Eliza’s brother has been to visit her last retreat, and to learn the particulars of her melancholy exit.  He relates that she was well accommodated, and had every attention and assistance which her situation required.  The people where she resided appear to have a lively sense of her merit and misfortunes.  They testify her modest deportment, her fortitude under the sufferings to which she was called, and the serenity and composure with which she bade a last adieu to the world.  Mr. Wharton has brought back several scraps of her writing, containing miscellaneous reflections on her situation, the death of her babe, and the absence of her friends.  Some of these were written before, some after, her confinement.  These valuable testimonies of the affecting sense and calm expectation she entertained of her approaching dissolution are calculated to soothe and comfort the minds of mourning connections.  They greatly alleviate the regret occasioned by her absence at this awful period.  Her elopement can be equalled only by the infatuation which caused her ruin.

  “But let no one reproach her memory. 
  Her life has paid the forfeit of her folly. 
  Let that suffice.”

I am told that Major Sanford is quite frantic.  Sure I am that he has reason to be.  If the mischiefs he has brought upon others return upon his own head, dreadful indeed must be his portion.  His wife has left him, and returned to her parents.  His estate, which has been long mortgaged, is taken from him, and poverty and disgrace await him.  Heaven seldom leaves injured innocence unavenged.  Wretch that he is, he ought forever to be banished from human society!  I shall continue with Mrs. Wharton till the lenient hand of time has assuaged her sorrows, and then make my promised visit to you.  I will bring Eliza’s posthumous papers with me when I come to Boston, as I have not time to copy them now.

I foresee, my dear Mrs. Sumner, that this disastrous affair will suspend your enjoyments, as it has mine.  But what are our feelings, compared with the pangs which rend a parent’s heart?  This parent I here behold inhumanly stripped of the best solace of her declining years by the insnaring machinations of a profligate debauchee.  Not only the life, but, what was still dearer, the reputation and virtue? of the unfortunate Eliza have fallen victims at the shrine of libertinism.  Detested be the epithet.  Let it henceforth bear its true signature, and candor itself shall call it lust and brutality.  Execrable is the man, however arrayed in magnificence, crowned with wealth, or decorated with the external graces and accomplishments of fashionable life, who shall presume to display them at the expense of virtue and innocence.  Sacred name attended with real blessings—­blessings too useful and important to be trifled away.  My resentment at the base arts which must have been employed to complete the seduction of Eliza I cannot suppress.  I wish them to be exposed, and stamped with universal ignominy.  Nor do I doubt but you will join with me in execrating the measures by which we have been robbed of so valuable a friend, and society of so ornamental a member.  I am, &c.,