Volume I Will Never Part with; It Shall Be the Manual of My Devotions,

my companion through the world which I am going to enter; it shall be my antidote against the pernicious maxims of society; it shall comfort me under my afflictions; it shall prevent or amend my errors; it shall afford me instruction in my youth, and yield me edification in age: the first love-letters, Eloisa, that perhaps ever were put to such an use! With respect to your last epistle, which I have before me, excellent as it appears to me, I find however one thing you should have omitted. You may think it strange; but it is much more so, that this very article should particularly regard yourself, and that I blame you even for writing it at all. Why do you talk to me of fidelity and constancy? you once were better acquainted both with my passion and your own power. Ah, Eloisa, do you entertain such changeable sentiments? what, though I had promised you nothing, should I the sooner cease to be yours? Oh, no, it was at the first glance you directed to me, at the first word you spoke, at the first motion of my heart, that a flame was kindled in my soul which can never be extinguished. Had I never seen you since that first moment, it had been enough, it had been afterwards too late to have ever forgotten you. And is it possible for me to forget you now? now, that, intoxicated with my past felicity, the very remembrance of it makes me still happy? now, that the soul, which once animated me, is fled, and I live only by that which Eloisa hath inspired? now, that I despise myself for expressing so coldly what I so sensibly feel? should all the beauties in the universe display their charms to seduce me, is there one amongst them could eclipse thine? let them all combine to captivate my heart; let them pierce, let them wound it, let them break to pieces, this faithful mirror of my Eloisa, her unsullied image will not cease to be reflected from its smallest fragments, for nothing is able to drive it thence. No, not omnipotence itself can go thus far; it may annihilate my soul, but it cannot leave its existence and make it cease to love Eloisa.

Lord B---- has undertaken to give you an account of my affairs, and what he has projected in my favour: but I am afraid he will not strictly fulfil his promise with respect to his present plan. For you are to know that he has abused the right his beneficence has given him over me, in extending it beyond the bounds of generosity. The pension he has settled on me, and which he has made independent, has put me in a condition to make an appearance here much above my rank, and perhaps even that which I shall have occasion to make in London. While I am here, as I have nothing to do, I live just as I please, and shall have no temptation to throw away the savings of my income in idle expenses. You, Eloisa, have taught me that our principal, at least our most pressing wants, are those of a benevolent mind; and, as long as one individual is deprived of the necessaries of life, what virtuous man will riot in its superfluities?