I took it.  These, Lucy, are the contents.

’The bishop acquaints him with the very melancholy way they are in.  The father and mother declining in their healths.  Signor Jeronymo worse than when Sir Charles left them.  His sister also declining in her health:  yet earnest still to see him.

’He says, that she is at present at Urbino; but is soon to go to Naples to the general’s.  He urges him to make them one visit more; yet owns, that his family are not unanimous in the request:  but that he and Father Marescotti, and the marchioness, are extremely earnest that this indulgence should be granted to the wishes of his dear sister.

’He offers to meet him, at his own appointment, and conduct him to Bologna; where, he tells him, his presence will rejoice every heart, and procure an unanimous consent to the interview so much desired:  and says, that if this measure, which he is sorry he has so long withstood, answers not his hopes, he will advise the shutting up of their Clementina in a nunnery, or to consign her to private hands, where she shall be treated kindly, but as persons in her unhappy circumstances are accustomed to be treated.’

Sir Charles then shewed me a letter from Signor Jeronymo; in which he acquaints him with the dangerous way he is in.  He tells him, ’That his life is a burden to him.  He wishes it was brought to its period.  He does not think himself in skilful hands.  He complains most of the wound which is in his hip-joint; and which has hitherto baffled the art both of the Italian and French surgeons who have been consulted.  He wishes, that himself and Sir Charles had been of one country, he says, since the greatest felicity he now has to wish for, is to yield up his life to the Giver of it, in the arms of his Grandison.’

He mentions not one word in this melancholy letter of his unhappy sister:  which Sir Charles accounted for, by supposing, that she not being at Bologna, they kept from him, in his deplorable way, everything relating to her, that was likely to disturb him.  He then read part of a letter written in English, by the admired Mrs. Beaumont; some of the contents of which were, as you shall hear, extremely affecting.

’Mrs. Beaumont gives him in it an account of the situation of the unhappy young lady; and excuses herself for not having done it before, in answer to his request, by reason of an indisposition under which she had for some time laboured, which had hindered her from making the necessary inquiries.

’She mentions, that the lady had received no benefit from her journeyings from place to place; and from her voyage from Leghorn to Naples, and back again; and blames her attendants, who, to quiet her, unknown to their principals, for some time, kept her in expectation of seeing her Chevalier, at the end of each; for her more prudent Camilla, she says, had been hindered by illness from attending her, in several of the excursions.