Chapter XVI: Letter XVI: TO Miss GRENVILLE

Enough, my dearest sister, enough have you suffered through your unremitted tenderness to your Julia;--yet believe her, while she vows to the dear bosom of friendship, no action of her's shall call a blush on your cheek. Good God! what a wretch should I be, if I could abuse such sisterly love! if, after such friendly admonitions, enforced with so much moving eloquence, your Julia should degenerate from her birth, and forget those lessons of virtue early inculcated by the best of fathers! If, after all these, she should suffer herself to be immersed in the vortex of folly and vice, what would she not deserve! Oh! rest assured, my dearest dear Louisa, be satisfied, your sister cannot be so vile,--remember the same blood flows through our veins; one parent stock we sprang from; nurtured by one hand; listening at the same time to the same voice of reason; learning the same pious lesson--why then these apprehensions of my degeneracy? Trust me, Louisa, I will not deceive you; and God grant I may never deceive myself! The wisest of men has said, "the heart of man is deceitful above all things." I however will strictly examine mine; I will search into it narrowly; at present the search is not painful; I have nothing to reproach myself with; I have, I hope, discharged my filial and fraternal duties; my matrimonial ones are inviolate: I have studied the temper of Sir William, in hopes I should discover a rule for my actions; but how can I form a system from one so variable as he is? Would to heaven he was more uniform! or that he would suffer himself to be guided by his own understanding, and not by the whim or caprice of others so much inferior to himself! All this I have repeated frequently to you, together with my wish to leave London, and the objects with which I am daily surrounded.--Does such a wish look as if I was improperly attached to the world, or any particular person in it? You are too severe, my love, but when I reflect that your rigidity proceeds from your unrivaled attachment, I kiss the rod of my chastisement;--I long to fold my dear lecturer in my arms, and convince her, that one, whose heart is filled with the affection that glows in mine, can find no room for any sentiment incompatible with virtue, of which she is the express image. Adieu!

JULIA STANLEY.