_Harrington_ to _Harriot_.
_Boston._
IF a wish, arising from the most tender affection, could
transport me to the object of my love, I persuade myself that you would
not be troubled with reading this letter.
YOU must expect nothing like wit or humour, or even common sense, from
me; wit and humour are flown with you, and your return only can restore
them. I am sometimes willing to persuade myself that this is the case—I
think I hear the well known voice, I look around me with the ecstasy of
_Orpheus_, but that look breaks the charm, I find myself alone, and my
_Eurydice_ vanished to the shades.
I HOPE you will not permit yourself to grow envious of the beauties of
Rhodeisland. Of the force of their charms I am experimentally
acquainted. Wherever fortune has thrown me, it has been my happiness to
imagine myself in love with some divine creature or other; and after all
it is but truth to declare that the passion was seated more in fancy
than the heart; and it is justice to acknowledge to you that I am now
more provident of my passion, and never suffer the excursion of fancy,
except when I am so liberal as to admit the united _beauty_ of the
Rhodeisland ladies in competition with yours.
WHERE there are handsome women there will necessarily be fine gentlemen,
and should they be smitten with your _external graces_, I cannot but
lament their deplorable situation, when they discover how egregiously
they have been cheated. What must be his disappointment, who thought
himself fascinated by beauty, when he finds he has unknowingly been
charmed by reason and virtue!
BUT this you will say contains a sentiment of jealously, and is but a
transcript of my apprehensions and gloomy anxieties: When will your
preference, like the return of the sun in the spring, which dispels
glooms, and reanimates the face of nature, quiet these apprehensions? If
it be not in a short time, I shall proceed on a journey to find you out;
until then I commit you to the care of your guardian angel.