Project Gutenberg's The History of Emily Montague, by Frances Brooke

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Title: The History of Emily Montague

Author: Frances Brooke

Release Date: July 15, 2005 [EBook #16300]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE ***




Produced by Andrew Sly

THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE.

LETTER I.1.

After spending two or three very agreeable days here, with a party of friends, in exploring the beauties of the Island, and dropping a tender tear at Carisbrook Castle on the memory of the unfortunate Charles the First, I am just setting out for America, on a scheme I once hinted to you, of settling the lands to which I have a right as a lieutenant-colonel on half pay. On enquiry and mature deliberation, I prefer Canada to New-York for two reasons, that it is wilder, and that the women are handsomer: the first, perhaps, every body will not approve; the latter, I am sure, you will.

You may perhaps call my project romantic, but my active temper is ill suited to the lazy character of a reduc’d officer: besides that I am too proud to narrow my circle of life, and not quite unfeeling enough to break in on the little estate which is scarce sufficient to support my mother and sister in the manner to which they have been accustom’d.

What you call a sacrifice, is none at all; I love England, but am not obstinately chain’d down to any spot of earth; nature has charms every where for a man willing to be pleased: at my time of life, the very change of place is amusing; love of variety, and the natural restlessness of man, would give me a relish for this voyage, even if I did not expect, what I really do, to become lord of a principality which will put our large-acred men in England out of countenance. My subjects indeed at present will be only bears and elks, but in time I hope to see the human face divine multiplying around me; and, in thus cultivating what is in the rudest state of nature, I shall taste one of the greatest of all pleasures, that of creation, and see order and beauty gradually rise from chaos.

The vessel is unmoor’d; the winds are fair; a gentle breeze agitates the bosom of the deep; all nature smiles: I go with all the eager hopes of a warm imagination; yet friendship casts a lingering look behind.

Our mutual loss, my dear Temple, will be great. I shall never cease to regret you, nor will you find it easy to replace the friend of your youth. You may find friends of equal merit; you may esteem them equally; but few connexions form’d after five and twenty strike root like that early sympathy, which united us almost from infancy, and has increas’d to the very hour of our separation.

What pleasure is there in the friendships of the spring of life, before the world, the mean unfeeling selfish world, breaks in on the gay mistakes of the just-expanding heart, which sees nothing but truth, and has nothing but happiness in prospect!

I am not surpriz’d the heathens rais’d altars to friendship: ’twas natural for untaught superstition to deify the source of every good; they worship’d friendship, which animates the moral world, on the same principle as they paid adoration to the sun, which gives life to the world of nature.

I am summon’d on board. Adieu!

LETTER II.2.

I have this moment your letter, my dear; I am happy to hear my mother has been amus’d at Bath, and not at all surpriz’d to find she rivals you in your conquests. By the way, I am not sure she is not handsomer, notwithstanding you tell me you are handsomer than ever: I am astonish’d she will lead a tall daughter about with her thus, to let people into a secret they would never suspect, that she is past five and twenty.

You are a foolish girl, Lucy: do you think I have not more pleasure in continuing to my mother, by coming hither, the little indulgencies of life, than I could have had by enjoying them myself? pray reconcile her to my absence, and assure her she will make me happier by jovially enjoying the trifle I have assign’d to her use, than by procuring me the wealth of a Nabob, in which she was to have no share.

But to return; you really, Lucy, ask me such a million of questions, ’tis impossible to know which to answer first; the country, the convents, the balls, the ladies, the beaux—’tis a history, not a letter, you demand, and it will take me a twelvemonth to satisfy your curiosity.

Where shall I begin? certainly with what must first strike a soldier: I have seen then the spot where the amiable hero expir’d in the arms of victory; have traced him step by step with equal astonishment and admiration: ’tis here alone it is possible to form an adequate idea of an enterprize, the difficulties of which must have destroy’d hope itself had they been foreseen.

The country is a very fine one: you see here not only the beautiful which it has in common with Europe, but the great sublime to an amazing degree; every object here is magnificent: the very people seem almost another species, if we compare them with the French from whom they are descended.

On approaching the coast of America, I felt a kind of religious veneration, on seeing rocks which almost touch’d the clouds, cover’d with tall groves of pines that seemed coeval with the world itself: to which veneration the solemn silence not a little contributed; from Cape Rosieres, up the river St. Lawrence, during a course of more than two hundred miles, there is not the least appearance of a human footstep; no objects meet the eye but mountains, woods, and numerous rivers, which seem to roll their waters in vain.

It is impossible to behold a scene like this without lamenting the madness of mankind, who, more merciless than the fierce inhabitants of the howling wilderness, destroy millions of their own species in the wild contention for a little portion of that earth, the far greater part of which remains yet unpossest, and courts the hand of labour for cultivation.

The river itself is one of the noblest in the world; it’sits breadth is ninety miles at it’sits entrance, gradually, and almost imperceptibly, decreasing; interspers’d with islands which give it a variety infinitely pleasing, and navigable near five hundred miles from the sea.

Nothing can be more striking than the view of Quebec as you approach; it stands on the summit of a boldly-rising hill, at the confluence of two very beautiful rivers, the St. Lawrence and St. Charles, and, as the convents and other public buildings first meet the eye, appears to great advantage from the port. The island of Orleans, the distant view of the cascade of Montmorenci, and the opposite village of Beauport, scattered with a pleasing irregularity along the banks of the river St. Charles, add greatly to the charms of the prospect.

I have just had time to observe, that the Canadian ladies have the vivacity of the French, with a superior share of beauty: as to balls and assemblies, we have none at present, it being a kind of interregnum of government: if I chose to give you the political state of the country, I could fill volumes with the pours and the contres; but I am not one of those sagacious observers, who, by staying a week in a place, think themselves qualified to give, not only its natural, but it’sits moral and political history: besides which, you and I are rather too young to be very profound politicians. We are in expectation of a successor from whom we hope a new golden age; I shall then have better subjects for a letter to a lady.

Adieu! my dear girl! say every thing for me to my mother. Yours,

LETTER III.3.

