I HOPE you will not permit yourself to grow envious of the beauties of Rhodeisland. Of the force of their charms I am experimentally acquainted. Wherever fortune has thrown me, it has been my happiness to imagine myself in love with some divine creature or other; and after all it is but truth to declare that the passion was seated more in fancy than the heart; and it is justice to acknowledge to you that I am now more provident of my passion, and never suffer the excursion of fancy, except when I am so liberal as to admit the united _beauty_ of the Rhodeisland ladies in competition with yours. WHERE there are handsome women there will necessarily be fine gentlemen, and should they be smitten with your _external graces_, I cannot but lament their deplorable situation, when they discover how egregiously they have been cheated. What must be his disappointment, who thought himself fascinated by beauty, when he finds he has unknowingly been charmed by reason and virtue! BUT this you will say contains a sentiment of jealously, and is but a transcript of my apprehensions and gloomy anxieties: When will your preference, like the return of the sun in the spring, which dispels glooms, and reanimates the face of nature, quiet these apprehensions? If it be not in a short time, I shall proceed on a journey to find you out; until then I commit you to the care of your guardian angel. LETTER XX. _Harrington_ to _Harriot_. _Boston._ LAST night I went on a visit to your house: It was an adventure that would have done honour to the Knight of _La Mancha_. The moon ascended a clear, serene sky, the air was still, the bells sounded the solemn hour of midnight—I sighed—and the reason of it I need not tell you. This was, indeed, a pilgrimage; and no _Musselman_ ever travelled barefooted to _Mecca_ with more sincere devotion. YOUR absence would cause an insufferable _ennui_ in your friends, were it not for the art we have in making it turn to our amusement. Instead of wishing you were of our party, you are the goddess in whose honour we performed innumerable _Heathenish_ rites. Libations of wine are poured out, but not a guest presumes to taste it, until they implore the name of _Harriot_; we hail the new divinity in songs, and strew around the flowers of poetry. You need not, however, take to yourself any extraordinary addition of vanity on the occasion as your absence will not cause any repining: “Harriot our goddess and our grief no more.” BUT to give you _my_ opinion on this important matter, I must descend to plain truth, and acknowledge I had rather adore you a _present_ mortal, than an _absent_ divinity; and therefore wish for your return with more religious ardour than a devout disciple of the false prophet for the company of the _Houri_.