penitence, and, in all probability, to future mercy.

But here is Miss CLARISSA HARLOWE, a virtuous, noble, wise, and pious
young lady; who being ill used by her friends, and unhappily ensnared by
a vile libertine, whom she believes to be a man of honour, is in a manner
forced to throw herself upon his protection. And he, in order to obtain
her confidence, never scruples the deepest and most solemn protestations
of honour.

After a series of plots and contrivances, al baffled by her virtue and
vigilance, he basely has recourse to the vilest of arts, and, to rob her
of her honour, is forced first to rob her of her senses.

Unable to bring her, notwithstanding, to his ungenerous views of
cohabitation, she over-awes him in the very entrance of a fresh act of
premeditated guilt, in presence of the most abandoned of women assembled
to assist his devilish purpose; triumphs over them all, by virtue only of
her innocence; and escapes from the vile hands he had put her into.

She nobly, not franticly, resents: refuses to see or to marry the wretch;
who, repenting his usage of so divine a creature, would fain move her to
forgive his baseness, and make him her husband: and this, though
persecuted by all her friends, and abandoned to the deepest distress,
being obliged, from ample fortunes, to make away with her apparel for
subsistence; surrounded also by strangers, and forced (in want of others)
to make a friend of the friend of her seducer.

Though longing for death, and making all proper preparations for it,
convinced that grief and ill usage have broken her noble heart, she
abhors the impious thought of shortening her allotted period; and, as