Tell me, _Philander_, what new accident, what powerful misfortune has befallen thee, greater than what we have experienced yet, to drive the little god out of thy heart, and make thee so unlike my soft _Philander_? What place contains thee, or what pleasures ease thee, that thou art now contented to live a tedious day without thy _Sylvia_? How then the long long age of forty more, and yet thou livest, art patient, tame and well; thou talkest not now of ravings, or of dying, but look’st about thee like a well pleased conqueror after the toils of battle--oh, I have known a time--but let me never think upon it more! It cannot be remembered without madness! What, think thee fallen from love! To think, that I must never hear thee more pouring thy soul out in soft sighs of love? A thousand dear expressions by which I knew the story of thy heart, and while you tell it, bid me feel it panting--never to see thy eyes fixed on my face--till the soft showers of joy would gently fall and hang their shining dew upon thy looks, then in a transport snatch me to thy bosom, and sigh a thousand times ere thou couldst utter--’Ah _Sylvia_, how I love thee’--oh the dear eloquence those few short words contain, when they are sent with lovers’ accents to a soul all languishing! But now--alas, thy love is more familiar grown--oh take the other part of the proverb too, and say it has bred contempt, for nothing less than that your letter shews, but more it does, and that is indifference, less to be borne than hate, or any thing-- At least be just, and let me know my doom: do not deceive the heart that trusted all thy vows, if thou be’st generous--if thou lettest me know--thy date of love--is out (for love perhaps as life has dates) and equally uncertain, and thou no more canst stay the one than the other; yet if thou art so kind for all my honour lost, my youth undone, my beauty tarnished, and my lasting vows, to let me fairly know thou art departing, my worthless life will be the only loss: but if thou still continuest to impose upon my easy faith, and I should any other way learn my approaching fate--look to it _Philander_,--she that had the courage to abandon all for love and faithless thee, can, when she finds herself betrayed and lost, nobly revenge the ruin of her fame, and send thee to the other world with SYLVIA.