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180 nature, will conquer the only thing I would desire to see altered in yours. Nothing could ever make me adore you less, though you affect to dread it; nothing but a knowledge that you are unworthy of me—that you have a thought for another—then—then I should not hate you. No: the privilege of my past existence would revive; I should revel in a luxury of contempt—I should despise you—I should mock you, and I should be once more what I was before I knew you. But why do I talk thus? My bride, my blessing, forgive me."

In concluding our extracts from this correspondence, we wish the Reader to note—first, that the love professed by Brandon seems of that vehement and corporeal nature which, while it is often the least durable, is also the most susceptible of the fiercest extremes of hatred, or even of disgust. Secondly, that the character opened by his sarcastic candour evidently required in a mistress either an utter devotion, or a skilful address. And thirdly, that we have hinted at such qualities in the fair correspondent as did not seem sanguinely to promise either of those essentials.