I shall now be convinced that there is something in dreams.  The opening cloud is the reconciliation in view.  The bright form, lifting up my charmer through it to a firmament stuck round with golden cherubims and seraphims, indicates the charming little boys and girls, that will be the fruits of this happy reconciliation.  The welcomes, thrice repeated, are those of her family, now no more to be deemed implacable.  Yet are they family, too, that my soul cannot mingle with.

But then what is my tumbling over and over through the floor into a frightful hole, descending as she ascends?  Ho! only this! it alludes to my disrelish to matrimony:  Which is a bottomless pit, a gulph, and I know not what.  And I suppose, had I not awoke in such a plaguy fright, I had been soused into some river at the bottom of the hole, and then been carried (mundified or purified from my past iniquities,) by the same bright form (waiting for me upon the mossy banks,) to my beloved girl; and we should have gone on cherubiming of it and caroling to the end of the chapter.

But what are the black sweeping mantles and robes of Lord M. thrown over my face?  And what are those of the ladies?  O Jack!  I have these too:  They indicate nothing in the world but that my Lord will be so good as to die, and leave me all he has.  So, rest to thy good-natured soul, honest Lord M.

Lady Sarah Sadleir and Lady Betty Lawrance, will also die, and leave me swinging legacies.

Miss Charlotte and her sister—­what will become of the?—­Oh! they will be in mourning, of course, for their uncle and aunts—­that’s right!

As to Morden’s flashing through the window, and crying, Die, Lovelace, and be d——­d, if thou wilt not repair my cousin’s wrong!  That is only, that he would have sent me a challenge, had I not been disposed to do the lady justice.

All I dislike is this part of the dream:  for, even in a dream, I would not be thought to be threatened into any measure, though I liked it ever so well.

And so much for my prophetic dream.

Dear charming creature!  What a meeting will there be between her and her father and mother and uncles!  What transports, what pleasure, will this happy, long-wished-for reconciliation give her dutiful heart!  And indeed now methinks I am glad she is so dutiful to them; for her duty to her parents is a conviction to me that she will be as dutiful to her husband:  since duty upon principle is an uniform thing.

Why pr’ythee, now, Jack, I have not been so much to blame as thou thinkest:  for had it not been for me, who have led her into so much distress, she could neither have received nor given the joy that will now overwhelm them all.  So here rises great and durable good out of temporary evil.

I know they loved her (the pride and glory of their family,) too well to hold out long!

I wish I could have seen Arabella’s letter.  She has always been so much eclipsed by her sister, that I dare say she has signified this reconciliation to her with intermingled phlegm and wormwood; and her invitation must certainly runs all in the rock-water style.