“I am ready to become all that you could wish me to be if you loved me and which is all I wish your husband. But suppose I should have gone too far in this declaration, and my fond observation prove a mistake, how will you wish, nay rather how impossible would it then be for you to wish even to call me by that tender name. But let me still suppose it is not so.... Yet what argument can I use to induce you to leave London with all the delights it affords, or how persuade you to leave so good a master who I know values you and whom you both esteem and love. Here I am at a loss and if you should be indifferent with regard to me it will be impossible to say anything that will be sufficient. And indeed I am not inclined to flatter nor to fill your imagination with fine words only; and this is one of all the realities I can think of, that it is not impossible but that you may be happy here even tho’ it is true you cannot behold the splendour and the gaiety of a great city nor the noise and hurry of its inhabitants; yet the London air is not half so sweet, nor the pleasures half so lasting and sincere. Here inocense and health more frequently reside; here the beauties of nature are ever presenting themselves both to our senses and imaganations; here you may view the rising and the setting sun which many in London are strangers to; here it is that you may have the morning and the evening song of many warbling larks and linnets and as Milton expresses it ‘The shrill matin song of birds on everry bough.’ As to myself fortune has not placed me among the number of the rich and great and so not subjected me to the many temptations and follies that attend great men some of which perhaps I should not have been able to withstand, and others that I should have been loth to bear; yet by the blessing of heaven I have more then enough for happiness, and by that means at this season of the year I enjoy many leisure hours (and all the blessings of leisure and retirement) some of which I spend in reading and meditation, the rest I dedicate to love and you. “But I shall forget myself and learn to do a thing I never loved that is to write long letters, and yet methinks I have a thousand things to say; but as I had rather you wished I had said more than less nay if I could have told you all my heart in one word, I should not now have troubled you with so many; but I have no apology to make, only my sincerity, and if you read with candour and with the same simplicity with which I write you will certainly find it sincere. I hope that will recomment it to your kind reception and obtain if possible an answer of kindness. “I saw your brother as I passed through Derby but I did not take him the books you desired me. I heard from my brother last week and rejoyce to hear he has been abroad (i e out of the house).