But since you ask for my opinion, you must tell me all you know or
surmise of their inducements. And if you will not forbid me to make
extracts from your letters for the entertainment of my aunt and cousin
in the little island, who long to hear more of your affairs, it will
be very obliging.

But you are so tender of some people who have no tenderness for any
body but themselves, that I must conjure you to speak out. Remember,
that a friendship like ours admits of no reserves. You may trust my
impartiality. It would be an affront to your own judgment, if you did
not: For do you not ask my advice? And have you not taught me that
friendship should never give a bias against justice?--Justify them,
therefore, if you can. Let us see if there be any sense, whether
sufficient reason or not in their choice. At present I cannot (and
yet I know a good deal of your family) have any conception how all of
them, your mother and your aunt Hervey in particular, can join with
the rest against judgments given. As to some of the others, I cannot
wonder at any thing they do, or attempt to do, where self is
concerned.

You ask, Why may not your brother be first engaged in wedlock? I'll
tell you why: His temper and his arrogance are too well known to
induce women he would aspire to, to receive his addresses,
notwithstanding his great independent acquisitions, and still greater
prospects. Let me tell you, my dear, those acquisitions have given
him more pride than reputation. To me he is the most intolerable
creature that I ever conversed with. The treatment you blame, he
merited from one whom he addressed with the air of a person who
presumes that he is about to confer a favour, rather than to receive
one. I ever loved to mortify proud and insolent spirits. What, think