Indeed! gone to people the wilds of America, Ned, and multiply the human face divine? ’tis a project worthy a tall handsome colonel of twenty seven: let me see; five feet, eleven inches, well made, with fine teeth, speaking eyes, a military air, and the look of a man of fashion: spirit, generosity, a good understanding, some knowledge, an easy address, a compassionate heart, a strong inclination for the ladies, and in short every quality a gentleman should have: excellent all these for colonization: prenez garde, mes cheres dames. You have nothing against you, Ned, but your modesty; a very useless virtue on French ground, or indeed on any ground: I wish you had a little more consciousness of your own merits: remember that to know one’s self the oracle of Apollo has pronounced to be the perfection of human wisdom. Our fair friend Mrs. H—— says, “Colonel Rivers wants nothing to make him the most agreeable man breathing but a little dash of the coxcomb.”

For my part, I hate humility in a man of the world; ’tis worse than even the hypocrisy of the saints: I am not ignorant, and therefore never deny, that I am a very handsome fellow; and I have the pleasure to find all the women of the same opinion.

I am just arriv’d from Paris: the divine Madame De —— is as lovely and as constant as ever; ’twas cruel to leave her, but who can account for the caprices of the heart? mine was the prey of a young unexperienc’d English charmer, just come out of a convent,

Ha, Ned? But I forget; you are for the full-blown rose: ’tis a happiness, as we are friends, that ’tis impossible we can ever be rivals; a woman is grown out of my taste some years before she comes up to yours: absolutely, Ned, you are too nice; for my part, I am not so delicate; youth and beauty are sufficient for me; give me blooming seventeen, and I cede to you the whole empire of sentiment.

This, I suppose, will find you trying the force of your destructive charms on the savage dames of America; chasing females wild as the winds thro’ woods as wild as themselves: I see you pursuing the stately relict of some renown’d Indian chief, some plump squaw arriv’d at the age of sentiment, some warlike queen dowager of the Ottawas or Tuscaroras.

And pray, comment trouvez vous les dames sauvages? all pure and genuine nature, I suppose; none of the affected coyness of Europe: your attention there will be the more obliging, as the Indian heroes, I am told, are not very attentive to the charms of the beau sexe.

You are very sentimental on the subject of friendship; no one has more exalted notions of this species of affection than myself, yet I deny that it gives life to the moral world; a gallant man, like you, might have found a more animating principle:

I am most gloriously indolent this morning, and would not write another line if the empire of the world (observe I do not mean the female world) depended on it.

LETTER IV.4.

’Tis very true, Jack; I have no relish for the Misses; for puling girls in hanging sleeves, who feel no passion but vanity, and, without any distinguishing taste, are dying for the first man who tells them they are handsome. Take your boarding-school girls; but give me a woman; one, in short, who has a soul; not a cold inamimateinanimate form, insensible to the lively impressions of real love, and unfeeling as the wax baby she has just thrown away.

You will allow Prior to be no bad judge of female merit; and you may remember his Egyptian maid, the favorite of the luxurious King Solomon, is painted in full bloom.

By the way, Jack, there is generally a certain hoity-toity inelegance of form and manner at seventeen, which in my opinion is not balanc’d by freshness of complexion, the only advantage girls have to boast of.

I have another objection to girls, which is, that they will eternally fancy every man they converse with has designs; a coquet and a prude in the bud are equally disagreeable; the former expects universal adoration, the latter is alarm’d even at that general civility which is the right of all their sex; of the two however the last is, I think, much the most troublesome; I wish these very apprehensive young ladies knew, their virtue is not half so often in danger as they imagine, and that there are many male creatures to whom they may safely shew politeness without being drawn into any concessions inconsistent with the strictest honor. We are not half such terrible animals as mammas, nurses, and novels represent us; and, if my opinion is of any weight, I am inclin’d to believe those tremendous men, who have designs on the whole sex, are, and ever were, characters as fabulous as the giants of romance.

Women after twenty begin to know this, and therefore converse with us on the footing of rational creatures, without either fearing or expecting to find every man a lover.

To do the ladies justice however, I have seen the same absurdity in my own sex, and have observed many a very good sort of man turn pale at the politeness of an agreeable woman.

I lament this mistake, in both sexes, because it takes greatly from the pleasure of mix’d society, the only society for which I have any relish.

Don’t, however, fancy that, because I dislike the Misses, I have a taste for their grandmothers; there is a golden mean, Jack, of which you seem to have no idea.

You are very ill inform’d as to the manners of the Indian ladies; ’tis in the bud alone these wild roses are accessible; liberal to profusion of their charms before marriage, they are chastity itself after: the moment they commence wives, they give up the very idea of pleasing, and turn all their thoughts to the cares, and those not the most delicate cares, of domestic life: laborious, hardy, active, they plough the ground, they sow, they reap; whilst the haughty husband amuses himself with hunting, shooting, fishing, and such exercises only as are the image of war; all other employments being, according to his idea, unworthy the dignity of man.

I have told you the labors of savage life, but I should observe that they are only temporary, and when urg’d by the sharp tooth of necessity: their lives are, upon the whole, idle beyond any thing we can conceive. If the Epicurean definition of happiness is just, that it consists in indolence of body, and tranquillity of mind, the Indians of both sexes are the happiest people on earth; free from all care, they enjoy the present moment, forget the past, and are without solicitude for the future: in summer, stretch’d on the verdant turf, they sing, they laugh, they play, they relate stories of their ancient heroes to warm the youth to war; in winter, wrap’d in the furs which bounteous nature provides them, they dance, they feast, and despise the rigors of the season, at which the more effeminate Europeans tremble.

War being however the business of their lives, and the first passion of their souls, their very pleasures take their colors from it: every one must have heard of the war dance, and their songs are almost all on the same subject: on the most diligent enquiry, I find but one love song in their language, which is short and simple, tho’ perhaps not inexpressive:

An old Indian told me, they had also songs of friendship, but I could never procure a translation of one of them: on my pressing this Indian to translate one into French for me, he told me with a haughty air, the Indians were not us’d to make translations, and that if I chose to understand their songs I must learn their language. By the way, their language is extremely harmonious, especially as pronounced by their women, and as well adapted to music as Italian itself. I must not here omit an instance of their independent spirit, which is, that they never would submit to have the service of the church, tho’ they profess the Romish religion, in any language but their own; the women, who have in general fine voices, sing in the choir with a taste and manner that would surprize you, and with a devotion that might edify more polish’d nations.

