fathers.  Can you imagine that he that demands L5000 besides the reversion of an estate will like bare L4000?  Such miracles are seldom seen, and you must prepare to suffer a strange persecution unless you grow conformable; therefore consider what you do, ’tis the part of a friend to advise you.  I could say a great deal to this purpose, and tell you that ’tis not discreet to refuse a good offer, nor safe to trust wholly to your own judgment in your disposal.  I was never better provided in my life for a grave admonishing discourse.  Would you had heard how I have been catechized for you, and seen how soberly I sit and answer to interrogatories.  Would you think that upon examination it is found that you are not an indifferent person to me?  But the mischief is, that what my intentions or resolutions are, is not to be discovered, though much pains has been taken to collect all scattering circumstances; and all the probable conjectures that can be raised from thence has been urged, to see if anything would be confessed.  And all this done with so much ceremony and compliment, so many pardons asked for undertaking to counsel or inquire, and so great kindness and passion for all my interests professed, that I cannot but take it well, though I am very weary on’t.  You are spoken of with the reverence due to a person that I seem to like, and for as much as they know of you, you do deserve a very good esteem; but your fortune and mine can never agree, and, in plain terms, we forfeit our discretions and run wilfully upon our own ruins if there be such a thought.  To all this I make no reply, but that if they will needs have it that I am not without kindness for you, they must conclude withal that ’tis no part of my intention to ruin you, and so the conference breaks up for that time.  All this is [from] my friend, that is not yours; and the gentleman that came upstairs in a basket, I could tell him that he spends his breath to very little purpose, and has but his labour for his pains.  Without his precepts my own judgment would preserve me from doing anything that might be prejudicial to you or unjustifiable to the world; but if these be secured, nothing can alter the resolution I have taken of settling my whole stock of happiness upon the affection of a person that is dear to me, whose kindness I shall infinitely prefer before any other consideration whatsoever, and I shall not blush to tell you that you have made the whole world beside so indifferent to me that, if I cannot be yours, they may dispose of me how they please.  Henry Cromwell will be as acceptable to me as any one else.  If I may undertake to counsel, I think you shall do well to comply with your father as far as possible, and not to discover any aversion to what he desires further than you can give reason for.  What his disposition may be I know not; but ’tis that of many parents to judge their children’s dislikes to be an humour of approving nothing that is chosen for them, which many times makes them take up another of denying their children all they choose for themselves.  I find I am in the humour of talking wisely if my paper would give me leave.  ’Tis great pity here is room for no more but—­