Sometimes my father fixes his eyes so tenderly on me, yet with a look as if he would search to the most secret folds of my heart. He has never once asked my opinion of my elected bride, who, gay and happy as the first circles of this dissipated city can make her, cheerfully receives the plea which ill health affords (attributed to a heavy cold) of not attending her in her pursuit of pleasure. The fact is, I am indeed ill; my mind and body seem declining together, and nothing in this world can give me joy, but the prospect of its delivery. By this I suppose the mysterious friend is arrived. It was expedient, therefore, that I should be dismissed. By this I suppose she is.... So closely does my former weakness cling round my heart, that I cannot think of it without madness. After having contemplated for a few minutes the sun’s cloudless radiancy, the impression left on the averted gaze is two dark spots, and the dazzled organ becomes darkened by a previous excess of lumination. It is thus with my mind; its present gloom is proportioned to its former light. Oh! it was too, too much! Rescued from that moral death, that sickbed satiety of feeling, that state of chill, hopeless existence, in which the torpid faculties were impalpable to every impression, when to breathe, to move, constituted all the powers of being: and then suddenly, as if by intervention of Providence (and what an agent did it appoint for the execution of its divine will!) raised to the summit of human thought, human feeling, human felicity, only again to be plunged in endless night. It was too much. ***** Good God! would you believe it! My father is gone to M------house, to prepare for the reception of the bridal party. We are to follow, and he proposes spending the summer there; there too, he says, my marriage with Miss D------ is to be celebrated; he wishes to conciliate the good will, not only of the neighbouring gentry, but of his tenantry in general, and thinks this will be a fair occasion. Well be it so; but I shall not hold myself answerable for the consequences: my destiny is in their hands--let them look to the result.