The Indian women are tall and well shaped; have good eyes, and before marriage are, except their color, and their coarse greasy black hair, very far from being disagreeable; but the laborious life they afterwards lead is extremely unfavorable to beauty; they become coarse and masculine, and lose in a year or two the power as well as the desire of pleasing. To compensate however for the loss of their charms, they acquire a new empire in marrying; are consulted in all affairs of state, chuse a chief on every vacancy of the throne, are sovereign arbiters of peace and war, as well as of the fate of those unhappy captives that have the misfortune to fall into their hands, who are adopted as children, or put to the most cruel death, as the wives of the conquerors smile or frown.

A Jesuit missionary told me a story on this subject, which one cannot hear without horror: an Indian woman with whom he liv’d on his mission was feeding her children, when her husband brought in an English prisoner; she immediately cut off his arm, and gave her children the streaming blood to drink: the Jesuit remonstrated on the cruelty of the action, on which, looking sternly at him, “I would have them warriors,” said she, “and therefore feed them with the food of men.”

This anecdote may perhaps disgust you with the Indian ladies, who certainly do not excel in female softness. I will therefore turn to the Canadian, who have every charm except that without which all other charms are to me insipid, I mean sensibility: they are gay, coquet, and sprightly; more gallant than sensible; more flatter’d by the vanity of inspiring passion, than capable of feeling it themselves; and, like their European countrywomen, prefer the outward attentions of unmeaning admiration to the real devotion of the heart. There is not perhaps on earth a race of females, who talk so much, or feel so little, of love as the French; the very reverse is in general true of the English: my fair countrywomen seem ashamed of the charming sentiment to which they are indebted for all their power.

Adieu! I am going to attend a very handsome French lady, who allows me the honor to drive her en calache to our Canadian Hyde Park, the road to St. Foix, where you will see forty or fifty calashes, with pretty women in them, parading every evening: you will allow the apology to be admissible.

LETTER V.5.

What an inconstant animal is man! do you know, Lucy, I begin to be tir’d of the lovely landscape round me? I have enjoy’d from it all the pleasure meer inanimate objects can give, and find ’tis a pleasure that soon satiates, if not relieved by others which are more lively. The scenery is to be sure divine, but one grows weary of meer scenery: the most enchanting prospect soon loses its power of pleasing, when the eye is accustom’d to it: we gaze at first transported on the charms of nature, and fancy they will please for ever; but, alas! it will not do; we sigh for society, the conversation of those dear to us; the more animated pleasures of the heart. There are fine women, and men of merit here; but, as the affections are not in our power, I have not yet felt my heart gravitate towards any of them. I must absolutely set in earnest about my settlement, in order to emerge from the state of vegetation into which I seem falling.

But to your last: you ask me a particular account of the convents here. Have you an inclination, my dear, to turn nun? if you have, you could not have applied to a properer person; my extreme modesty and reserve, and my speaking French, having made me already a great favourite with the older part of all the three communities, who unanimously declare colonel Rivers to be un tres aimable homme, and have given me an unlimited liberty of visiting them whenever I please: they now and then treat me with a sight of some of the young ones, but this is a favor not allow’d to all the world.

There are three religious houses at Quebec, so you have choice; the Ursulines, the Hotel Dieu, and the General Hospital. The first is the severest order in the Romish church, except that very cruel one which denies its fair votaries the inestimable liberty of speech. The house is large and handsome, but has an air of gloominess, with which the black habit, and the livid paleness of the nuns, extremely corresponds. The church is, contrary to the style of the rest of the convent, ornamented and lively to the last degree. The superior is an English-woman of good family, who was taken prisoner by the savages when a child, and plac’d here by the generosity of a French officer. She is one of the most amiable women I ever knew, with a benevolence in her countenance which inspires all who see her with affection: I am very fond of her conversation, tho’ sixty and a nun.

The Hotel Dieu is very pleasantly situated, with a view of the two rivers, and the entrance of the port: the house is chearful, airy, and agreeable; the habit extremely becoming, a circumstance a handsome woman ought by no means to overlook; ’tis white with a black gauze veil, which would shew your complexion to great advantage. The order is much less severe than the Ursulines, and I might add, much more useful, their province being the care of the sick: the nuns of this house are sprightly, and have a look of health which is wanting at the Ursulines.

The General Hospital, situated about a mile out of town, on the borders of the river St. Charles, is much the most agreeable of the three. The order and the habit are the same with the Hotel Dieu, except that to the habit is added the cross, generally worn in Europe by canonesses only: a distinction procur’d for them by their founder, St. Vallier, the second bishop of Quebec. The house is, without, a very noble building; and neatness, elegance and propriety reign within. The nuns, who are all of the noblesse, are many of them handsome, and all genteel, lively, and well bred; they have an air of the world, their conversation is easy, spirited, and polite: with them you almost forget the recluse in the woman of condition. In short, you have the best nuns at the Ursulines, the most agreeable women at the General Hospital: all however have an air of chagrin, which they in vain endeavour to conceal; and the general eagerness with which they tell you unask’d they are happy, is a strong proof of the contrary.

Tho’ the most indulgent of all men to the follies of others, especially such as have their source in mistaken devotion; tho’ willing to allow all the world to play the fool their own way, yet I cannot help being fir’d with a degree of zeal against an institution equally incompatible with public good, and private happiness; an institution which cruelly devotes beauty and innocence to slavery, regret, and wretchedness; to a more irksome imprisonment than the severest laws inflict on the worst of criminals.

Could any thing but experience, my dear Lucy, make it be believ’d possible that there should be rational beings, who think they are serving the God of mercy by inflicting on themselves voluntary tortures, and cutting themselves off from that state of society in which he has plac’d them, and for which they were form’d? by renouncing the best affections of the human heart, the tender names of friend, of wife, of mother? and, as far as in them lies, counter-working creation? by spurning from them every amusement however innocent, by refusing the gifts of that beneficent power who made us to be happy, and destroying his most precious gifts, health, beauty, sensibility, chearfulness, and peace!

