ABSTRACT
If it will be any pleasure to my dear friend to hear that my wishes coincide with his, I frankly confess they do. I please my imagination with anticipating the happiness I shall feel in meeting you again in my little villa. If that love which has once been bestowed on another, can be worthy the acceptance of a man of merit, it is yours without allay. This is an affection which is not liable to change; since it was not the mere effect of what pleased the eye, nor lighted up by a sudden gust of passion, but the consequence of long knowledge of such virtues as perhaps were never before possessed by any human mind.
