You see, for instance, with surprize, the incredible affection Lord B---- has for your friend; you see his zeal for your happiness; you receive with admiration his generous offers; you attribute them to his virtue only. My dear cousin, you are mistaken. God forbid I should extenuate his Lordship’s beneficence, or undervalue his greatness of soul. But, believe me, his zeal, disinterested as it is, would be less fervent if under the same circumstances he had to do with different people. It is the irresistible ascendant you and your friend have over him that, without his perceiving it, determines his resolution, and makes him do that out of affection, which he imagines proceeds only from motives of generosity. This is what always will be effected by minds of a certain temper. They transform, in a manner, every other into their own likeness; having a sphere of activity wherein nothing can resist their power. It is impossible to know without imitating them, while from their own sublime elevation they attract all that are about them. It is for this reason, my dear, that neither you nor your friend will perhaps ever know mankind; for you will rather see them such as you model them, than such as they are in themselves. You will lead the way for all those among whom you live; others will either imitate or leave you; and perhaps you will meet with nothing in the world similar to what you have hitherto seen. Let us come now to myself; to me whom the tie of consanguinity, a similarity of age, and, above all, a perfect conformity of taste, and humour, with a very opposite temperament, have united to you from your infancy. _Congiunti eran gl’ alberghi, Ma più congiunti i cori: Conforme era l’ etate, Ma l’ pensier più conforme._ What think you has been the effect of that captivating influence, which is felt by every one that approaches you, on her who has been intimate with you from her childhood? Can you think there subsists between us, but an ordinary connection? Do not my eyes communicate their sparkling joy in meeting yours? Do you not perceive in my heart the pleasure of partaking your pains, and lamenting with you? Can I forget that, in the first transports of a growing passion, my friendship was never disagreeable; and that the complaints of your lover could never prevail on you to send me from you, or prevent me from being a witness to your weakness? This, my Eloisa, was a critical juncture. I am sensible how great a sacrifice you made to modesty, in making me acquainted with an error I happily escaped. Never should I have been your confident had I been but half your friend: no, our souls felt themselves too intimately united for any thing ever to part them.