My indignation is yet awake, from having seen a few days since at the Ursulines, an extreme lovely young girl, whose countenance spoke a soul form’d for the most lively, yet delicate, ties of love and friendship, led by a momentary enthusiasm, or perhaps by a childish vanity artfully excited, to the foot of those altars, which she will probably too soon bathe with the bitter tears of repentance and remorse.

The ceremony, form’d to strike the imagination, and seduce the heart of unguarded youth, is extremely solemn and affecting; the procession of the nuns, the sweetness of their voices in the choir, the dignified devotion with which the charming enthusiast received the veil, and took the cruel vow which shut her from the world for ever, struck my heart in spite of my reason, and I felt myself touch’d even to tears by a superstition I equally pity and despise.

I am not however certain it was the ceremony which affected me thus strongly; it was impossible not to feel for this amiable victim; never was there an object more interesting; her form was elegance itself; her air and motion animated and graceful; the glow of pleasure was on her cheek, the fire of enthusiasm in her eyes, which are the finest I ever saw: never did I see joy so livelily painted on the countenance of the happiest bride; she seem’d to walk in air; her whole person look’d more than human.

An enemy to every species of superstition, I must however allow it to be least destructive to true virtue in your gentle sex, and therefore to be indulg’d with least danger: the superstition of men is gloomy and ferocious; it lights the fire, and points the dagger of the assassin; whilst that of women takes its color from the sex; is soft, mild, and benevolent; exerts itself in acts of kindness and charity, and seems only substituting the love of God to that of man.

Who can help admiring, whilst they pity, the foundress of the Ursuline convent, Madame de la Peltrie, to whom the very colony in some measure owes its existence? young, rich and lovely; a widow in the bloom of life, mistress of her own actions, the world was gay before her, yet she left all the pleasures that world could give, to devote her days to the severities of a religion she thought the only true one: she dar’d the dangers of the sea, and the greater dangers of a savage people; she landed on an unknown shore, submitted to the extremities of cold and heat, of thirst and hunger, to perform a service she thought acceptable to the Deity. To an action like this, however mistaken the motive, bigotry alone will deny praise: the man of candor will only lament that minds capable of such heroic virtue are not directed to views more conducive to their own and the general happiness.

I am unexpectedly call’d this moment, my dear Lucy, on some business to Montreal, from whence you shall hear from me.

LETTER VI.6.

I am arriv’d, my dear, and have brought my heart safe thro’ such a continued fire as never poor knight errant was exposed to; waited on at every stage by blooming country girls, full of spirit and coquetry, without any of the village bashfulness of England, and dressed like the shepherdesses of romance. A man of adventure might make a pleasant journey to Montreal.

The peasants are ignorant, lazy, dirty, and stupid beyond all belief; but hospitable, courteous, civil; and, what is particularly agreeable, they leave their wives and daughters to do the honors of the house: in which obliging office they acquit themselves with an attention, which, amidst every inconvenience apparent (tho’ I am told not real) poverty can cause, must please every guest who has a soul inclin’d to be pleas’d: for my part, I was charm’d with them, and eat my homely fare with as much pleasure as if I had been feasting on ortolans in a palace. Their conversation is lively and amusing; all the little knowledge of Canada is confined to the sex; very few, even of the seigneurs, being able to write their own names.

The road from Quebec to Montreal is almost a continued street, the villages being numerous, and so extended along the banks of the river St. Lawrence as to leave scarce a space without houses in view; except where here or there a river, a wood, or mountain intervenes, as if to give a more pleasing variety to the scene. I don’t remember ever having had a more agreeable journey; the fine prospects of the day so enliven’d by the gay chat of the evening, that I was really sorry when I approach’d Montreal.

The island of Montreal, on which the town stands, is a very lovely spot; highly cultivated, and tho’ less wild and magnificent, more smiling than the country round Quebec: the ladies, who seem to make pleasure their only business, and most of whom I have seen this morning driving about the town in calashes, and making what they call, the tour de la ville, attended by English officers, seem generally handsome, and have an air of sprightliness with which I am charm’d; I must be acquainted with them all, for tho’ my stay is to be short, I see no reason why it should be dull. I am told they are fond of little rural balls in the country, and intend to give one as soon as I have paid my respects in form.

I am just come from dining with the —— regiment, and find I have a visit to pay I was not aware of, to two English ladies who are a few miles out of town: one of them is wife to the major of the regiment, and the other just going to be married to a captain in it, Sir George Clayton, a young handsome baronet, just come to his title and a very fine estate, by the death of a distant relation: he is at present at New York, and I am told they are to be married as soon as he comes back.

I have been making some flying visits to the French ladies; tho’ I have not seen many beauties, yet in general the women are handsome; their manner is easy and obliging, they make the most of their charms by their vivacity, and I certainly cannot be displeas’d with their extreme partiality for the English officers; their own men, who indeed are not very attractive, have not the least chance for any share in their good graces.

I am just setting out with a friend for Major Melmoth’s, to pay my compliments to the two ladies: I have no relish for this visit; I hate misses that are going to be married; they are always so full of the dear man, that they have not common civility to other people. I am told however both the ladies are agreeable.

Agreeable, Lucy! she is an angel: ’tis happy for me she is engag’d; nothing else could secure my heart, of which you know I am very tenacious: only think of finding beauty, delicacy, sensibility, all that can charm in woman, hid in a wood in Canada!

You say I am given to be enthusiastic in my approbations, but she is really charming. I am resolv’d not only to have a friendship for her myself, but that you shall, and have told her so; she comes to England as soon as she is married; you are form’d to love each other.

But I must tell you; Major Melmoth kept us a week at his house in the country, in one continued round of rural amusements; by which I do not mean hunting and shooting, but such pleasures as the ladies could share; little rustic balls and parties round the neighbouring country, in which parties we were joined by all the fine women at Montreal. Mrs. Melmoth is a very pleasing, genteel brunette, but Emily Montague—you will say I am in love with her if I describe her, and yet I declare to you I am not: knowing she loves another, to whom she is soon to be united, I see her charms with the same kind of pleasure I do yours; a pleasure, which, tho’ extremely lively, is by our situation without the least mixture of desire.

