QQ MEMOIK OF JOHN WILSON. 



it all over with him. I am doubtful whether I ought to write to 

 him about it." 



This affectionate friend did write to him on the subject, and a 

 few days later he again addresses Findlay: — 



"Hill Top, Sunset, Tuesday, 1804. 



" I am writing to Wilson, and shall send the letter to-morrow, 

 so that he will get it on Thursday morning. I tell him why I am 

 convinced that he is loved ; and what I fear she may be induced to 

 do, both from her delicacy and just pride, which must shrink from 

 the idea of the disapprobation of relations, and from her scrupulous 

 sense of right, which makes her refuse to separate him from those 

 relations. I will say, that she is now guided in every thing she does 

 by the resolution she has formed since he left her, of sacrificing her 

 happiness to her sense of right (she may perhaps think) to his hap- 

 piness ; and I will, on that account, caution him against writing to 

 her on that subject, because she might have strength of mind to 

 write a refusal, that would blast all his hopes, and make him never 

 dare to speak of it to her again. My wish is that he should see her 

 next summer, and force from her a confession of her feelings. 



" See what he thinks about P — . He has talked to me as if he 

 feared she was attached to him. P — left his country when she 

 knew nothing more of Wilson than that he was a fine boy, and 1 

 think it very probable at that tirhe she might feel a grateful attach- 

 ment to him for his love to her, and what she might think his gene- 

 rosity. Does Wilson know so little of her and of himself as to 

 dream for a moment that, after knowing him as she has done for 

 these last three years, her heart can still hold by one wish to such 

 a man as P — ? If she has formed any engagement to such a man 

 as P — , God help us ! I cannot think it possible. If it had been, 

 she must have acted differently. Her love might overpower in her 

 for a time her sense of what she thinks she owes to the order of 

 society ; while her only restraint was the idea that she ought not to 

 separate Wilson from all his family connections. I can conceive her 

 doing all that she has done with the purest and most virtuous mind, 

 for she acted under a great degree of delusion ; I am convinced she 

 did not suspect the consequences to her own heart or to Wilson's. 

 But if she could in the slightest degree look on herself as the prop- 

 erty of another, every thing becomes utterly incomprehensible ; a 

 positive engagement leaves no room for delusion, and in that situa- 



