nice.

Well done, my friend! I congratulate you on the fair prospect of happiness now before you. I am glad to find you gained courage at last to avow your sentiments to Miss Bertills. Upon the whole, you have done much better than I expected, considering the great disadvantage you laboured under in not having me at your elbow to inspire you with heroism sufficient for so capital an undertaking; tho’ it must be allowed you threw away a vast deal of precious time in conjuring up dangers and difficulties where they had no existence in reality. Edward says, he could have told you a secret which would have removed them all in a moment, but from motives of kindness he chose to withhold it; because a lover's greatest pleasures spring out of/his pains. When you are married, he will devulge the said secret to you, and not before; when that time arrives, may you and Miss Bertills experience for a long succession of years, the utmost felicity that state affords!

You see, Charles, I have disdained to copy the selfish example you set me, by writing only upon my own affairs, and neglecting to say one word upon yours.

– On the contrary, I begin with the subject nearest your heart, and, afterwards, proceed to that in which my own is interested; tho’ I am to tell you, that I am not wholly without doubts and fears, which sometimes take possesion of my bosom, and make me as miserable a dog as ever was created. This tender passion, when it is sincere, makes shocking work with a man. I declare to you, if I were not happily stocked with a tolerable portion of vanity, I could never go thro’ the probation time; that alone enables me to support it. If vanity did not always take care to step in, and, like a good housewife, clear away the trumpery which is scattered up and down over the wide expanse of my mind, and set things perfectly to rights there, I know/not what would become of me; for the moment I am alone the powers of imagination go to work, and present my loved Harriet to my view, decorated with all the numberless beauties of her face, and graces of her person.