How little is the equanimity or patience that nature has allotted me! Thy entrance now would find me quite peevish. Yet I do not fear thy entrance. Always anxious as I am to be amiable in your eyes, I am at no pains to conceal from you that impatience which now vexes my soul, because it is your absence that occasions it.

I sat alone on the sofa below, for a whole hour. Not once was the bell rung; not once did my fluttering heart answer to footsteps in the passage. I had no need to start up at the opening of the parlour-door, and to greet, as distinctly as the joyous tumult of my bosom would suffer me, the much-loved, long-expected visitant.

Yet, deceived by my fond heart into momentary forgetfulness of the interval of a hundred miles that lies between us, more than once I cast a glance behind me, and started, as if the hoped-for peal had actually been rung.

Tired, at length, of my solitude, where I had enjoyed your company so often, I covered up the coals and withdrew to my chamber. "And here," said I, "though I cannot talk to him, yet I can write."

But first, I read over again this cruel letter of my mother. I weighed all the contents, and especially those heavy charges against you.

How does it fall out that the same object is viewed by two observers with such opposite sensations? That what one hates, the other should dote upon?–two of the same sex; one cherished from infancy, reared, modelled, taught to think, feel, and even to speak, by the other: acting till now, and even now acting in all respects but one, in inviolable harmony; that two such should jar and thwart each other, in a point, too, in respect to which the whole tendency and scope of the daughter's education was to produce a fellow-feeling with the mother. How hard to be accounted for! how deeply to be rued!

I sometimes catch myself trembling with solicitude lest I should have erred. Am I not betrayed by passion? can I claim the respect due to that discernment which I once boasted?

I cannot blame my mother. She acts and determines, as I sometimes believe, without the benefits of my knowledge. Did she know as much as I know, surely she would think as I do.

In general, this conclusion seems to be just; but there are moments when doubts insinuate themselves. I cannot help remembering the time when I reasoned like my mother; when the belief of a Christian seemed essential to every human excellence. All qualities, without that belief, were not to be despised as useless, but to be abhorred as pernicious. There would be no virtue, no merit, divorced from religion. In proportion to the speciousness of his qualities was he to be dreaded. The fruit, whatever form it should assume, was nothing within but bane, and was to be detested and shunned in proportion as the form was fair and its promises delicious.

I seldom trusted myself to inquire how it was my duty to act towards one whom I loved, but who was destitute of this grace; for of such moment was the question to me, that I imagined the decision would necessarily precede all others. I could not love till I had investigated this point, and no force could oblige me to hold communion with a soul whom this defect despoiled of all beauty and devoted to perdition.

But what now is the change that time and passion have wrought! I have found a man without religion. What I supposed impossible has happened. I love the man. I cannot give him up. The mist that is before my eyes does not change what was once vice into virtue. I do not cease to regard unbelief as the blackest stain, as the most deplorable calamity that can befall a human creature; but still I love the man, and that fills me with unconquerable zeal to rescue him from this calamity.

But my mother interferes. She reminds me of the horror which I once entertained for men of your tenets. She enjoins me to hate you, or to abhor myself for loving one worthy of nothing but hatred.

I cannot do either. My heart is still yours, and it is a voluntary captive. I would not free it from its thraldom, if I could. Neither do I think its captivity dishonours it. Time, therefore, has wrought some change. I can now discover some merit, something to revere and to love, even in a man without religion. I find my whole soul penetrated with zeal for his welfare. There is no scheme which I muse upon with half the constancy or pleasure, as that of curing his errors; and I am confident of curing them.

"Ah, Jane," says my mother; "rash and presumptuous girl, what a signal punishment hangs over thee! Thou wilt trust thyself within the toils of the grand deceiver. Thou wilt enter the list with his subtleties. Vain and arrogant, thou fearest not thy own weakness. Thou wilt stake thy eternal lot upon thy triumph in argument against one who, in spite of all his candour and humility, has his pride and his passions engaged on the side of his opinions.

"Subtle wretch!" does she exclaim; "accomplished villain! How nicely does he select, how adroitly manage, his tools! He will oppose, only to yield more gracefully. He will argue, only that the rash simpleton may the more congratulate herself upon her seeming victory! How easy is the verbal assent,–the equivocating accent,–the hesitating air! These he will assume whenever it is convenient to lull your fears and gratify your vanity; and nothing but the uniformity of his conduct, his continuance in the same ignominious and criminal path, will open your eyes, and show you that only grace from above can reach his obdurate heart, or dart a ray into his benighted faculties."

Will you be surprised that I shudder when my mother urges me in this strain, with her customary energy? Always wont to be obsequious to the very turn of her eye, and to make her will not only the regulator of my actions, but the criterion of my understanding, it is impossible not to hesitate, to review all that has passed between us, and reconsider anew the motives that have made me act as I have acted.

