"Our first love-letter — it is an epoch in our life — a task equally delightful and difficult. No lover ever yet addressed his mistress, and no mistress ever yet addressed her lover, without beginning the gentle epistle some dozen times at least. There is so much to be said, and which no words seem exactly to say — the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach. One epithet is too cold — another we are scarcely entitled to use. Timidity and tenderness get in each other's way. The letter is sent, and immediately a thousand things are recollected — those, too, we were most anxious to write — and every sentence that occurs is precisely the one we wish we had omitted. The epistle is opened and read — with a little wonder, most probably not a little vexation, at its constrained style. True it is that no first love-letter ever yet gave satisfaction to either writer or reader. Its delight is another question."
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Romance and Reality
Romance and Reality (1831) is a novel by Letitia Elizabeth Landon about an attractive heiress, Emily Arundel, who meets the handsome Edward Lorraine and hopes to win his heart. In her imagination, she is succeeding but he is a traveler and in Spain he encounters Beatrice de los Zeridos, a spirited young lady of action, who is fighting to save both her home and family. Broken-hearted, Emily enters a nunnery in Italy from whence she is rescued, but she returns to England so weakened that she dies.
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