yet chaste, caresses and endearments of ineffable affection! My feelings became too highly wrought, and altogether insupportable. Sympathy for your situation, zeal for your virtues, love for your mind, tenderness for your person--a complication of generous, affecting, exquisite, emotions, impelled me to make one great effort.--"[13] The world might call my plans absurd, my views romantic, my pretensions extravagant--Was I, or was I not, guilty of any crime, when, in the very acme of the passions, I so totally disregarded the customs of the world?" Ah! what were my sensations--what did I not suffer, in the interval?--and you prolonged that cruel interval--and still you suffer me to doubt, whether, at the moment in my life when I was actuated by the highest, the most fervent, the most magnanimous, principles--whether, at that moment, when I most deserved your respect, I did not for ever forfeit it. [Footnote 13: Holcroft's Anna St Ives.] 'I seek not to extenuate any part of my conduct--I confess that it has been wild, extravagant, romantic--I confess, that, even for your errors, I am justly blameable--and yet I am unable to bear, because I feel they would be unjust, your hatred and contempt. I cherish no resentment--my spirit is subdued and broken--your unkindness sinks into my soul. 'EMMA.' Another fortnight wore away in fruitless expectation--the morning rose, the evening closed, upon me, in sadness. I could not, yet, think the mystery developed: on a concentrated view of the circumstances, they appeared to me contradictory, and irreconcileable. A solitary enthusiast, a child in the drama of the world, I had yet to learn, that those who have courage to act upon advanced principles, must be content to suffer moral martyrdom.[14] In subduing our own prejudices, we have done little, while assailed on every side by the prejudices of others. My own heart acquitted me; but I dreaded that distortion of mind, that should wrest guilt out of the most sublime of its emanations. [Footnote 14: This sentiment may be just in some particular cases, but it is by no means of general application, and must be understood with great limitations.]