Yet the review always confirms me in my first opinion. You err, but are not obstinate in error. If your opinions be adverse to religion, your affections are not wholly estranged from it. Your understanding dissents, but your heart is not yet persuaded to refuse. You have powers, irresistible in whatever direction they are bent; capable of giving the highest degree of misery or happiness to yourself and to others. At present they are misdirected or inactive; they are either pernicious or useless.

How can I, who have had ample opportunities of knowing you, stand by with indifference while such is your state? I love you, it is true. All your felicity and all your woe become mine. I have a selfish interest in your welfare. I cannot bear the thought of passing through this world, or of entering any future world, without you. My heart has tried in vain to create a separate interest, to draw consolation from a different source. Hence indifference to your welfare is impossible. But would not indifference, even if no extraordinary tie subsisted between us, be criminal? What becomes of our obligation to do good to others, if we do not exert ourselves, when all the means are in our power, to confer the most valuable of all benefits, to remove the greatest of all ills?

Of what stuff must that heart be made which can behold, unmoved, genius and worth, destitute of the joys and energies of religion; wandering in a maze of passions and doubts; devoured by fantastic repinings and vague regrets; drearily conscious of wanting a foundation whereon to repose, a guide in whom to trust? What heart can gaze at such a spectacle without unspeakable compassion?

Not to have our pity and our zeal awakened seems to me to argue the utmost depravity of heart. No stronger proof can be given that we ourselves are destitute of true religion. The faith or the practice must be totally wanting. We may talk devoutly; we may hie, in due season, to the house of prayer; while there, we may put on solemn visages and mutter holy names. We may abstain from profane amusements or unauthorized words; we may shun, as infections, the company of unbelievers. We may study homilies and creeds; but all this, without rational activity for others' good, is not religion. I see, in all this, nothing that I am accustomed to call by that name.

I see nothing but a narrow selfishness; sentiments of fear degrading to the Deity; a bigotry that contracts the view, that freezes the heart, that shuts up the avenues to benevolent and generous feeling. This buckram stiffness does not suit me. Out upon such monastic parade! I will have none of it.

But then, it seems, there is danger to ourselves from such attempts. In trying to save another from drowning, may we not sometimes be drawn in ourselves? Are we not taught to deprecate, not only evil, but temptation to evil?

What madness, to trust our convictions, in a point of such immense importance, to the contest of argument with one of superior subtlety and knowledge! Is there not presumption in such a trust?

Excellent advice is this to the mass of women; to those to whom habit or childish fear or parental authority has given their faith; who never doubted or inquired or reasoned for themselves. How easily is such a fabric to be overturned! It can only stand by being never blown upon. The least breath disperses it in air; the first tide washes it away.

Now, I entertain no reverence for such a bubble. In some sense, the religion of the timorous and uninquisitive is true. In another sense it is false. Considering the proofs on which it reposes, it is false, since it merely originates in deference to the opinions of others, wrought into belief by means of habit. It is on a level, as to the proof which supports it, with the wildest dreams of savage superstition, or the fumes of a dervise's fanaticism.

As to me, I was once just such a pretty fool in this respect as the rest of my sex. I was easily taught to regard religion not only as the safeguard of every virtue, but even as the test of a good understanding. The name of infidel was never mentioned but with abhorrence or contempt. None but a profligate, a sensualist, a ruffian, could disbelieve. Unbelief was a mere suggestion of the grand deceiver, to palliate or reconcile us to the unlimited indulgence of our appetites and the breach of every moral duty. Hence it was never steadfast or sincere. An adverse fortune or a death-bed usually put an end to the illusion.

Thus I grew up, never beset by any doubts, never venturing on inquiry. My knowledge of you put an end to this state of superstitious ignorance. In you I found, not one that disbelieved, but one that doubted. In all your demeanour there was simplicity and frankness. You concealed not your sentiments; you obtruded them not upon my hearing. When called upon to state the history of your opinions, it was candidly detailed; with no view of gaining my concurrence, but merely to gratify my curiosity.

From my remonstrances you never averted your ear. Every proof of an unprejudiced attention, and even of a bias favourable to my opinions, was manifest. Your own experience had half converted you already. Your good sense was for a time the sport of a specious theory. You became the ardent and bold champion of what you deemed truth. But a closer and longer view insensibly detected flaws and discords where all had formerly been glossy smoothness and ravishing harmony. Diffidence and caution, worthy of your youth and inexperience, had resumed their place; and those errors of which your own experience of their consequences had furnished the antidote, which your own reflections had partly divested of illusion, had only been propitious to your advancement in true wisdom.

What had I to fear from such an adversary? What might I not hope from perseverance? What expect but new clearness to my own convictions, new and more accurate views of my powers and habits?

