"We agreed," etc.) "My unfortunate friend Harriet," he writes under date August 15, 1811, from London, whether he had hurried to arrange the affairs of his elopement, "is yet undecided; not with respect to me, but to herself.
How much, my dear friend, have I to tell you.

In my leisure moments for thought, which since I wrote have been few, I have considered the important point on which you reprobated my hasty decision.

The ties of love and honour are doubtless of sufficient strength to bind congenial souls--they are doubtless indissoluble, but by the brutish force of power; they are delicate and satisfactory.

Yet the arguments of impracticability, and what is even worse, the disproportionate sacrifice which the female is called upon to make--these arguments, which you have urged in a manner immediately irresistible, I cannot withstand.

Not that I suppose it to be likely that _I_ shall directly be called upon to evince my attachment to either theory.