consideration their engagements with Mr. Solmes; that gentleman's
patience, and great affection for you; and the little opportunity you
have given yourself to be acquainted either with his merit, or his
proposals: having considered two points more; to wit, the wounded
authority of a father; and Mr. Solmes's continued entreaties (little as
you have deserved regard from him) that you may be freed from a
confinement to which he is desirous to attribute your perverseness to him
[averseness I should have said, but let it go], he being unable to
account otherwise for so strong a one, supposing you told truth to your
mother, when you asserted that your heart was free; and which Mr. Solmes
is willing to believe, though nobody else does--For all these reasons, it
is resolved, that you shall go to your uncle Antony's: and you must
accordingly prepare yourself to do so. You will have but short notice of
the day, for obvious reasons.

I will honestly tell you the motive for your going: it is a double one;
first, That they may be sure, that you shall not correspond with any body
they do not like (for they find from Mrs. Howe, that, by some means or
other, you do correspond with her daughter; and, through her, perhaps
with somebody else): and next, That you may receive the visits of Mr.
Solmes; which you have thought fit to refuse to do here; by which means
you have deprived yourself of the opportunity of knowing whom and what
you have hitherto refused.

If after one fortnight's conversation with Mr. Solmes, and after you have
heard what your friends shall further urge in his behalf, unhardened by
clandestine correspondencies, you shall convince them, that Virgil's amor
omnibus idem (for the application of which I refer you to the Georgic as
translated by Dryden) is verified in you, as well as in the rest of the
animal creation; and that you cannot, or will not forego your