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The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth. cover

The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.

Chapter 64: LETTER LX.
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About This Book

An epistolary novel recounts a series of letters that expose a courtship and a concealed seduction whose revelation brings shame, illness, and familial ruin, used to dramatize the moral dangers of reckless passion. Through careful narration and moral commentary, the correspondence traces how social conventions, personal weakness, and misplaced sympathy produce personal and domestic catastrophe while urging prudence, female self-respect, and the restorative force of nature and truth. Written in a sentimental, didactic mode, the work blends realistic social observation with moral exhortation and is structured to instruct readers about the consequences of seduction and the virtues of restraint.

LETTER LX.

Harrington to Worthy.

Boston.

HOW vain is the wish that sighs for the enjoyment of worldly happiness. Our imagination dresses up a phantom to impose on our reason: As Pygmalion loved the work of his own hand—so do we fall in love with the offspring of our brain. But our work illudes our embrace—we find no substance in it—and then fall a-weeping and complain of disappointment. Miserable reasoners are we all.

WHY should I mourn the loss of Harriot any longer? Such is my situation—in the midst of anxiety and distress, I complain of what cannot be remedied.—I lament the loss of that which is irretrievable: So on the sea-beat shore, the hopeless maid, unmindful of the storm, bewails her drowned lover.