Study has not impaired your vivacity, nor injured your person; insipid
gallantry has not contracted your genius, nor formality your
understanding: but love inspiring those sublime sentiments which are
its genuine offspring, has given you that elevation of mind and
justness of conception from which it is inseparable. [18] I have seen
thy mind expanded by its gentle warmth, display its brilliant
faculties, as a flower that unfolds itself to the rays of the sun; you
possess at once every talent that leads to fortune, and should set you
above it: you need only aspire to be considerable, to become so; and I
hope that object for whose take you should covet distinction, will
excite in you a greater zeal for those marks of the world’s esteem,
than of themselves they may deserve.
You are going, my friend, far from me----my best beloved is going to
fly from his Eloisa.----It must be so,----it is necessary that we
should part at present, if we ever mean to be happy; on the success of
your undertakings also depends our last hope of such an event----Oh,
may the anticipation of it animate and comfort you throughout our
cruel, perhaps long separation! may it inspire you with that zeal,
which surmounts every obstacle. The world and its affairs will indeed
continually engage your attention, and relieve you from the pangs of
absence. But I, alas! remain alone, abandoned to my own thoughts, or
subject to the persecution of others, that will oblige me incessantly
to lament thy absence. Happy, however, shall I be, in some measure, if
groundless alarms do not aggravate my real afflictions, and if the
evils I actually suffer be not augmented by those to which you may be
exposed----I shudder at the thoughts of the various dangers to which
your life and your innocence will be liable. I place in you all the
confidence a man can expect; but, since it is our lot to live asunder,
O, my friend, I could wish you were something more than man. Will you
not stand in need of frequent advice to regulate your conduct in a
world, to which you are so much a stranger? It does not belong to me,
young and unexperienced, and even less qualified by reflection and
study than yourself, to advise you here. That difficult task I leave
to Lord B----. I will content myself to recommend to you two things,
as these depend more on sentiment than experience; and, tho’ I know
but little of the world, I flatter myself I am not to be instructed in
the knowledge of your heart: _Be virtuous, and remember Eloisa._