Chapter XXX: Letter XXX: To the SYLPH

Though encouraged by the commendations of my Sylph, I tremble when you tell me the most retired secrets of my soul are open to your view. You say you have seen its struggles. Oh! that you alone have seen them! Could I be assured, that one _other_ is yet a stranger to those struggles, I should feel no more humiliated (though that word is not sufficiently strong to express my meaning), than I do in my confessions to Heaven; because I am taught to believe, that our thoughts are involuntary, and that we are not answerable for them, unless they tend to excite us to evil actions. Mine, thank God! have done me no other mischief, than robbing me of that _repose_, which, perhaps, had I been blest with insensibility, might have been my portion. But a very large share of insensibility must have been dealt out to me, to have guarded me from my sense of merit in one person, and my feeling no affliction at the want of it in another, that _other_ too, with whose fate mine is unavoidably connected. I must do myself that justice to say, my heart would have remained fixed with my hand, had my husband remained the same. Had _he_ known no change, my affections would have centered in him; that is, I should have passed through life a duteous and observant partner of his cares and pleasures. When I married, I had never loved any but my own relations; indeed I had seen no _one_ to love. The language, and its emotions, were equally strangers to my ears or heart. Sir William Stanley was the first man who used the one, and consequently, in a bosom so young and inexperienced as mine, created the other. He told me, he loved. I blushed, and felt confused; unhappily, I construed these indications of self-love into an attachment for him. Although this bore but a small relation to love, yet, in a breast where virtue and a natural tenderness resided, it would have been sufficient to have guarded my heart from receiving any other impression. He did so, till repeated slights and irregularities on one hand, and on the other all the virtues and graces that can adorn and beautify the mind, raised a conflict in my bosom, that has destroyed my peace, and hurt my constitution. I have a beloved sister, who deserves all the affection I bear her; from her I have concealed nothing. She has read every secret of my heart; for, when I wrote to her, reserve was banished from my pen. This unfortunate predilection, which, believe me, I have from the first combated with all my force, has given my Louisa, who has the tenderest soul, the utmost uneasiness. I have very lately assured her, my resolves to conquer this fatal attachment are fixed and permanent. I doubt (and she thinks perhaps) I have too often indulged myself in dwelling upon the dangerous subject in my frequent letters. I have given my word I will mention him no more. Oh! my Sylph! how has he risen in my esteem from a recent story I have heard of him! How hard is my fate (you can read my thoughts, so that to endeavour to soften the expression would be needless), that I am constrained to obey the man I can neither love nor honour! and, alas! love the man, who is not, nor can be, any thing to me.

I have vowed to my sister, myself, and now to you, that, however hardly treated, yet virtue and rectitude shall be my guide. I arrogate no great merit to myself in still preserving myself untainted in this vortex of folly and vice. No one falls all at once; and I have no temptation to do so. The man I esteem above all others is superior to all others. His manners refined, generous, virtuous, humane; oh! when shall I fill the catalogue of his excellent qualities? He pays a deference to me, at least used to do, because I was not tinctured with the licentious fashion of the times; he would lose that esteem for me, were I to act without decency and discretion; and I hope I know enough of my heart, to say, I should no longer feel an attachment for him, did he countenance vice. Alas! what is to be inferred from this, but that I shall carry this fatal preference with me to the grave! Let me, however, descend to _it_, without bringing disgrace on myself, sorrow on my beloved relations, and repentance on my Sylph, for having thrown away his counsels on an ingrate; and I will peacefully retire from a world for whose pleasures I have very little taste. Adieu.

JULIA STANLEY.