In order to benefit you, I was obliged to scrutinize the foundation of my own principles. I found nothing but a void. I was astonished and alarmed; and instantly set myself to the business of inquiry. How could I hope to work on your convictions without a suitable foundation for my own?

And see now, my friend, the blindness of our judgments. I, who am imagined to incur such formidable perils from intercourse with you, am, in truth, indebted to you alone for all my piety,–all of it that is permanent and rational. Without those apprehensions which your example inspired, without that zeal for your conversion which my attachment to you has produced, what would now have been my claims to religious knowledge?

Had I never extorted from you your doubts, and the occasion of these doubts; had I never known the most powerful objections to religion from your lips, I should have been no less ignorant of the topics and arguments favourable to it.

And I think I may venture to ascribe to myself no less a progress in candour than in knowledge. My belief is stronger than it ever was, but I no longer hold in scorn or abhorrence those who differ from me. I perceive the speciousness of those fallacies by which they are deluded. I find it possible for men to disbelieve and yet retain their claims to our reverence, our affection, and especially our good offices.

Those whom I once thought were only to be hated and shunned, I now find worthy of compassionate efforts for their good. Those whom I once imagined sunk beneath the reach of all succour, and to merit scarcely the tribute of a sigh for their lost estate, now appear to be easily raised to tranquillity and virtue, and to have irresistible claims to our help.

In no respect has your company made me a worse–in every respect it has made me a better–woman. Not only my piety has become more rational and fervent, but a new spring has been imparted to my languishing curiosity. To find a soul to whom my improvement will give delight; eager to direct and assist my inquiries; delicately liberal no less of censure when merited than of praise where praise is due; entering, almost without the help of language from me, into my inmost thoughts; assisting me, if I may so speak, to comprehend myself; and raising to a steadfast and bright flame the spark that my wayward fancy, left to itself, would have instantaneously emitted and lost.–

But why do I again attempt this impossible theme? While reflecting on my debt to thee, my heart becomes too big for its mansion. My hand falters, and the characters it traces run into an illegible scrawl.

My tongue only is fitted for such an office; and Heaven grant that you may speedily return to me, and put an end to a solitude which every hour makes more irksome!

Adieu.

Letter XXXV

To Mrs. Talbot

Baltimore, November 20.

How truly did my angel say, that she whom I love is my deity, and her lips my oracle, and that to her pertains not only the will to make me happy, by giving me steadfastness and virtue, but the power also!

I have read your letter oftener than a dozen times already, and at every reading my heart burns more and more. That weight of humiliation and despondency which, without your arm to sustain me, would assuredly sink me to the grave, becomes light as a feather; and, while I crush your testimonies of love in my hand, I seem to have hold of a stay of which no storm can bereave me.

One of my faults, thou sayest, is a propensity to reason. Not satisfied with looking at that side of the post that chances to be near me, I move round and round it, and pause and scrutinize till those whose ill fate it is to wait upon my motions are out of patience with me.

Every one has ways of his own. A transient glance at the post satisfies the mob of passengers. 'Tis my choice to stand a while and gaze.

The only post, indeed, which I closely examine, is myself, because my station is most convenient for inspecting that. Yet, though I have a fuller view of myself than any other can have of me, my imperfect sight--that is, my erring judgment–is continually blundering.

If all my knowledge relate to my own character, and that knowledge is egregiously defective, how profound must be my ignorance of others, and especially of her whom I presume to call mine!

No paradox ever puzzled me so much as your conduct. On my first interview with you I loved you; yet what kind of passion was that which knew only your features and the sound of your voice? Every successive interview has produced, not only something new or unexpected, but something in seeming contradiction to my previous knowledge.

"She will act," said I, "in such and such circumstances, as those of her delicate and indulgent education must always act. That wit, that eloquence, that knowledge, must only make her despise such a witless, unendowed, unaccomplished, wavering, and feeble wretch as I am."

To be called your friend; to be your occasional companion; to be a tolerated visitor, was more than I expected. When I found all this anxiously sought and eagerly accepted, I was lost in astonishment. At times–may I venture to confess?–your regard for me brought your judgment into question! It failed to inspire me with more respect for myself; and not to look at me with my own eyes degraded you in my opinion.

How have you laboured to bestow on me that inestimable gift,–self-confidence! And some success has attended your efforts. My deliverance from my chains is less desperate than once it was. I may judge of the future, perhaps, by the past. Since I have already made such progress in exchanging distant veneration for familiar tenderness, and in persuading myself that he must possess some merit whom a soul like thine idolizes, I may venture to anticipate the time when all my humiliation may vanish, and I shall come to be thought worthy of thy love, not only by thee, but by myself.

