I thank you most warmly for the trouble you have taken which will be of great use to me. I wish to make some remarks on parts of your very kind letter & comments.

With this consciousness of my own deficiencies in what is so essential to the conduct of a good wife, I am not in danger of being dissatisfied because I do not find perfection. Believe me I have never imagined myself deserving of attachment from the best kind of imperfect characters, and on that account I did not venture to include in my demands some qualities which you justly consider very great advantages (as those of Talents & Chearfulness) because I would not be conceitedly unreasonable.

With regard to the Principles, which I would have founded on a sense of religion, I thought that if they are consistent they cannot be unsettled, therefore that it is needless to add that they should be fixed. However you are very right in reproving vague expressions, and I should have made the sense less equivocal.

You say that with all these requisites “a man has my free leave to be obstinate, perverse, morose, sulky & ill-natured.” How can these dispositions exist with the well-regulated good feelings which I mention in the first place? Besides I afterwards specify the absence of ill-humoured habits. If I had not thought this sufficient to secure the exclusion of such bad qualities as you describe I should have named them distinctly as objectionable.

After so full an explanation you will perhaps take off my stilts, and allow that I am only on tiptoe. I quite agree with what you say, and I am trying to show you that it agrees more nearly with what I said than you seem to suppose.