I have said, she is charming; there are men here who do not think so, but to me she is loveliness itself. My ideas of beauty are perhaps a little out of the common road: I hate a woman of whom every man coldly says, she is handsome; I adore beauty, but it is not meer features or complexion to which I give that name; ’tis life, ’tis spirit, ’tis animation, ’tis—in one word, ’tis Emily Montague—without being regularly beautiful, she charms every sensible heart; all other women, however lovely, appear marble statues near her: fair; pale (a paleness which gives the idea of delicacy without destroying that of health), with dark hair and eyes, the latter large and languishing, she seems made to feel to a trembling excess the passion she cannot fail of inspiring: her elegant form has an air of softness and languor, which seizes the whole soul in a moment: her eyes, the most intelligent I ever saw, hold you enchain’d by their bewitching sensibility.

There are a thousand unspeakable charms in her conversation; but what I am most pleas’d with, is the attentive politeness of her manner, which you seldom see in a person in love; the extreme desire of pleasing one man generally taking off greatly from the attention due to all the rest. This is partly owing to her admirable understanding, and partly to the natural softness of her soul, which gives her the strongest desire of pleasing. As I am a philosopher in these matters, and have made the heart my study, I want extremely to see her with her lover, and to observe the gradual encrease of her charms in his presence; love, which embellishes the most unmeaning countenance, must give to her’s a fire irresistible: what eyes! when animated by tenderness!

The very soul acquires a new force and beauty by loving; a woman of honor never appears half so amiable, or displays half so many virtues, as when sensible to the merit of a man who deserves her affection. Observe, Lucy, I shall never allow you to be handsome till I hear you are in love.

Did I tell you Emily Montague had the finest hand and arm in the world? I should however have excepted yours: her tone of voice too has the same melodious sweetness, a perfection without which the loveliest woman could never make the least impression on my heart: I don’t think you are very unlike upon the whole, except that she is paler. You know, Lucy, you have often told me I should certainly have been in love with you if I had not been your brother: this resemblance is a proof you were right. You are really as handsome as any woman can be whose sensibility has never been put in motion.

I am to give a ball to-morrow; Mrs. Melmoth is to have the honors of it, but as she is with child, she does not dance. This circumstance has produc’d a dispute not a little flattering to my vanity: the ladies are making interest to dance with me; what a happy exchange have I made! what man of common sense would stay to be overlook’d in England, who can have rival beauties contend for him in Canada? This important point is not yet settled; the etiquette here is rather difficult to adjust; as to me, I have nothing to do in the consultation; my hand is destin’d to the longest pedigree; we stand prodigiously on our noblesse at Montreal.

After a dispute in which two French ladies were near drawing their husbands into a duel, the point of honor is yielded by both to Miss Montague; each insisting only that I should not dance with the other: for my part, I submit with a good grace, as you will suppose.

I never passed a more agreeable evening: we have our amusements here, I assure you: a set of fine young fellows, and handsome women, all well dress’d, and in humor with themselves, and with each other: my lovely Emily like Venus amongst the Graces, only multiplied to about sixteen. Nothing is, in my opinion, so favorable to the display of beauty as a ball. A state of rest is ungraceful; all nature is most beautiful in motion; trees agitated by the wind, a ship under sail, a horse in the course, a fine woman dancing: never any human being had such an aversion to still life as I have.

I am going back to Melmoth’s for a month; don’t be alarm’d, Lucy! I see all her perfections, but I see them with the cold eye of admiration only: a woman engaged loses all her attractions as a woman; there is no love without a ray of hope: my only ambition is to be her friend; I want to be the confidant of her passion. With what spirit such a mind as hers must love!

LETTER VII.7.

By Heavens, Lucy, this is more than man can bear; I was mad to stay so long at Melmoth’s; there is no resisting this little seducer: ’tis shameful in such a lovely woman to have understanding too; yet even this I could forgive, had she not that enchanting softness in her manner, which steals upon the soul, and would almost make ugliness itself charm; were she but vain, one had some chance, but she will take upon her to have no consciousness, at least no apparent consciousness, of her perfections, which is really intolerable. I told her so last night, when she put on such a malicious smile—I believe the little tyrant wants to add me to the list of her slaves; but I was not form’d to fill up a train. The woman I love must be so far from giving another the preference, that she must have no soul but for me; I am one of the most unreasonable men in the world on this head; she may fancy what she pleases, but I set her and all her attractions at defiance: I have made my escape, and shall set off for Quebec in an hour. Flying is, I must acknowledge, a little out of character, and unbecoming a soldier; but in these cases, it is the very best thing man or woman either can do, when they doubt their powers of resistance.

I intend to be ten days going to Quebec. I propose visiting the priests at every village, and endeavouring to get some knowledge of the nature of the country, in order to my intended settlement. Idleness being the root of all evil, and the nurse of love, I am determin’d to keep myself employed; nothing can be better suited to my temper than my present design; the pleasure of cultivating lands here is as much superior to what can be found in the same employment in England, as watching the expanding rose, and beholding the falling leaves: America is in infancy, Europe in old age. Nor am I very ill qualified for this agreable task: I have studied the Georgicks, and am a pretty enough kind of a husbandman as far as theory goes; nay, I am not sure I shall not be, even in practice, the best gentleman farmer in the province.

You may expect soon to hear of me in the Museum Rusticum; I intend to make amazing discoveries in the rural way: I have already found out, by the force of my own genius, two very uncommon circumstances; that in Canada, contrary to what we see every where else, the country is rich, the capital poor; the hills fruitful, the vallies barren. You see what excellent dispositions I have to be an useful member of society: I had always a strong biass to the study of natural philosophy.

Tell my mother how well I am employ’d, and she cannot but approve my voyage: assure her, my dear, of my tenderest regard.

The chaise is at the door.

The lover is every hour expected; I am not quite sure I should have lik’d to see him arrive: a third person, you know, on such an occasion, sinks into nothing; and I love, wherever I am, to be one of the figures which strike the eye; I hate to appear on the back ground of the picture.

LETTER VIII.8.

