Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to miss Howe
Sunday, July 23.

What pain, my dearest friend, does your kind solicitude for my welfare give me!  How much more binding and tender are the ties of pure friendship, and the union of like minds, than the ties of nature!  Well might the sweet-singer of Israel, when he was carrying to the utmost extent the praises of the friendship between him and his beloved friend, say, that the love of Jonathan to him was wonderful; that it surpassed the love of women!  What an exalted idea does it give of the soul of Jonathan, sweetly attempered for the sacred band, if we may suppose it but equal to that of my Anna Howe for her fallen Clarissa?—­But, although I can glory in your kind love for me, think, my dear, what concern must fill a mind, not ungenerous, when the obligation lies all on one side.  And when, at the same time that your light is the brighter for my darkness, I must give pain to a dear friend, to whom I delighted to give pleasure; and not pain only, but discredit, for supporting my blighted fame against the busy tongues of uncharitable censures!

This is that makes me, in the words of my admired exclaimer, very little altered, often repeat:  ’Oh! that I were as in months past! as in the days when God preserved me! when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness!  As I was in the days of my childhood—­when the Almighty was yet with me:  when I was in my father’s house:  when I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.’

You set before me your reasons, enforced by the opinion of your honoured mother, why I should think of Mr. Lovelace for a husband.*

* See the preceding Letter.

And I have before me your letter of the 13th,* containing the account of the visit and proposals, and kind interposition of the two Misses Montague, in the names of the good Ladies Sadleir and Betty Lawrance, and in that of my Lord M.

* See Letter IX. of this vol.

Also your’s of the 18th,* demanding me, as I may say, of those ladies, and of that family, when I was so infamously and cruelly arrested, and you knew not what was become of me.

* See Letter XI. ibid.

The answer likewise of those ladies, signed in so full and generous a manner by themselves,* and by that nobleman, and those two venerable ladies; and, in his light way, by the wretch himself.

* See Letter XIV. ibid.

Thse, my dearest Miss Howe; and your letter of the 16th,* which came when I was under arrest, and which I received not till some days after; are all before me.

* See Letter X. of this volume.

And I have as well weighed the whole matter, and your arguments in support of your advice, as at present my head and my heart will let me weigh them.

I am, moreover, willing to believe, not only from your own opinion, but from the assurances of one of Mr. Lovelace’s friends, Mr. Belford, a good-natured and humane man, who spares not to censure the author of my calamities (I think, with undissembled and undesigning sincerity) that that man is innocent of the disgraceful arrest.