And I said, "Now, Mrs. Jewkes, let me have your advice as to this."

"Why then," said she, "I will give it you freely: e'en send for him to come down. It will highly oblige him, and I daresay you will fare the better for it."

"Well," said I, "I will write him a letter, because he expects an answer, or maybe he will make a pretense to come down. How can it go?" "I'll take care of that," said she: "it is in my instructions." "Aye," thought I, "so I doubt, by the hint Mr. Williams gave me about the post-house."

I wrote to my master as follows:

Honored Sir:

When I consider how easily you might have made me happy, since all I desire is to be permitted to go to my poor father and mother; when I reflect upon your former proposal to me in relation to a certain person, not one word of which is now mentioned; and upon my being in that strange manner run away with, and still kept here a miserable prisoner, do you think, sir (pardon your poor servant's freedom: my fears make me bold),- do you think, I say, that your general assurances of honor to me can have the effect they ought to have? O good sir! I too much apprehend that your notions of honor and mine are very different from one another; I have no other hope but in your continual absence. If you have any proposals to make me that are consistent with your honorable professions, in my humble sense of the word, a few lines will communicate them to me, and I will return such an answer as befits me.

Whatever rashness you may impute to me, I cannot help it; but I wish I may not be forced upon any that otherwise would not enter my thoughts. Forgive, sir, my plainness; I should be loth to behave. to my master unbecomingly: but I must say, sir, my innocence is so dear to me that all other considerations must be dispensed with. If you mean honorably, why should you not let me know it plainly? Why, sir, I humbly ask, why all this if you mean honorably? It is not for me to expostulate too freely with you, sir, so greatly my superior. Pardon me, I hope you will; but as to seeing you, I cannot bear the dreadful apprehension. Whatever you have to propose to me, whatever you intend, let my assent be that of a free person, and not of a sordid slave, who is to be threatened and frightened into a compliance with measures which your conduct seems to imply. My restraint is hard upon me; I am very uneasy under it. Shorten it, I beseech you, or— But I will dare to say no more than that I am your greatly oppressed, unhappy servant.

After I had taken a copy of this, I folded it up: and Mrs. Jewkes coming just as I had done, sat down by me; and said, when she saw me directing it, "I wish you would tell me if you have taken my advice, and consented to my master's coming down."

"If it will oblige you," said I, "I will read it to you."
"That's good," said she; "then I'll love you dearly."
Said I, "Then you must not offer to alter one word."
"I won't," replied she.

So I read it to her. She praised me much for my wording of it; but said she thought I pushed the matter very close, and it would better bear talking than writing about. She wanted an explanation or two about a certain person; but I said she must take it as she heard it.

"Well, well," said she, "I make no doubt you understand one another, and will do so more and more."

I sealed up the letter, and she undertook to convey it.

MISS BYRON'S RESCUE FROM ABDUCTION, BY SIR CHARLES

GRANDISON

RELATED IN A LETTER FROM MISS BYRON TO HER FRIEND MISS SELBY

AR

From Sir Charles Grandison>

S THE chariot drove by houses, I cried out for help. But under pretense of preventing my taking cold, Sir Hargrave tied a handkerchief over my face, head, and mouth, having first muffled me up in the cloak; and with his right arm thrown round me, kept me fast on the seat: and except that now and then my struggling head gave me a little opening, I was blinded.

On the road, just after I had screamed, and made another effort to get my hands free, I heard voices: and immediately the chariot stopped. Then how my heart was filled with hope! But alas! it was momentary. I heard one of his men say, "The best of husbands, I assure you, sir; and she is the worst of wives." I screamed again. "Aye, scream and be d―d! Poor gentleman, I pity him with all my heart." And immediately the coachman drove on again. The vile wretch laughed.

I was ready to faint several times. I begged for air; and when we were in an open road, and I suppose there was nobody in sight he vouchsafed to pull down the blinding handkerchief,

but kept it over my mouth; so that, except now and then that I struggled it aside with my head (and my neck is very stiff with my efforts to free my face), I could only make a murmuring kind of noise. The curtain of the fore-glass was pulled down, and generally the canvas on both sides drawn up. But I was sure to be made acquainted when we came near houses, by his care again to blind and stifle me up. A little before we were met by my deliverer, I had, by getting one hand free, unmuffled myself so far as to see (as I had guessed once or twice before by the stone pavements) that we were going through a town: and then I again vehemently screamed; but he had the cruelty to thrust a handkerchief into my mouth, so that I was almost strangled, and my mouth was hurt, and is still sore.