You can’t think, my dear, what a fund of useful knowledge I have treasur’d up during my journey from Montreal. This colony is a rich mine yet unopen’d; I do not mean of gold and silver, but of what are of much more real value, corn and cattle. Nothing is wanting but encouragement and cultivation; the Canadians are at their ease even without labor; nature is here a bounteous mother, who pours forth her gifts almost unsolicited: bigotry, stupidity, and laziness, united, have not been able to keep the peasantry poor. I rejoice to find such admirable capabilities where I propose to fix my dominion.

I was hospitably entertained by the curés all the way down, tho’ they are in general but ill provided for: the parochial clergy are useful every where, but I have a great aversion to monks, those drones in the political hive, whose whole study seems to be to make themselves as useless to the world as possible. Think too of the shocking indelicacy of many of them, who make it a point of religion to abjure linen, and wear their habits till they drop off. How astonishing that any mind should suppose the Deity an enemy to cleanliness! the Jewish religion was hardly any thing else.

I paid my respects wherever I stopped, to the seigneuress of the village; for as to the seigneurs, except two or three, if they had not wives, they would not be worth visiting.

I am every day more pleased with the women here; and, if I was gallant, should be in danger of being a convert to the French stile of gallantry; which certainly debases the mind much less than ours.

But what is all this to my Emily? How I envy Sir George! what happiness has Heaven prepared for him, if he has a soul to taste it!

I really must not think of her; I found so much delight in her conversation, it was quite time to come away; I am almost ashamed to own how much difficulty I found in leaving her: do you know I have scarce slept since? This is absurd, but I cannot help it; which by the way is an admirable excuse for any thing.

I have been come but two hours, and am going to Silleri, to pay my compliments to your friend Miss Fermor, who arrived with her father, who comes to join his regiment, since I left Quebec. I hear there has been a very fine importation of English ladies during my absence. I am sorry I have not time to visit the rest, but I go to-morrow morning to the Indian village for a fortnight, and have several letters to write to-night.

LETTER IX.9.

I cannot, Madam, express my obligation to you for having added a postscript to Major Melmoth’s letter: I am sure he will excuse my answering the whole to you; if not, I beg he may know that I shall be very pert about it, being much more solicitous to please you than him, for a thousand reasons too tedious to mention.

I thought you had more penetration than to suppose me indifferent: on the contrary, sensibility is my fault; though it is not your little every-day beauties who can excite it: I have admirable dispositions to love, though I am hard to please: in short, I am not cruel, I am only nice: do but you, or your divine friend, give me leave to wear your chains, and you shall soon be convinced I can love like an angel, when I set in earnest about it. But, alas! you are married, and in love with your husband; and your friend is in a situation still more unfavorable to a lover’s hopes. This is particularly unfortunate, as you are the only two of your bewitching sex in Canada, for whom my heart feels the least sympathy. To be plain, but don’t tell the little Major, I am more than half in love with you both, and, if I was the grand Turk, should certainly fit out a fleet, to seize, and bring you to my seraglio.

There is one virtue I admire extremely in you both; I mean, that humane and tender compassion for the poor men, which prompts you to be always seen together; if you appeared separate, where is the hero who could resist either of you?

You ask me how I like the French ladies at Montreal: I think them extremely pleasing; and many of them handsome; I thought Madame L—— so, even near you and Miss Montague; which is, I think, saying as much as can be said on the subject.

I have just heard by accident that Sir George is arrived at Montreal. Assure Miss Montague, no one can be more warmly interested in her happiness than I am: she is the most perfect work of Heaven; may she be the happiest! I feel much more on this occasion than I can express: a mind like hers must, in marriage, be exquisitely happy or miserable: my friendship makes me tremble for her, notwithstanding the worthy character I have heard of Sir George.

I will defer till another time what I had to say to Major Melmoth.

LETTER X.10.

I have been a month arrived, my dear, without having seen your brother, who is at Montreal, but I am told is expected to-day. I have spent my time however very agreably. I know not what the winter may be, but I am enchanted with the beauty of this country in summer; bold, picturesque, romantic, nature reigns here in all her wanton luxuriance, adorned by a thousand wild graces which mock the cultivated beauties of Europe. The scenery about the town is infinitely lovely; the prospect extensive, and diversified by a variety of hills, woods, rivers, cascades, intermingled with smiling farms and cottages, and bounded by distant mountains which seem to scale the very Heavens.

The days are much hotter here than in England, but the heat is more supportable from the breezes which always spring up about noon; and the evenings are charming beyond expression. We have much thunder and lightening, but very few instances of their being fatal: the thunder is more magnificent and aweful than in Europe, and the lightening brighter and more beautiful; I have even seen it of a clear pale purple, resembling the gay tints of the morning.

The verdure is equal to that of England, and in the evening acquires an unspeakable beauty from the lucid splendor of the fire-flies sparkling like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass.

There are two very noble falls of water near Quebec, la Chaudiere and Montmorenci: the former is a prodigious sheet of water, rushing over the wildest rocks, and forming a scene grotesque, irregular, astonishing: the latter, less wild, less irregular, but more pleasing and more majestic, falls from an immense height, down the side of a romantic mountain, into the river St. Lawrence, opposite the most smiling part of the island of Orleans, to the cultivated charms of which it forms the most striking and agreeable contrast.

The river of the same name, which supplies the cascade of Montmorenci, is the most lovely of all inaminateinanimate objects: but why do I call it inanimate? It almost breathes; I no longer wonder at the enthusiasm of Greece and Rome; ’twas from objects resembling this their mythology took its rise; it seems the residence of a thousand deities.

Paint to yourself a stupendous rock burst as it were in sunder by the hands of nature, to give passage to a small, but very deep and beautiful river; and forming on each side a regular and magnificent wall, crowned with the noblest woods that can be imagined; the sides of these romantic walls adorned with a variety of the gayest flowers, and in many places little streams of the purest water gushing through, and losing themselves in the river below: a thousand natural grottoes in the rock make you suppose yourself in the abode of the Nereids; as a little island, covered with flowering shrubs, about a mile above the falls, where the river enlarges itself as if to give it room, seems intended for the throne of the river goddess. Beyond this, the rapids, formed by the irregular projections of the rock, which in some places seem almost to meet, rival in beauty, as they excel in variety, the cascade itself, and close this little world of enchantment.

