My hand and heart, madam, are everlastingly yours: and it is because this heart yearns to set the world an example, higher infinitely than that which you propose, that thus I plead!--This opportunity is my first and last--I read my doom--Bear with me therefore while I declare my sensations and my thoughts.--The passion I feel is as unlike what is usually meant by love as day to night, grace to deformity, or truth to falsehood. It is not your fine form, madam, supremely beautiful though you are, which I love. At least I love it only as an excellent part of a divine whole. It is your other, your better, your more heavenly self, to which I have dared to aspire. I claim relationship to your mind; and again declare I think my claims have a right, which none of the false distinctions of men can supersede. Think then, madam, again I conjure you, think ere you decide.--If the union of two people whose pure love, founded on an unerring conviction of mutual worth, might promise the reality of that heaven of which the world delights to dream; whose souls, both burning with the same ardour to attain and to diffuse excellence, would mingle and act with incessant energy, who, having risen superior to the mistakes of mankind, would disseminate the same spirit of truth, the same internal peace, the same happiness, the same virtues which they themselves possess among thousands; who would admire, animate, emulate each other; whose wishes, efforts, and principles would all combine to one great end, the general good; who, being desirous only to dispense blessings, could not fail to enjoy; if a union like this be not strictly conformable to the laws of eternal truth, or if there be any arguments, any perils, any terrors which ought to annul such a union, I confess that the arguments, the perils, the terrors, and eternal truth itself are equally unknown to me.
We paused for a moment. The beauty, force, and grandeur of the picture he had drawn staggered me. Yet it was but a repetition of what had frequently presented itself to my mind, in colours almost as vivid as those with which he painted. I had but one answer, and replied--
The world!--My family!--My father!--I cannot encounter the malediction of a father!--What! Behold him in an agony of cursing his child?--Imagination shudders and shrinks from the guilty picture with horror!--I cannot!--I cannot!--It must not be!--To foresee this misery so clearly as I do, and yet to seek it, would surely be detestable guilt!