I grasped at the proposal with eagerness; she flitted out of the chamber with a promissory smile; and I was so charmed, that I began frisking about, and snapping my fingers, in a most indecorous manner. What an angel is this Sympathina! Her face has the contour of a Madona, with the sensibility of a Magdalen. Her voice is soft as the last accents of a dying maid. Her language is engaging, her oh is sublime, and her ah is beautiful. Adieu. LETTER XLIII Towards night I heard the sound of several steps approaching the chamber. The bolts were undrawn, and Lady Sympathina, at the head of the company, entered, and announced their names. 'Bless me!' said I, involuntarily; for such a set of objects never were seen. Sir Charles Grandison came forward the first. He was an emaciated old oddity in flannels and a flowing wig. He bowed over my hand, and kissed it--his old custom, you know. Lady Grandison leaned on his arm, bursting with fat and laughter, and so unlike what I had conceived of Harriet Byron, that I turned from her in disgust. Mortimer Delville came next; and my disappointment at finding him a plain, sturdy, hard-featured fellow, was soon absorbed in my still greater regret at seeing his Cecilia,--once the blue-eyed, sun-tressed Cecilia,--now flaunting in all the reverend graces of a painted grandmother, and leering most roguishly. After them, Lord Mortimer and his Amanda advanced; but he had fallen into flesh; and she, with a face like scorched parchment, appeared both broken-hearted and broken-winded; such a perpetual sighing and wheezing did she keep. I was too much shocked and disappointed to speak; but Sir Charles soon broke silence; and after the most tedious sentence of compliment that I had ever heard, he thus continued: 'Your ladyship may recollect I have always been celebrated for giving advice. Let me then advise you to relieve yourself from your present embarrassment, by marrying Lord Montmorenci. It seems you do not love him. For that very reason marry him. Trust me, love before marriage is the surest preventive of love after it. Heroes and heroines exemplify the proposition. Why do their biographers always conclude the book just at their wedding? Simply because all beyond it is unhappiness and hatred.' 'Surely, Sir Charles,' said I, 'you must be mistaken. Their biographers (who have such admirable information, that they can even tell the thoughts and actions of dying personages, when not a soul is near them), these always end the book with declaring that the connubial lives of their heroes and heroines are like unclouded skies, or unruffled streams, or summer all the year through, or some gentle simile or other.' 'That is all irony,' replied Sir Charles. 'But I know most of these heroes and heroines myself; and I know that nothing can equal their misery.' 'Do you know Lord Orville and his Evelina?' said I; 'and are not they happy?'