And cannot our fraternity in an hundred instances give proof of the like predominance of vice over virtue?  And that we have risked more to serve and promote the interests of the former, than ever a good man did to serve a good man or a good cause?  For have we not been prodigal of life and fortune? have we not defied the civil magistrate upon occasion? and have we not attempted rescues, and dared all things, only to extricate a pounded profligate?

Whence, Jack, can this be?

O!  I have it, I believe.  The vicious are as bad as they can be; and do the Devil’s work without looking after; while he is continually spreading snares for the others; and, like a skilful angler, suiting his baits to the fish he angles for.

Nor let even honest people, so called, blame poor Dorcas for her fidelity in a bad cause.  For does not the general, who implicitly serves an ambitious prince in his unjust designs upon his neighbours, or upon his own oppressed subjects; and even the lawyer, who, for the sake of a paltry fee, undertakes to whiten a black cause, and to defend it against one he knows to be good, do the very same thing as Dorcas?  And are they not both every whit as culpable?  Yet the one shall be dubbed a hero, the other called an admirable fellow, and be contended for by every client, and his double-tongued abilities shall carry him through all the high preferments of the law with reputation and applause.

Well, but what shall be done, since the lady is so much determined on removing!—­Is there no way to oblige her, and yet to make the very act subservient to my other views?  I fancy such a way may be found out.

I will study for it——­

Suppose I suffer her to make an escape?  Her heart is in it.  If she effect it, the triumph she will have over me upon it will be a counterbalance for all she has suffered.

I will oblige her if I can.

LETTER XXVI

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ.

Tired with a succession of fatiguing days and sleepless nights, and with contemplating the precarious situation I stand in with my beloved, I fell into a profound reverie; which brought on sleep; and that produced a dream; a fortunate dream; which, as I imagine, will afford my working mind the means to effect the obliging double purpose my heart is now once more set upon.

What, as I have often contemplated, is the enjoyment of the finest woman in the world, to the contrivance, the bustle, the surprises, and at last the happy conclusion of a well-laid plot!—­The charming round-abouts, to come to the nearest way home;—­the doubts; the apprehensions; the heart-achings; the meditated triumphs—­these are the joys that make the blessing dear.—­For all the rest, what is it?—­What but to find an angel in imagination dwindled down to a woman in fact?——­But to my dream——­