Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: bridegroom—including a passion for reading and writing as marked as her own—and her intention of building a " neat plain habitation " on a piece of ground that Mr. Locke had given them in his park. " One of my first pleasures in our little intended home," she concludes, " will be finding a place of honour for the legacy of Mrs. Delany [a portrait of Sacharissa]. Whatever may be the general wonder, and perhaps blame, of general people at this connexion, equally indiscreet in pecuniary points for us both, I feel sure that the truly liberal and truly intellectual judgment of that most venerated character would have accorded its sanction when the worthiness of the object who would wish it was made known."l Mrs. Waddington, also, it must be supposed, accorded her sanction to this imprudent match, for we are told that she used her interest at Court to obtain a continuance of Madame D'Arblay's pension after her marriage. The correspondence was kept up in the intermittent fashion usual between two people who seldom meet, and we find that Fanny is obliged more than once to defend herself against charges of what Miss Seward would have called "epistolary negligence!" In April 1795 she writes from Bookham to protest against a " dry reproof" from her friend for not having informed her of the production of her unsuccessful tragedy, and in June of the same year begs her " dearest Marianne " " not to suffer this, our only communication, to dwindle away for me; though the least punctual of correspondents, I am perhaps the most faithful of all friends ; for my regard, 1 Diary and Letters. once excited, keeps equal energy in absence as in presence, and an equally fond and minute interest in those for whom I cherish it, whether I see them but at the distance of years, or with every day's sun...