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My dear Eliza,

Your silence afflicted me, because it led me to apprehend you were ill; for which I sincerely grieve.—your letter also afflicts me, because it expresses a disposition not to regard my advice & my Intreaties, on a Subject, where I had used such Arguments, & such Supplications, as I flattered myself must have influenced both your Mind & your Heart. alas! my dear Eliza, you talk of Resentments, but what Occasion for Resentment, or Hostility, can we have against each other?— Destiny brought us strangely together:— We wished to make each other happy:—Nature rendered it impossible:— We are neither of us to blame:— but each of us, I trust, in the sight of God, no common degree of Merit, in having most generously, tho unsuccessfully long laboured to do, what could not be done.— You speak of 22 years of domestic vexation:- My Sufferings in that Period were not inferior to yours; & had I not, with a singular Mixture of Resolution & Tenderness, removed you from me, I must have sunk into Ideotism, or into the Grave.— But tho the peculiar Texture of our respective Nerves rendered us, involuntarily, & inevitably, a Source of Misery to each other, when under the same roof; we may surely prove very tender Friends to each other at a distance; & it shall not be my Fault, if we cease to be so.

Yet Man, you know, is imperious by Nature; & my Spirit perhaps is particularly so, because I am conscious, not of superior Powers, but of that upright Benevolence, which never would impose any Command on Another, that I would not myself obey in the same Situation:— Had you prayed me not to visit derbyshire, with such arguments as I gave you against your Visit to Sussex, I protest to Heaven, I would have endured any Pain or Sickness, rather than have acted in opposition to your Intreaties. – You tell me, you can find in the North no bathing place so convenient as Hastings;