Mr. Belford sends with this letter to Miss Howe the lady’s memorandum book, and promises to send her copies of the several posthumous letters.  He tells her that Mr. Lovelace being upon the recovery, he had enclosed the posthumous letter directed for him to Lord M. that his Lordship might give it to him, or not, as he should find he could bear it.  The following is a copy of that letter: 

TO MR. LOVELACE THURSDAY, AUG. 24.

I told you, in the letter I wrote to you on Tuesday last,* that you should have another sent you when I had got into my father’s house.

* See her letter, enclosed in Mr. Lovelace’s, No.  LIV. of Vol.  VII.

The reader may observe, by the date of this letter, that it was written within two days of the allegorical one, to which it refers, and while the lady was labouring under the increased illness occasioned by the hurries and terrors into which Mr. Lovelace had thrown her, in order to avoid the visit he was so earnest to make her at Mr. Smith’s; so early written, perhaps, that she might not be surprised by death into a seeming breach of her word.

High as her christian spirit soars in this letter, the reader has seen, in Vol.  VIII.  Letter LXIV. and in other places, that that exalted spirit carried her to still more divine elevations, as she drew nearer to her end.

I presume to say, that I am now, at your receiving of this, arrived there; and I invite you to follow me, as soon as you are prepared for so great a journey.

Not to allegorize farther—­my fate is now, at your perusal of this, accomplished.  My doom is unalterably fixed; and I am either a miserable or happy being to all eternity.  If happy, I owe it solely to the Divine mercy; if miserable, to your undeserved cruelty.—­And consider not, for your own sake, gay, cruel, fluttering, unhappy man! consider, whether the barbarous and perfidious treatment I have met with from you was worthy the hazard of your immortal soul; since your wicked views were not to be effected but by the wilful breach of the most solemn vows that ever were made by man; and those aided by a violence and baseness unworthy of a human creature.

In time then, once more, I wish you to consider your ways.  Your golden dream cannot long last.  Your present course can yield you pleasure no longer than you can keep off thought or reflection.  A hardened insensibility is the only foundation on which your inward tranquillity is built.  When once a dangerous sickness seizes you; when once effectual remorse breaks in upon you; how dreadful will be your condition!  How poor a triumph will you then find it, to have been able, by a series of black perjuries, and studied baseness, under the name of gallantry or intrigue, to betray poor unexperienced young creatures, who perhaps knew nothing but their duty till they knew you!—­Not one good action in the hour of languishing to recollect, not one worthy intention to revolve, it will be all reproach and horror; and you will wish to have it in your power to compound for annihilation.