I can scarcely picture to myself a life more negative, less energetic, notwithstanding your fervor, than that you would have led with Sibella had fortune placed you in the situation Clement stood with her. Do not let your burning brain consume you at the supposition; for, highly gifted as you both are, mind cannot always feel in that extreme:--the tight drawn wire must either snap or slacken.--Too happy, banished in rapture, age would have come upon you without preparation for its arrival, without proper nourishment for its abode. In vain you then turn to each other for consolation.--The spell that guarded you from every intruding care is broken: and you have lessons, wearisome tasks to learn, which would only have been pleasant relaxations intermixed with the abounding delights of youth. You are both at present the victims of erroneous educations, but your artificial refinements being so admirably checked in their growth, now I know not two people upon earth so calculated, so fitted for each other as Murden and Sibella.--My resolution envigorates with the prospect!--Be ye but what ye may, and the first vaunted pair of paradise were not more happy! I perceive not only the value of the work I undertake, but the labour also; nor am I deterred by the firmness wherewith you hold your resolutions, not by the tedious scarcely perceptible degrees with which I must sap the foundation of Sibella's error.--Ah, Murden, I suspect, had she possessed equal advantages with yourself, she would have soared far beyond what you are as yet! By her last letter, I find she discovers a deficiency in Clement's conduct which she struggles to hide from her own penetration.--He is my best auxiliary. I once thought him only a negative character, drawn this way or that by a thread. Now, I see he has an incessant restlessness after pomp and pleasure which nothing can subdue, and to which every thing must yield: Sibella in her turn--indeed, half her hold at least is gone already.--If he speaks of her now to me, she is not as before--his adored--an angel--superior to every thing in heaven or on earth--but one lady has an eye almost as intelligent as Sibella's--another, a bloom of complexion scarcely less exquisite--and a third, in form in graces moves a counterpart goddess!----As you say, there is a vehemency and energy in his expressions, that, in the general apprehension, cloathe him with attributes which never did and never can belong to him. It is but very rarely that I partake of his effusions, for I am not to his taste. My mother is his confidante; and she is quite fascinated with the descriptions of his love. When he was first introduced to us, I thought it necessary, for a reason you perhaps divine, to mention the mutual attachment subsisting between Clement and Sibella.--Mrs. Ashburn declared she would take his constancy under her protection: yes, she would guard him from folly and temptation.