1825.) 
them their due. I have appointed Count 
Woronzow and M. IItshaninow, colonels, 
on your recommendation. For the rest, I 
remain, &c. 
St. Petersburg, 2d August 1770. 
P.S.—lI thank you for having despatched 
a brave and meritorious officer. I have 
undoubted news from the Archipelago, that 
our fleet has beaten and dispersed that of 
the Turks; but.I have no letters yet from 
our people, for which reason I haye not 
published any thing about it. 
—<=Z—— 
Letters from Lavy Mary MonTacur 
and Lavy MarGARET CREIGHTON. 
[Continued from Vol. 58, No. 400, p. 142.] 
LETTER V. 
From Lady Mary Wortley Montague to Lady 
Margaret Creighton. 
ES, my dear Lady Margaret, I canlove 
up to all the rules; and you are un- 
just to me in fancying it possible for you to 
be more my friend than I am yours. Why 
was you so surprized I should distinguish 
between the effect of friendship and a 
meddling humour; it would have been 
impertinence in Mrs. It was 
kind, it was obliging in Lady Margaret. 
Who [ once called my friend, has power of 
saying what they please to me, or exacting 
what they please from me; ’tis my maxim, 
after the heart is once given, all reserves are 
foolish ; I have, nor can have, no trust so 
great as giving my affection, nor can I give 
that, but what I dare give all things; you 
talk to me sometimes of a divided heart, 
as if twas impossible to have a great love 
anda great friendship in the same breast? in 
my circumstances one may.—M— is alive, 
but dead to me; I talk and think of him, 
as something eternally irrecoverable, and, 
I may almost say, you are the only incli- 
nation I have on earth, for t’other only 
exists in imagination; an invisible object 
is next to no object at all, and I may say, 
like Cortez in the Indian Emperor— 
«« —_if to one I am untrue, 
By Heaven, my falsehood is to him, not you.” 
I can hardly reconcile, to my constancy, the 
indulging any other tenderness. Dear Lady 
Margaret, don’t I love you too well, when 
I can be pleased to see you, even to the 
wishing no other pleasure? Ought I to 
forget so far? I have no way of excusing 
it to myself, but by saying, I love you for 
the resemblance ; I love in you what I have 
lost in him; the wit, the good-nature, the 
generosity, the softness, the jarring attri- 
butes of judgment and gentleness, the 
penetration to find, the indulgence to pass 
over a fault. I would pursue the character; 
but have already said more than is to be found 
any where else; should I not think myself 
happy that I please the only two of either 
sex that can, possibly, entirely please me ? 
No—absence—why? I shall run mad if 
I pursue this farther: Ihave spent the last 
Remains of Eminent Persons. 
237 
two days in a very apt preparation for it ; 
Mrs. Lowther could not haye been more 
perfectly a dulcimer; Monsieur Galiam 
has been with my sister ; the whole after- 
noons have been spent, at the lower end of. 
the garden, hearkening to his flute, by the’ 
side of the fountain ; to finish my distrac- 
tion, he came from the D. of O.; M— 
was there, and being delighted with. his 
company (as all the world is) interlarde@ 
his discourse with perpetual repetitions of 
what he had said the day before—what 
were my thoughts ?—what they always are. 
I know no accident can lessen, or increase 
my love and my despair; after this, can 
you say ’tis impossible to retain an. inelj_ 
nation—no—no, all those thoughts are 
injuries to me; I will love you and M— 
eternally, and I will never love any thing 
else. : 
From Lady Margaret Creighton to I 
Mary Wortley Montague. 
I was just going abroad with Lady L—d 
when I received your letter; I read it 
once in going to the coach, and again when 
I was in it, but that was not enough, I am 
now come home on purpose to read it 
over and over again; how could you think 
of burning the letter you writ for me ? it 
seems you don’t know the joy and plea- 
sure a letter can give—if you did, you 
could never think of letting me live a day 
without hearing from you; I wish you 
could but know the transport I am now in: 
sure none but you ever knew how to give 
such happiness—even in absence you can 
give pleasure—may I know it ?—does it 
look indifferent? No more, since ’tis you 
that give it, I would not suffer another to 
put me in such a humour—but how do I 
rave—this joy is but for a minute, T shall 
quickly feel the pain of absence return with 
all its anguish. I’m engaged to be abroad 
this evening ; I could not resolve to spend 
the whole afternoon without the pleasure 
of thanking you for so obliging a letter as I 
received to-day ; did ever any but me leave 
company to come home to write, when the 
letter cannot reach you till Monday. My 
mind was so full of ycu, I could not be easy 
unless I writ to you this very minute. 
Adieu, I am just going out ; I don’t know 
when Lady L—d will see you: I do all I 
can to advance it when she does: why 
may not you be so much out of order as 
may excuse your not waiting on her to the 
garden. I am sorry I cannot answer your 
letter in the way it was writ;-I have no 
genius that way: till now I never knew I 
wanted it; that way of writing allows of 
more elevated thoughts—'tis extravagant 
in the common way, which is pretty ; I’m 
at a loss by wanting this, without iit *tis 
impossible to express les beaux sentimens 
que j'ai pour vous; I’m almost asleep. 
I must ask you though how matters go 
with Mr. K—g; I’m told, he says all is 
ended, 
ady 
ORIGINAL 
