hotel, leeds.

I have obeyed the injunctions in your last, friend Edward, and have accompanied Montgomery in one visit to his Dulcinea; but pardon me if I say, I should think it almost too great a sacrifice to friendship to attend him upon many more: besides, I am rather too young for the office of guardian to him; and the name of spy I detest; therefore, if you wish, as I know you do, to preserve him from mischief, let me advise you not to depend upon a deputy, but come over and take proper care of him yourself. Let me tell you, however, that your thoughts of his dear, sweet, lovely, angelic Fanny, exactly coincide with my own; tho' you do not speak with quite so much acrimony of her as she appear to me to merit. Heaven and earth! what a composition she is to think of for a wife! Did/ a man want a mistress indeed, why she might serve in that capacity for a little while, – but not for me, if I had an inclination to one, - for the jade paints, and all the world should not bribe me to put my lips to a painted face if I knew it to be so: I love pure nature; it lasts the longest. I dare swear Fanny Elwood is made up of art, inside and out. You may be assured, Edward, that I shall never pay homage to beauty; because, I shall always suspect it to be more the child of art than of nature, and even where it is natural, it generally engrosses so much of the attention as to leave the female, who is in possession of it, no leisure to attend to any thing else.

Since I saw Miss Elwood, I have asked myself, several times, whether I was not mistaken in my opinion of Charles's understanding; for this attachment loudly proclaims him a fool. – He certainly must be infatuated.