What a picture is this thou drawest! Yet such is my weakness, Jane, that I must shudder at the prospect. To tear thee from thy present dwelling and its comforts, to make thee a tenant of thy good widow, and a seamstress for me!

"Yet what" (thou sayest) "is a fine house, and a train of servants, music, and pictures? What silly prejudice, to connect dignity and happiness with high ceilings and damask canopies and golden superfluity!"

Yet so silly am I, when reason deserts the helm and habit assumes it. The change thou hast painted deceives me for a moment, or rather is rightly judged of while I look at nothing but thy colouring; but when I withdraw my eye from that, and the scene rises before me in the hues it is accustomed to derive from my own fancy, my soul droops, and I pray Heaven to avert such a destiny.

I tell thee all my follies, Jane. Art thou not my sweet physician? and how canst thou cure the malady when thou knowest not all its symptoms?

I love to regard myself in this light:–as one owing his virtue, his existence, his happiness, his every thing, to thee, and as proposing no end to himself but thy happiness in turn, but the discharge of an endless debt of gratitude.

On my account, Jane, I cannot bear you should lose any thing. It must not be. Yet what remedy? How is thy mother's aversion to be subdued? how can she be made to reason on my actions as you reason? Yet not so, either. None but she that loves me can make such constructions and allowances as you do.

Why may she not be induced to give up the hope of disuniting us, and, while she hates me, continue her affection for thee? Why rob thee of those bounties hitherto dispensed to thee, merely because I must share in them? My partaking with thee contributes indispensably to thy happiness. Not for my own sake, then, but merely for thine, ought competence to be secured to thee.

But is there no method of excluding me from all participation? She may withhold from me all power of a landlord, but she cannot prevent me from subsisting on thy bounty.

Yet why does she now allow you to possess what you do? Can she imagine that my happiness is not as dear to you now as it will be in consequence of any change? If I share nothing with you now, it is not from any want of benevolent importunity in you.

There is a strange inconsistency and contradiction in thy mother's conduct.

But something may surely be done to lighten her antipathies. I may surely confute a false charge. I may convince her of my innocence in one respect.

Yet see, my friend, the evils of which one error is the parent. My conduct towards the poor Jessy appears to your mother a more enormous wickedness than this imputed injustice to Talbot. The frantic indiscretion of my correspondence with Thomson has ruined me; for he that will commit the greater crime will not be thought to scruple the less.

And then there is such an irresistible crowd of evidence in favour of the accusation! When I first read Mrs. Fielder's letter, the consciousness of my innocence gave me courage; but the longer I reflect upon the subject, the more deeply I despond. My own errors will always be powerful pleaders against me at the bar of this austere judge.

Would to Heaven I had not yielded to your urgency! The indecorum of compliance stared me in the face at the time. Too easily I yielded to the enchantments of those eyes, and the pleadings of that melting voice.

The charms of your conversation; the midnight hour whose security was heightened by the storm that raged without; so perfectly screened from every interruption; and the subject we had been talking on, so affecting and attractive to me, and so far from being exhausted, and you so pathetically earnest in entreaty, so absolutely forbidding my departure.

And was I such a short-sighted fool as not to insist on your retiring at the usual hour? The only thing that could make the expedient suggested by me effectual was that. Your Molly lying with you could avail you nothing, unless you actually passed the night in your chamber.

As it was, no contrivance could be more unfortunate, since it merely enabled her the more distinctly to remark the hour when you came up. Was it three, or four, when you left the parlour?

The unbosoming of souls which that night witnessed, so sweetly as it dwelt upon my memory, I now regard with horror, since it has involved you in such evil.

But the letter,–that was a most disastrous accident. I had read very frequently this fatal billet. Who is it that could imitate your hand so exactly? The same fashion in the letters, the same colour in the ink, the same style, and the sentiments expressed so fully and accurately coalescing with the preceding and genuine passages!–no wonder that your mother, being so well acquainted with your pen, should have no doubt as to your guilt, after such testimony.

There must be a perpetrator of this iniquity. Talbot it could not be; for where lay the letter in the interval between its disappearance and his return? and what motive could influence him to commit or to countenance such a forgery?

Without doubt there was some deceiver. Some one stole the letter, and by his hand was this vile conclusion added, and by him was it communicated to Talbot. But hast thou such an enemy in the world? Whom have you offended, capable of harbouring such deadly vengeance?

Pray, my friend, sit down to the recollection of your past life, and inquire who it was that possessed your husband's confidence; who were his intimate companions, endeavour to discover; tell me the names and characters of all those who were accustomed to visit your house, either on your account or his. Strange, if among all these there is no foundation for some conjecture, however shadowy.

Thomson is no better, yet grows worse hardly perceptibly. Adieu.

HENRY COLDEN.