previous next
[1068] on any subject we may have in common. Will this satisfy you? Oh let it! suffer me to know you.

In a postscript she adds, “No other cousin or friend of any style is to see this note.” So for twenty years it has lain unseen, but for twenty years did we remain true to the pledges of that period. And now that noble heart sleeps beneath the tossing Atlantic, and I feel no reluctance in showing to the world this expression of pure youthful ardor. It may, perhaps, lead some wise worldlings, who doubt the possibility of such a relation, to reconsider the grounds of their scepticism; or, if not that, it may encourage some youthful souls, as earnest and eager as ours, to trust themselves to their hearts' impulse, and enjoy some such blessing as came to us.

Let me give extracts from other notes and letters, written by Margaret, about the same period.

Saturday evening, May 1st, 1830.—The holy moon and merry-toned wind of this night woo to a vigil at the open window; a half-satisfied interest urges me to live, love and perish! in the noble, wronged heart of Basil;1 my Journal, which lies before me, tempts to follow out and interpret the as yet only half-understood musings of the past week. Letterwriting, compared with any of these things, takes the ungracious semblance of a duty. I have, nathless, after a two hours reverie, to which this resolve and its preliminaries have formed excellent warp, determined to sacrifice this hallowed time to you.

It did not in the least surprise me that you found it impossible at the time to avail yourself of the confidential

1 The hero of a novel she was reading.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1830 AD (1)
May 1st (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: