Here, my dearest Eloisa, your unhappy lover is enjoying the last pleasure that perhaps he may ever relish on this side the grave. Here, in spite of every obstacle, he can penetrate into your very chamber. He is even dazzled with your beauty, and the tenderness of your looks reanimates his drooping soul; nay he can wish for those raptures which he experienced with you in the grove. Alas! it is all a dream, the idle phantom of a projecting mind. Pleasing as it is, it vanishes like a vision, and I am soon forced to awake from so agreeable a delirium; and yet, even then, I have full employment for my thoughts. I admire and revere the purity of your sentiments, the innocence of your life; I trace out in my mind the method of your daily conduct, by comparing it with what I formerly well knew in happier days, and under more endearing circumstances; I find you ever attentive to engagements, which heighten your character: need I add that such a view most movingly affects me. In the morning I say to myself, she is just now awaking from calm and gentle slumbers, as fresh as the early dew, and as composed as the most spotless innocence, and is dedicating to her Creator a day, which she determines shall not be lost to virtue. She is now going to her mother, and her tender heart is feeling the soft ties of filial duty; she is either relieving her parents from the burthen of domestic cares, soothing their aged sorrows, pitying their infirmities, or excusing those indirections in others, which she knows not how to allow in herself. At another time, she is employing herself in works of genius or of use, storing her mind with valuable knowledge, or reconciling the elegancies of life to its more sober occupations. Sometimes I see a neat and studied simplicity set off those charms which need no such recommendations, and at others, she is consulting her holy pastor, on the circumstances of indigent merit. Here she is aiding, comforting, relieving the orphan or the widow; there she is the entertainment of the whole circle of her friends, by her prudent and sensible conversation. Now she is tempering the gaiety of youth, with wisdom and discretion: and some few moments (forgive me the presumption) you bestow on my hapless love. I see you melted into tears at the perusal of my letters, and can perceive, it is thy devoted lover is the subject of the lines you are penning, and of the passionate discourse between you and your cousin. O Eloisa, Eloisa! shall we never be united? Shall we never live together? can we, can we part for ever? No, be that thought quite banished from my soul. I start into the phrenzy at the very idea, and my distempered mind hurries me from rock to rock. Involuntary sighs and groans betray my inward disorder; I roar out like a lioness robbed of her young. I can do every thing but lose you; there is nothing, nothing, I would not attempt for you, at the risk of my life.