with!—­My soul is above thee, man!’* Miss Howe thinks her above me too.  Thou, even thou, my friend, my intimate friend and companion, art of the same opinion.  Then I fear her as much as I love her.—­How shall my pride bear these reflections?  My wife (as I have often said, because it so often recurs to my thoughts) to be so much my superior!—­ Myself to be considered but as the second person in my own family!—­Canst thou teach me to bear such a reflection as this!—­To tell me of my acquisition in her, and that she, with all her excellencies, will be mine in full property, is a mistake—­it cannot be so—­for shall I not be her’s; and not my own?—­Will not every act of her duty (as I cannot deserve it) be a condescension, and a triumph over me?—­And must I owe it merely to her goodness that she does not despise me?—­To have her condescend to bear with my follies!—­To wound me with an eye of pity!—­A daughter of the Harlowes thus to excel the last, and as I have heretofore said, not the meanest of the Lovelaces**—­forbid it!

* See Vol.  IV.  Letter XLVII. ** See Vol.  III.  Letter XVIII.

Yet forbid it not—­for do I not now—­do I not every moment—­see her before me all over charms, and elegance and purity, as in the struggles of the past midnight?  And in these struggles, heart, voice, eyes, hand, and sentiments, so greatly, so gloriously consistent with the character she has sustained from her cradle to the present hour?

But what advantages do I give thee?

Yet have I not always done her justice?  Why then thy teasing impertinence?

However, I forgive thee, Jack—­since (so much generous love am I capable of!) I had rather all the world should condemn me, than that her character should suffer the least impeachment.

The dear creature herself once told me, that there was a strange mixture in my mind.* I have been called Devil and Beelzebub, between the two proud beauties:  I must indeed be a Beelzebub, if I had not some tolerable qualities.

* See Vol.  III.  Letter XXXIII.

But as Miss Howe says, the suffering time of this excellent creature is her shining time.* Hitherto she has done nothing but shine.

* See Vol.  IV.  Letter XXIII.

She called me villain, Belford, within these few hours.  And what is the sum of the present argument; but that had I not been a villain in her sense of the word, she had not been such an angel?

O Jack, Jack!  This midnight attempt has made me mad; has utterly undone me!  How can the dear creature say, I have made her vile in her own eyes, when her behaviour under such a surprise, and her resentment under such circumstances, have so greatly exalted her in mine?

Whence, however, this strange rhapsody?—­Is it owing to my being here?  That I am not at Sinclair’s?  But if there be infection in that house, how has my beloved escaped it?

But no more in this strain!—­I will see what her behaviour will be on my return—­yet already do I begin to apprehend some little sinkings, some little retrogradations:  for I have just now a doubt arisen, whether, for her own sake, I should wish her to forgive me lightly, or with difficulty?