse. I have always wished to be good, but, till I knew you, I despaired of ever being so, and even now my hopes are perpetually drooping.

I sometimes question, especially since your actual condition is known, whether I should accept your offered hand; but mistake me not, my beloved creature. My distrust does not arise from any doubts of my own constancy. That I shall grow indifferent or forgetful or ungrateful to you, can never be.

All my doubts are connected with you. Can I compensate you for those losses which will follow your marriage?--the loss of your mother's affection,--the exchange of all that splendour and abundance you have hitherto enjoyed for obscurity and indigence?

You say I can. The image of myself in my own mind is a sorry compound of hateful or despicable qualities. I am even out of humour with my person, my face. So absurd am I in my estimates of merit, that my homely features and my scanty form had their part in restraining me from aspiring to one supreme in loveliness, and in causing the surprise that followed the discovery of your passion.

In your eyes, however, this mind and this person are venerable and attractive. My affection, my company, are chief goods with you. The possession of all other goods cannot save you from misery, if this be wanting. The loss of all others will not bereave you of happiness if this be possessed.

Fain would I believe you. You decide but reasonably. Fortune's goods ought not to be so highly prized as the reason of many prizes them, and as my habits, in spite of reason's dissent and remonstrances, compel me to prize them. They contribute less to your happiness, and that industry and frugality which supplies their place, you look upon without disgust; with even some degree of satisfaction.

Not so I: I cannot labour for bread; I cannot work to live. In that respect I have no parallel. The world does not contain my likeness. My very nature unfits me for any profitable business. My dependence must ever be on others or on fortune.

As to the influence of some stronger motive to industry than has yet occurred, I am without hope. There can be no stronger ones to a generous mind, than have long been urgent with me: being proof against these, none will ever conquer my reluctance.

I am not indolent, but my activity is vague, profitless, capricious. No lucrative or noble purpose impels me. I aim at nothing but selfish gratification. I have no relish, indeed, for sensual indulgences. It is the intellectual taste that calls for such banquets as imagination and science can furnish; but, though less sordid than the epicure, the voluptuary, or the sportsman, the principle that governs them and me is the same; equally limited to self; equally void of any basis in morals or religion.

Should you give yourself to me, and rely upon my labour for shelter and food, deplorable and complete would be your disappointment. I know myself too well to trust myself with such an office. My love for you would not strengthen my heart or my hands. No; it would only sink me with more speed into despair. Quickly, and by some fatal deed, should I abandon you, my children and the world.

Possibly I err. Possibly I underrate my strength of mind and the influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not trust to the possible.

Hence it is that, if by marriage you should become wholly dependent on me, it could never take place. Some freak of fortune may indeed place me above want, but my own efforts never will. Indeed, in this forbearance, in this self-denial, there is no merit. While admitted to the privileges of a betrothed man, your company, your confidence, every warrantable proof of love mine, I may surely dispense with the privileges of wedlock. Secretly repine I might; occasionally I might murmur. But my days would glide along with fewer obstacles, at least, than if I were that infirm and disconsolate wretch, your husband.

But this unhappy alternative is not ours. Thou hast something which thy mother cannot take away; sufficient for thy maintenance, thy frugal support. Meaner and more limited indeed than thy present and former affluence; such as I, of my own motion, would never reduce thee to; such as I can object to only on thy own account.

How has the night run away! My friend's sister arrived here yesterday. They joined in beseeching me to go to a separate chamber and strive for some refreshment. I have slept a couple of hours, and that has sufficed. My mind, on waking, was thronged with so many images connected with my Jane, that I started up at last and betook myself to the pen.

Yet how versatile and fleeting is thought! In this long letter I have not put down one thing that I intended. I meant not to repeat what has been so often said before, and especially I meant not to revolve, if I could help it, any gloomy ideas.

Thy letters gave me exquisite pleasure. They displayed all thy charming self to my view. I pressed every precious line to my lips with nearly as much rapture as I would have done the prattler herself, had she been talking to me all this tenderness instead of writing it.

I took up the pen that I might tell thee my thanks, yet rambled almost instantly into mournful repetitions. I have half a mind to burn the scribble, but I cannot write more just now, and this will show you, at least, that I am not unmindful of you. Adieu.

COLDEN.

Letter XXVIII

To Mrs. Talbot

Baltimore, November 6.

Let me see! this is the beginning of November. Yes; it was just a twelvemonth ago that I was sitting, at this silent hour, at a country-fire just like this. My elbow then as now was leaning on a table, supplied with books and writing-tools.

"What shall I do," thought I, "then, to pass away the time till ten? Can't think of going to bed till that hour, and if I sit here, idly basking in the beams of this cheerful blaze, I shall fall into a listless, uneasy doze, that, without refreshing me, as sleep would do, will unfit me for sleep.

"Shall I read? Nothing here that is new. Enough that is of value, if I could but make myself inquisitive; treasures which, in a curious mood, I would eagerly rifle; but now the tedious page only adds new weight to my eyelids.

"Shall I write? What? to whom? there are Sam and Tom, and brother Dick, and sister Sue: they all have epistolary claims upon me still unsatisfied. Twenty letters that I ought to answer. Come, let me briskly set about the task----

"Not now; some other time. To-morrow. What can I write about? Haven't two ideas that hang together intelligibly. 'Twill be commonplace trite stuff. Besides, writing always plants a thorn in my breast.

"Let me try my hand at a reverie; a meditation,--on that hearth-brush. Hair--what sort of hair? of a hog; and the wooden handle--of poplar or cedar or white oak. At one time a troop of swine munching mast in a grove of oaks, transformed by those magicians, carpenters and butchers, into hearth-brushes. A whimsical metamorphosis, upon my faith!

