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I devote almost all my leisure to the transcription of those letters
of which I have already shewn you a specimen. I think I have already
assured ‸ you that those letters are genuine, and I suppose you easily percieve
that one of the parties in this correspondence is myself. Consider then my
friend, what felicity I must have heretofore enjoyed, and whether one to
whom recollection is at once a source of happiness and misery unspeakable
can take much delight in playing, or poeticising upon, Loo.
I am, indeed incapable of tasting any but melancholly pleasures. How
much, my friend, Am I indebted to you? I have rarely felt more corporeally
or mentally disordered than yesterday evening when I first saw you
but, whi never was more serenely happy, than when I left you. To the
magic of your presence or conversation only can I ascribe this pleasing
revolution.
I have formerly intimated that I thought you happyness and
that your happiness was the daughter of benevolence and piety. Had I
wanted any proof of this, than that which resulted from my own observation
it would have been furnished by the letter which you wrote in order (as
you say) to undecieve me.
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