In short, the loveliness of this fairy scene alone more than pays the fatigues of my voyage; and, if I ever murmur at having crossed the Atlantic, remind me that I have seen the river Montmorenci.

I can give you a very imperfect account of the people here; I have only examined the landscape about Quebec, and have given very little attention to the figures; the French ladies are handsome, but as to the beaux, they appear to me not at all dangerous, and one might safely walk in a wood by moonlight with the most agreeable Frenchman here. I am not surprized the Canadian ladies take such pains to seduce our men from us; but I think it a little hard we have no temptation to make reprisals.

I am at present at an extreme pretty farm on the banks of the river St. Lawrence; the house stands at the foot of a steep mountain covered with a variety of trees, forming a verdant sloping wall, which rises in a kind of regular confusion, “Shade above shade, a woody theatre,” and has in front this noble river, on which the ships continually passing present to the delighted eye the most charming moving picture imaginable; I never saw a place so formed to inspire that pleasing lassitude, that divine inclination to saunter, which may not improperly be called, the luxurious indolence of the country. I intend to build a temple here to the charming goddess of laziness.

A gentleman is just coming down the winding path on the side of the hill, whom by his air I take to be your brother. Adieu! I must receive him: my father is at Quebec.

Your brother has given me a very pleasing piece of intelligence: my friend Emily Montague is at Montreal, and is going to be married to great advantage; I must write to her immediately, and insist on her making me a visit before she marries. She came to America two years ago, with her uncle Colonel Montague, who died here, and I imagined was gone back to England; she is however at Montreal with Mrs. Melmoth, a distant relation of her mother’s. Adieu! ma tres chere!

LETTER XI.11.

I find, my dear, that absence and amusement are the best remedies for a beginning passion; I have passed a fortnight at the Indian village of Lorette, where the novelty of the scene, and the enquiries I have been led to make into their antient religion and manners, have been of a thousand times more service to me than all the reflection in the world would have been.

I will own to you that I staid too long at Montreal, or rather at Major Melmoth’s; to be six weeks in the same house with one of the most amiable, most pleasing of women, was a trying situation to a heart full of sensibility, and of a sensibility which has been hitherto, from a variety of causes, a good deal restrained. I should have avoided the danger from the first, had it appeared to me what it really was; but I thought myself secure in the consideration of her engagements, a defence however which I found grow weaker every day.

But to my savages: other nations talk of liberty, they possess it; nothing can be more astonishing than to see a little village of about thirty or forty families, the small remains of the Hurons, almost exterminated by long and continual war with the Iroquoise, preserve their independence in the midst of an European colony consisting of seventy thousand inhabitants; yet the fact is true of the savages of Lorette; they assert and they maintain that independence with a spirit truly noble. One of our company having said something which an Indian understood as a supposition that they had been subjects of France, his eyes struck fire, he stop’d him abruptly, contrary to their respectful and sensible custom of never interrupting the person who speaks, “You mistake, brother,” said he; “we are subjects to no prince; a savage is free all over the world.” And he spoke only truth; they are not only free as a people, but every individual is perfectly so. Lord of himself, at once subject and master, a savage knows no superior, a circumstance which has a striking effect on his behaviour; unawed by rank or riches, distinctions unknown amongst his own nation, he would enter as unconcerned, would possess all his powers as freely in the palace of an oriental monarch, as in the cottage of the meanest peasant: ’tis the species, ’tis man, ’tis his equal he respects, without regarding the gaudy trappings, the accidental advantages, to which polished nations pay homage.

I have taken some pains to develop their present, as well as past, religious sentiments, because the Jesuit missionaries have boasted so much of their conversion; and find they have rather engrafted a few of the most plain and simple truths of Christianity on their ancient superstitions, than exchanged one faith for another; they are baptized, and even submit to what they themselves call the yoke of confession, and worship according to the outward forms of the Romish church, the drapery of which cannot but strike minds unused to splendor; but their belief is very little changed, except that the women seem to pay great reverence to the Virgin, perhaps because flattering to the sex. They anciently believed in one God, the ruler and creator of the universe, whom they called the Great Spirit and the Master of Life; in the sun as his image and representative; in a multitude of inferior spirits and demons; and in a future state of rewards and punishments, or, to use their own phrase, in a country of souls. They reverenced the spirits of their departed heroes, but it does not appear that they paid them any religious adoration. Their morals were more pure, their manners more simple, than those of polished nations, except in what regarded the intercourse of the sexes: the young women before marriage were indulged in great libertinism, hid however under the most reserved and decent exterior. They held adultery in abhorrence, and with the more reason as their marriages were dissolvibledissolvable at pleasure. The missionaries are said to have found no difficulty so great in gaining them to Christianity, as that of persuading them to marry for life: they regarded the Christian system of marriage as contrary to the laws of nature and reason; and asserted that, as the Great Spirit formed us to be happy, it was opposing his will, to continue together when otherwise.

The sex we have so unjustly excluded from power in Europe have a great share in the Huron government; the chief is chose by the matrons from amongst the nearest male relations, by the female line, of him he is to succeed; and is generally an aunt’s or sister’s son; a custom which, if we examine strictly into the principle on which it is founded, seems a little to contradict what we are told of the extreme chastity of the married ladies.

The power of the chief is extremely limited; he seems rather to advise his people as a father than command them as a master: yet, as his commands are always reasonable, and for the general good, no prince in the world is so well obeyed. They have a supreme council of ancients, into which every man enters of course at an age fixed, and another of assistants to the chief on common occasions, the members of which are like him elected by the matrons: I am pleased with this last regulation, as women are, beyond all doubt, the best judges of the merit of men; and I should be extremely pleased to see it adopted in England: canvassing for elections would then be the most agreeable thing in the world, and I am sure the ladies would give their votes on much more generous principles than we do. In the true sense of the word, we are the savages, who so impolitely deprive you of the common rights of citizenship, and leave you no power but that of which we cannot deprive you, the resistless power of your charms. By the way, I don’t think you are obliged in conscience to obey laws you have had no share in making; your plea would certainly be at least as good as that of the Americans, about which we every day hear so much.