"Pish! what stupid musing! I see I must betake myself to bed at last, and throw away upon oblivion one more hour than is common."

So it once was. But how is it now? no wavering and deliberating what I shall do,--to lash the drowsy moments into speed. In my haste to set the table and its gear in order for scribble, I overturn the inkhorn, spill the ink, and stain the floor.

The damage is easily repaired, and I sit down, with unspeakable alacrity, to a business that tires my muscles, sets a gnawer at work upon my lungs, fatigues my brain, and leaves me listless and spiritless.

How you have made yourself so absolute a mistress of the goose-quill, I can't imagine; how you can maintain the writing posture and pursue the writing movement for ten hours together, without benumbed brain or aching fingers, is beyond my comprehension.

But you see what zeal will do for me. It has enabled me to keep drowsiness, fatigue, and languor at bay during a long night. Converse with thee, heavenly maid, is an antidote even to sleep, the most general and inveterate of all maladies.

By-and-by I shall have as voluble a pen as thy own. And yet to that, my crazy constitution says, Nay. 'Twill never be to me other than an irksome, ache-producing implement. It need give pleasure to others, not a little, to compensate for the pain it gives myself.

But this, thou'lt say, is beside the purpose. It is; and I will lay aside the quill a moment to consider. I left off my last letter, with a head full of affecting images, which I have waited impatiently for the present opportunity of putting upon paper. Adieu, then, for a moment, says thy

COLDEN.

Letter XXIX

To the Same

10 o'clock at night.

Now let us take a view of what is to come. Too often I endeavour to escape from foresight when it presents to me nothing but evils, but now I must, for thy sake, be less a coward.

In six weeks Jane becomes mine. Till then, thy mother will not cast thee out of her protection. And will she then? will she not allow of thy continuance in thy present dwelling? and, though so much displeased as to refuse thee her countenance and correspondence, will she indeed turn thee out of doors? She threatens it, we see; but I suspect it will never be more than a threat, employed, perhaps, only to intimidate and deter; not designed to be enforced. Or, if made in earnest, yet, when the irrevocable deed is done, will she not hesitate to inflict the penalty? Will not her ancient affection; thy humility, thy sorrow, thy merits,--such as, in spite of this instance of contumacy, she cannot deny thee,--will not these effectually plead for thee?

More than ever will she see that thou needest her bounty; and, since she cannot recall what is past, will she not relent and be willing to lessen the irremediable evil all she can?

There is one difficulty that I know not how to surmount. Giving to the wife will be only giving to the husband. Shall one whom she so much abhors be luxuriously supplied from her bounty?

The wedded pair must live together, she will think; and shall this hated encroacher find refuge from beggary and vileness under her roof,--be lodged and banqueted at her expense? That her indignant heart will never suffer.

Would to Heaven she would think of me with less abhorrence! I wish for treatment conformable to her assumed relation to thee, for all our sakes. As to me, I have no pride; no punctilio, that will stand in the way of reconciliation. At least there is no deliberate and steadfast sentiment of that kind. When I reason the matter with myself, I perceive a sort of claim to arise from my poverty and relation to thee on the one hand, and, on the other, from thy merit, thy affinity to her, and her capacity to benefit. Yet I will never supplicate--not meanly supplicate--for an alms. I will not live, nor must thou, when thou art mine, in her house. Whatever she will give thee, money, or furniture, or clothes, receive it promptly and with gratitude; but let thy home be thy own. For lodging and food be thou the payer.

And where shall be thy home? You love the comforts, the ease, the independence of a household. Your own pittance will not suffice for this. All these you must relinquish for my sake. You must go into a family of strangers. You must hire a chamber, and a plate of such food as is going. You must learn to bear the humours and accommodate yourself to the habits of your inmates.

Some frugal family and humble dwelling must content thee. A low roof, a narrow chamber, and an obscure avenue, the reverse of all the specious, glossy, and abundant that surround thee now, will be thy portion,--all that thou must look for as my wife. And how will this do, Jane? Is not the price too great?

And my company will not solace thee under these inconveniences. I must not live with thee; only an occasional visitor; one among a half-dozen at a common fire; with witnesses of all we say. Thy pittance will do no more than support thyself. I must house myself and feed elsewhere. Where, I know not. That will depend upon the species of employment I shall be obliged to pursue for my subsistence. Scanty and irksome it will be, at best.

Once a day I may see thee. Most of my evenings may possibly be devoted to thy company. A soul harassed by unwelcome toil, eyes dim with straining at tiresome or painful objects, shall I bring to thee. If now and then we are alone, how can I contribute to thy entertainment? The day's task will furnish me with nothing new. Instead of alleviating, by my cheerful talk, thy vexations and discomforts, I shall demand consolation from thee.

And yet imperious necessity may bereave us even of that joy. I may be obliged to encounter the perils of the seas once more. Three-fourths of the year, the ocean may divide us, thou in solitude, the while, pondering on the dangers to which I may be exposed, and I, a prey to discontent, and tempted in some evil hour to forget thee, myself, and the world.

How my heart sinks at this prospect! Does not thine, Jane? Dost thou not fear to take such a wretched chance with me? I that know myself, my own imbecility,--I ought surely to rescue thee from such a fate, by giving thee up.

I can write no more just now. I wonder how I fell into this doleful strain. It was silly in me to indulge it. These images are not my customary inmates. Yet, now that they occur to me, they seem but rational and just. I want, methinks, to know how they appear to thee.

Adieu.

HENRY COLDEN.