Once more, adieu.
E.H.
_From Mrs.Hamilton to Miss Greville._ I cannot, my dear Mary, suffer Emmeline's long letter to be forwarded to you without a few lines from me, to remove all lingering fears which you may perhaps have had, that I do not approve of your correspondence.
Believe me, my dear girl, that to see you the chosen friend of my giddy but warm-hearted Emmeline is still, as it has ever been from your childhood, a source of real pleasure both to Mr.Hamilton and myself.
Female friendships are, I know, often regarded with contempt, not only by men, but frequently by the sterner principles of our own sex; they are deemed connections of folly; that the long letters which pass between young ladies set down by the world as intimate friends, are but relations of all the petty incidents they may hear or see.

Such letters are also considered tending to weaken the mind and produce false sensibility, by the terms of affection they force into their service--the magnified expression of momentary and fleeting emotions.
That such may sometimes be the tenor of some young people's correspondence, I do not pretend to deny, and when that is the case, and such letters are treasured up in secret and requested to be burnt, lest any eyes save those for whom they are intended should chance to encounter them, then, indeed, I too might disapprove of similar intimacies, and it was to prevent this I would not permit Emmeline to send the first letter to which she has alluded.

Every feeling was magnified and distorted, till you must have fancied--had not the real cause been told--that some very serious evil had happened, or was impending over her.

I did not in the least doubt but that you would have used all your influence to combat with and conquer this sinful repining; but still I thought your very replies might have called forth renewed ebullitions of sensibility, and thus in the frame of mind which she was then indulging, your hinted reproaches, however gentle, might have been turned and twisted into a decay of friendship or some such display of sensitiveness, which would certainly have removed your affection and injured herself.

When, therefore, she so frankly acknowledged her error, and offered to sacrifice the pleasure I knew it was to write to you, I accepted it, spite of the pain which I saw she felt, and which to inflict on her, you may believe gave her, and now I certainly feel rewarded for all the self-denial we both practised, Emmeline is again the same happy girl she was at Oakwood, although I can perceive there is nothing, or at best but very little here, that can compensate for the rural pleasures she has left.