esteem it as the most perfect present for a lady; for should you make her a present of such a one as yours was before you parted with it, it is fifty to one whether you would receive a true one in return.

Therefore, let everyone who expects an equivalent for his heart be provided with a false one, which is equally fit for the most professed lover. It will burn, flame, bleed, pant, sigh, and receive as many darts, and appear altogether as charming, as a true one. Besides, it does not in the least embarrass the bearer, and I think your Lordship was always a lover of liberty.

TO MRS. HOWARD

By your letter you seem to insinuate mine may be like yours; for you honestly confess a mighty resemblance between the male and female hearts. I wish the likeness could be carried on throughout. I should almost be content, as you advise, to change a true one for a false one if at the same time I could receive as much beauty, wit, and youth.

You own you can make no judgment of your own heart, declaring positively that woman cannot judge of a woman; out of complaisance to your opinion, I suppose the same of man. There can be, then, but one expedient how we may come at some probable conjectures of each other. If you would make as honest confessions to me as I would do to you, then you might judge of my heart, and I of yours.

Without similes or studied expressions, I would tell you my distress. I would truly describe what I have felt

for others what I feel for you. I would reveal every thought, as good Catholics do to their father confessors; and upon the whole matter you shall determine whether you can give me absolution for the past and credit for the future. I confess I should find great pleasure in such a bargain; for if my first wish were to have the woman's heart I love the next would be to know it such as it is.

That I am a lover of liberty, I must not deny, but it were better for me to be out of my own power. A cruel mistress could not use me worse than I commonly use myself. Take me, or I shall ramble all my life in restlessness and change. Accept of the libertine for a slave, and try how faithfully I can love, honour, and obey.

As far as I can judge of myself, if you give me leave naturally to express my wants and desires, I desire nothing more than your esteem, and want nothing but your heart.

FROM MRS. HOWARD

I think your Lordship, in the last paragraph of your letter, is a little ungenerous. In a present which you tell me you have made to me, you expect the most exact return, which generosity generally leaves to the courtesy of the receiver. You quote Scripture to justify the reasonableness of your request: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a heart for a heart. This seems to me to be rather a demand of revenge and resentment than love. But a man cannot give a heart for a heart that has none to give. Consider, my Lord, that you have but one heart, and then consider whether you have a right to dispose of it. Is

there not a lady at Paris who is convinced that nobody has it but herself? Did you not bequeath it to another lady at Turin? At Venice you disposed of it to six or seven, and you again parted with it at Naples and in Sicily. I am therefore obliged, my Lord, to believe that one who disposes of his heart in so profuse a manner is like a juggler, who seems to fling away a piece of money, but still has it in his own keeping.

TO MRS. HOWARD

Before I complain, I give you thanks that in the several dispositions of my heart you have had the grace not to say I bestow it on any German lady, but have you not too much confined my generosity, and forgot that some Blacks are very beautiful, and Indians very lively?

By your account I am in the condition to make you the greater and the juster compliment. I give you the preference to all the women in the world, with authority too, since I believe no person ever had the opportunity of seeing such variety.

But give me leave to tell you your intelligence is very imperfect, and in many cases false. I have no knowledge of the lady you begin with. I was ever too good an Englishman to submit to a French enemy, and were I to offer anything to a lady at Paris, it should be three bottles of champagne, and not one heart. At Turin I was so busied in making kings that I had not time to think of ladies, and was so far from making a conveyance, that I

know no person that ever had the least pretence to me or I to them. Venice, indeed, was an idle place, and proper enough for an idle engagement; but alas! madam, hate does not differ more from love than a Venetian amusement from an English passion, such an one as I feel for you. In truth, you never had, in any country, nor could have, but one rival; for in no place I ever found any to compare to you but one, and that was an English lady, and a wife; so that, after all, this vagabond heart never went out of his own country, and the first and last true and warm passions seized me in this cold climate, and the deep and lasting wounds were given me at home.

Were you curious upon any score, and would believe my confessions, I would appeal to your judgment, whether my heart was ever so much in any other woman's power as in yours? I could appeal to what is past as well as to what I am sure will happen; for you shall and will believe that I have had for you a passion which deserves neither reproach nor reproof. The repetition of either would throw me into such melancholy and despair that, consenting to my fate, I should never be able to maintain the greatest innocence or justify the greatest love. madam, may I not say were there a possibility of some return, that I would prefer one kind thought to the mines of Peru and Mexico?

Oh,

A heart for a heart is a natural, though unreasonable demand. Oh, dearest lady, refuse not mine, and do with your own as you think fit, provided you keep it to yourself; or keep it, at least, till you can find one who deserves it.

NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON

In 1815 an English lady was living in a little French

fishing town near Calais. One morning she went to the butcher's to buy some meat for her pet dog. The butcher said: "Madame is English. There is another English lady in town who would be glad to have the meat you buy for your little dog."

The other English lady, who was then dying, was Lady Hamilton. Ten years before Captain Hardy of the "Victory" had brought to her Nelson's dying message and his last letter. The message was, "I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter to my country." The letter had been found in Nelson's desk on board the "Victory." It is now in the British Museum, and across the top is written in Lady Hamilton's hand: "Oh miserable, wretched Emma! Oh, glorious and happy Nelson!"

These words were prophetic-more so than Nelson's dying message. Today the remains of England's greatest admiral lie buried under the pomp and panoply of St. Paul's while across the Channel, in unconsecrated ground, moulder those of the woman who was his inspiration.