The Guardian's Urgent Summons — Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

On 7 July Villars writes from Berry Hill to the girl who has asked him to send Clinton. The letter opens as welcome, thrice welcome, into the arms of the truest and fondest of her friends. Clinton will hasten with these lines and conduct Evelina directly hither. He can consent no longer to be parted from the child of his bosom, the comfort of his age, the sweet solace of all his infirmities.

He asks her worthy friends at Howard Grove to pardon him. He is robbing them of the visit she had proposed to make before she returned to Berry Hill, because his fortitude is unequal to a longer separation. The Grove comes first in the plan they had shared. It does not come first in this letter.

He has much to say, and many comments to make upon her late letters. Some parts give him no little uneasiness. He will not set those remarks down here. He reserves every one of them for their future conversations, so the paper that calls her home also withholds the reckoning until they are face to face.

He bids her hasten to the spot of her nativity, the abode of her youth, where care or sorrow never yet had power to annoy her. He wishes care and sorrow might ever be banished from that peaceful dwelling. He prays only that her satisfaction at the meeting may bear any comparison with his, and he signs himself Arthur Villars. Clinton is the messenger already named. What he thinks of London is still unsaid.