are any remainders of it left;—­I think I might as well have said as long as I lived.  Why should you give yourself over so unreasonably to it?  Good God! no woman breathing can deserve half the trouble you give yourself.  If I were yours from this minute I could not recompense what you have suffered from the violence of your passion, though I were all that you can imagine me, when, God knows, I am an inconsiderable person, born to a thousand misfortunes, which have taken away all sense of anything else from me, and left me a walking misery only.  I do from my soul forgive you all the injuries your passion has done me, though, let me tell you, I was much more at my ease whilst I was angry.  Scorn and despite would have cured me in some reasonable time, which I despair of now.  However, I am not displeased with it, and, if it may be of any advantage to you, I shall not consider myself in it; but let me beg, then, that you will leave off those dismal thoughts.  I tremble at the desperate things you say in your letter; for the love of God, consider seriously with yourself what can enter into comparison with the safety of your soul.  Are a thousand women, or ten thousand worlds, worth it?  No, you cannot have so little reason left as you pretend, nor so little religion.  For God’s sake let us not neglect what can only make us happy for trifles.  If God had seen it fit to have satisfied our desires we should have had them, and everything would not have conspired thus to have crossed them.  Since He has decreed it otherwise (at least as far as we are able to judge by events), we must submit, and not by striving make an innocent passion a sin, and show a childish stubbornness.

I could say a thousand things more to this purpose if I were not in haste to send this away,—­that it may come to you, at least, as soon as the other.  Adieu.

I cannot imagine who this should be that Mr. Dr. meant, and am inclined to believe ’twas a story meant to disturb you, though perhaps not by him.

Letter 47.

SIR,—­’Tis never my humour to do injuries, nor was this meant as any to you.  No, in earnest, if I could have persuaded you to have quitted a passion that injures you, I had done an act of real friendship, and you might have lived to thank me for it; but since it cannot be, I will attempt it no more.  I have laid before you the inconveniences it brings along, how certain the trouble is, and how uncertain the reward; how many accidents may hinder us from ever being happy, and how few there are (and those so unlikely) to make up our desire.  All this makes no impression on you; you are still resolved to follow your blind guide, and I to pity where I cannot help.  It will not be amiss though to let you see that what I did was merely in consideration of your interest, and not at all of my own, that you may judge of me accordingly; and, to do that, I must tell you that, unless it were after the receipt of those letters that made me angry,