by that which reason and religion teaches us to govern, and in that only gives us a pre-eminence over beasts.  This, soberly consider’d, is enough to let us see our error, and consequently to persuade us to redeem it.  To another person, I should justify myself that ’tis not a lightness in my nature, nor any interest that is not common to us both, that has wrought this change in me.  To you that know my heart, and from whom I shall never hide it, to whom a thousand testimonies of my kindness can witness the reality of it, and whose friendship is not built upon common grounds, I have no more to say but that I impose not my opinions upon you, and that I had rather you took them up as your own choice than upon my entreaty.  But if, as we have not differed in anything else, we could agree in this too, and resolve upon a friendship that will be much the perfecter for having nothing of passion in it, how happy might we be without so much as a fear of the change that any accident could bring.  We might defy all that fortune could do, and putting off all disguise and constraint, with that which only made it necessary, make our lives as easy to us as the condition of this world will permit.  I may own you as a person that I extremely value and esteem, and for whom I have a particular friendship, and you may consider me as one that will always be

Your faithful.

This was written when I expected a letter from you, how came I to miss it?  I thought at first it might be the carrier’s fault in changing his time without giving notice, but he assures me he did, to Nan.  My brother’s groom came down to-day, too, and saw her, he tells me, but brings me nothing from her; if nothing of ill be the cause, I am contented.  You hear the noise my Lady Anne Blunt has made with her marrying?  I am so weary with meeting it in all places where I go; from what is she fallen! they talked but the week before that she should have my Lord of Strafford.  Did you not intend to write to me when you writ to Jane?  That bit of paper did me great service; without it I should have had strange apprehension, and my sad dreams, and the several frights I have waked in, would have run so in my head that I should have concluded something of very ill from your silence.  Poor Jane is sick, but she will write, she says, if she can.  Did you send the last part of Cyrus to Mr. Hollingsworth?

Letter 42.

SIR,—­I am extremely sorry that your letter miscarried, but I am confident my brother has it not.  As cunning as he is, he could not hide from me, but that I should discover it some way or other.  No; he was here, and both his men, when this letter should have come, and not one of them stirred out that day; indeed, the next day they went all to London.  The note you writ to Jane came in one of Nan’s, by Collins, but nothing else; it must be lost by the porter that was sent with it, and ’twas very unhappy that there should be anything in it of more