liberties with relations so very respectable, and whom she highly
respects? What an unhappy situation is that which obliges her, in her
own defence as it were, to expose their failings?

But you, who know how much I love and reverence my mother, will judge
what a difficulty I am under, to be obliged to oppose a scheme which
she has engaged in. Yet I must oppose it (to comply is impossible);
and must without delay declare my opposition, or my difficulties will
increase; since, as I am just now informed, a lawyer has been this
very day consulted [Would you have believed it?] in relation to
settlements.

Were ours a Roman Catholic family, how much happier for me, that they
thought a nunnery would answer all their views!--How happy, had not a
certain person slighted somebody! All then would have been probably
concluded between them before my brother had arrived to thwart the
match: then had I a sister; which now I have not; and two brothers;--
both aspiring; possibly both titled: while I should only have valued
that in either which is above title, that which is truly noble in
both!

But by what a long-reaching selfishness is my brother governed! By
what remote, exceedingly remote views! Views, which it is in the
power of the slightest accident, of a fever, for instance, (the seeds
of which are always vegetating, as I may say, and ready to burst
forth, in his own impetuous temper,) or of the provoked weapon of an
adversary, to blow up and destroy!

I will break off here. Let me write ever so freely of my friends, I
am sure of your kind construction: and I confide in your discretion,