At one place the chariot drove out of the road, over rough ways and little hillocks, as I thought, by its rocking; and then, it stopping, he let go my hands and endeavored to soothe me. He begged I would be pacified; and offered, if I would forbear crying out for help, to leave my eyes unmuffled all the rest of the way. But I would not, I told him, give such a sanction to his barbarous violence. On the chariot's stopping, one of his men came up, and put a handkerchief into his master's hands, in which were some cakes and sweetmeats, and gave him also a bottle of sack, with a glass. Sir Hargrave was very urgent with me to take some of the sweetmeats and to drink a glass of the wine; but I had neither stomach nor will to touch either. He eat himself very cordially. God forgive me! I wished in my heart there were pins and needles in every bit he put into his mouth. He drank two glasses of the wine. Again he urged I said I hoped I had eat and drank my last.

me.

I saw that I was upon a large, wild, heath-like place, between two roads, as it seemed. I asked nothing about my journey's end. All I had to hope for as to an escape (though then I began to despair of it) was upon the road, or in some town. My journey's end, I knew, must be the beginning of new trials; for I was resolved to suffer death rather than to marry him.

The chariot had not many minutes got into the great road again, over the like rough and sometimes plashy ground, when it stopped on a dispute between the coachman and the coachman of another chariot-and-six, as it proved. Sir Hargrave looked out of his chariot to see the occasion of this stop; and then I

found means to disengage one hand. I heard a gentleman's voice directing his own coachman to give way. I then pushed up the handkerchief with my disengaged hand from my mouth, and pulled it down from over my eyes, and cried out for help— "Help, for God's sake!"

A man's voice (it was my delivere's, as it happily proved) bid Sir Hargrave's coachman proceed at his peril. Sir Hargrave, with terrible oaths and curses, ordered him to proceed, and to drive through all opposition.

The gentleman called Sir Hargrave by his name, and charged him with being upon a bad design. The vile wretch said he had only secured a runaway wife, eloped to, and intending to elope from, a masquerade, to her adulterer: [horrid!] He put aside the cloak, and appealed to my dress. The gentleman would not be satisfied with Sir Hargrave's story. He would speak to me, and asked me, with an air that promised deliverance, if I were Sir Hargrave's wife?

"No, no, no, no!" I could only say.

For my own part, I could have no scruple, distressed as I was, and made desperate, to throw myself into the protection, and even into the arms, of my deliverer, though a very fine young gentleman. But you may better conceive than I can express the terror I was in when Sir Hargrave drew his sword and pushed at the gentleman, with such words as denoted (for I could not look that way) he had done him mischief. But when I found my oppressor pulled out of the chariot by the brave, the gallant man (which was done with such force as made the chariot rock), and my protector safe, I was as near fainting with joy as before I had been with terror. I had shaken off the cloak, and untied the handkerchief. He carried me in his arms (I could not walk) to his own chariot. I heard Sir Hargrave curse, swear, and threaten. I was glad, however, he was not dead.

"Mind him not, madam fear him not!" said Sir Charles Grandison. [You know his noble name, my Lucy.] "Coachman, drive not over your master: take care of your master!" or some such words he said, as he lifted me into his own chariot. He just surveyed, as it were, the spot, and bid a servant let Sir Hargrave know who he was; and then came back to me. He ordered his coachman to drive back to Colnebrook. In accents of kindness he told me that he had there at present the most

virtuous and prudent of sisters, to whose care he would commit me, and then proceed on his journey to town.

How irresistibly welcome to me was his supporting arm, thrown round me, as we flew back, compared to that of the vile Sir Hargrave! Mr. Reeves has given you an account from the angelic sister. O my Lucy, they are a pair of angels! I have written a long, long letter, or rather five letters in one, of my distresses, of my deliverance; and when my heart is stronger I will say more of the persons, as well as minds, of this excellent brother and sister.

Just now I have received a congratulatory packet of letters.

And so you expect the particular character and description of the persons of this more than amiable brother and sister? Need you to have told me that you do? And could you think that after having wasted so many quires of paper in giving you the characters of people, many of whom deserved not to be drawn out from the common crowd of mortals, I would forbear to give you those of persons who adorn the age in which they live, and even human nature?

You don't question, you say, if I begin in their praises, but my gratitude will make me write in a sublime style; and are ready, you promise me, to take, with allowance, all the fine things from me which Mr. Reeves has already taught you to expect.

Which shall I begin with? You will have a sharp lookout upon me, you say. Ah, my Lucy! I know what you mean. And so, if I begin with the character of the brother, then you will join with my uncle, shake your head, and cry, "Ah, my Harriet!" If I begin with the sister, will you not say that I save my choicest subject for the last? How difficult is it to avoid censure, when there is a resolution taken to be censorious!

Miss Grandison - Yes, my volant, my self-conducted quill, begin with the sister, say my Lucy what she pleases:

Miss Grandison is about twenty-four; of a fine stature. She has dignity in her aspect, and a very penetrating black eye, with which she does what she pleases. Her hair is black, very fine, and naturally curls. She is not fair; but her complexion is delicate and clear, and promises a long duration to her loveliness. Her features are generally regular; her nose is a little aquiline; but that is so far from being a blemish, that it gives a kind of majesty to her other features. Her teeth are white and even,

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