That to her aunt Hervey is written in the same pious and generous strain with those preceding, seeking to give comfort rather than distress.  ’The Almighty, I hope,’ says she, ’has received and blessed my penitence, and I am happy.  Could I have been more than so at the end of what is called a happy life of twenty, or thirty, or forty years to come?  And what are twenty, or thirty, or forty years to look back upon?  In half of any of these periods, what friends might not I have mourned for? what temptations from worldly prosperity might I not have encountered with?  And in such a case, immersed in earthly pleasures, how little likelihood, that, in my last stage, I should have been blessed with such a preparation and resignation as I have now been blessed with?’

She proceeds as follows:  ’Thus much, Madam, of comfort to you and to myself from this dispensation.  As to my dear parents, I hope they will console themselves that they have still many blessings left, which ought to balance the troubles my error has given them:  that, unhappy as I have been to be the interrupter of their felicities, they never, till this my fault, know any heavy evil:  that afflictions patiently borne may be turned into blessings:  that uninterrupted happiness is not to be expected in this life:  that, after all, they have not, as I humbly presume to hope, the probability of the everlasting perdition of their child to deplore:  and that, in short, when my story comes to be fully known, they will have the comfort to find that my sufferings redound more to my honour than to my disgrace.

’These considerations will, I hope, make their temporary loss of but one child out of three (unhappily circumstances too as she was) matter of greater consolation than affliction.  And the rather, as we may hope for a happy meeting once more, never to be separated either by time or offences.’

She concludes this letter with an address to her cousin Dolly Hervey, whom she calls her amiable cousin; and thankfully remembers for the part she took in her afflictions.—­’O my dear Cousin, let your worthy heart be guarded against those delusions which have been fatal to my worldly happiness!—­That pity, which you bestowed upon me, demonstrates a gentleness of nature, which may possibly subject you to misfortunes, if your eye be permitted to mislead your judgment.—­But a strict observance of your filial duty, my dearest Cousin, and the precepts of so prudent a mother as you have the happiness to have (enforced by so sad an example in your own family as I have set) will, I make no doubt, with the Divine assistance, be your guard and security.’

The posthumous letter to Miss Howe is extremely tender and affectionate.  She pathetically calls upon her ’to rejoice that all her Clarissa’s troubles are now at an end; that the state of temptation and trial, of doubt and uncertainty, is now over with her; and that she has happily escaped the snares that were laid for her soul; the rather to rejoice, as that her misfortunes were of such a nature, that it was impossible she could be tolerably happy in this life.’