The Hurons have no positive laws; yet being a people not numerous, with a strong sense of honor, and in that state of equality which gives no food to the most tormenting passions of the human heart, and the council of ancients having a power to punish atrocious crimes, which power however they very seldom find occasion to use, they live together in a tranquillity and order which appears to us surprizing.

In more numerous Indian nations, I am told, every village has its chief and its councils, and is perfectly independent on the rest; but on great occasions summon a general council, to which every village sends deputies.

Their language is at once sublime and melodious; but, having much fewer ideas, it is impossible it can be so copious as those of Europe: the pronunciation of the men is guttural, but that of the women extremely soft and pleasing; without understanding one word of the language, the sound of it is very agreeable to me. Their style even in speaking French is bold and metaphorical: and I am told is on important occasions extremely sublime. Even in common conversation they speak in figures, of which I have this moment an instance. A savage woman was wounded lately in defending an English family from the drunken rage of one of her nation. I asked her after her wound; “It is well,” said she; “my sisters at Quebec (meaning the English ladies) have been kind to me; and piastres, you know, are very healing.”

They have no idea of letters, no alphabet, nor is their language reducible to rules: ’tis by painting they preserve the memory of the only events which interest them, or that they think worth recording, the conquests gained over their enemies in war.

When I speak of their paintings, I should not omit that, though extremely rude, they have a strong resemblance to the Chinese, a circumstance which struck me the more, as it is not the stile of nature. Their dances also, the most lively pantomimes I ever saw, and especially the dance of peace, exhibit variety of attitudes resembling the figures on Chinese fans; nor have their features and complexion less likeness to the pictures we see of the Tartars, as their wandering manner of life, before they became christians, was the same.

If I thought it necessary to suppose they were not natives of the country, and that America was peopled later than the other quarters of the world, I should imagine them the descendants of Tartars; as nothing can be more easy than their passage from Asia, from which America is probably not divided; or, if it is, by a very narrow channel. But I leave this to those who are better informed, being a subject on which I honestly confess my ignorance.

I have already observed, that they retain most of their antient superstitions. I should particularize their belief in dreams, of which folly even repeated disappointments cannot cure them: they have also an unlimited faith in their powawers, or conjurers, of whom there is one in every Indian village, who is at once physician, orator, and divine, and who is consulted as an oracle on every occasion. As I happened to smile at the recital a savage was making of a prophetic dream, from which he assured us of the death of an English officer whom I knew to be alive, “You Europeans,” said he, “are the most unreasonable people in the world; you laugh at our belief in dreams, and yet expect us to believe things a thousand times more incredible.”

Their general character is difficult to describe; made up of contrary and even contradictory qualities, they are indolent, tranquil, quiet, humane in peace; active, restless, cruel, ferocious in war: courteous, attentive, hospitable, and even polite, when kindly treated; haughty, stern, vindictive, when they are not; and their resentment is the more to be dreaded, as they hold it a point of honor to dissemble their sense of an injury till they find an opportunity to revenge it.

They are patient of cold and heat, of hunger and thirst, even beyond all belief when necessity requires, passing whole days, and often three or four days together, without food, in the woods, when on the watch for an enemy, or even on their hunting parties; yet indulging themselves in their feasts even to the most brutal degree of intemperance. They despise death, and suffer the most excruciating tortures not only without a groan, but with an air of triumph; singing their death song, deriding their tormentors, and threatening them with the vengeance of their surviving friends: yet hold it honorable to fly before an enemy that appears the least superior in number or force.

Deprived by their extreme ignorance, and that indolence which nothing but their ardor for war can surmount, of all the conveniencies, as well as elegant refinements of polished life; strangers to the softer passions, love being with them on the same footing as amongst their fellow-tenants of the woods, their lives appear to me rather tranquil than happy: they have fewer cares, but they have also much fewer enjoyments, than fall to our share. I am told, however, that, though insensible to love, they are not without affections; are extremely awake to friendship, and passionately fond of their children.

They are of a copper color, which is rendered more unpleasing by a quantity of coarse red on their cheeks; but the children, when born, are of a pale silver white; perhaps their indelicate custom of greasing their bodies, and their being so much exposed to the air and sun even from infancy, may cause that total change of complexion, which I know not how otherwise to account for: their hair is black and shining, the women’s very long, parted at the top, and combed back, tied behind, and often twisted with a thong of leather, which they think very ornamental: the dress of both sexes is a close jacket, reaching to their knees, with spatterdashes, all of coarse blue cloth, shoes of deer-skin, embroidered with porcupine quills, and sometimes with silver spangles; and a blanket thrown across their shoulders, and fastened before with a kind of bodkin, with necklaces, and other ornaments of beads or shells.

They are in general tall, well made, and agile to the last degree; have a lively imagination, a strong memory; and, as far as their interests are concerned, are very dextrous politicians.

Their address is cold and reserved; but their treatment of strangers, and the unhappy, infinitely kind and hospitable. A very worthy priest, with whom I am acquainted at Quebec, was some years since shipwrecked in December on the island of Anticosti: after a variety of distresses, not difficult to be imagined on an island without inhabitants, during the severity of a winter even colder than that of Canada; he, with the small remains of his companions who survived such complicated distress, early in the spring, reached the main land in their boat, and wandered to a cabbin of savages; the ancient of which, having heard his story, bid him enter, and liberally supplied their wants: “Approach, brother,” said he; “the unhappy have a right to our assistance; we are men, and cannot but feel for the distresses which happen to men;” a sentiment which has a strong resemblance to a celebrated one in a Greek tragedy.

You will not expect more from me on this subject, as my residence here has been short, and I can only be said to catch a few marking features flying. I am unable to give you a picture at full length.

Nothing astonishes me so much as to find their manners so little changed by their intercourse with the Europeans; they seem to have learnt nothing of us but excess in drinking.

The situation of the village is very fine, on an eminence, gently rising to a thick wood at some distance, a beautiful little serpentine river in front, on which are a bridge, a mill, and a small cascade, at such a distance as to be very pleasing objects from their houses; and a cultivated country, intermixed with little woods lying between them and Quebec, from which they are distant only nine very short miles.

What a letter have I written! I shall quit my post of historian to your friend Miss Fermor; the ladies love writing much better than we do; and I should perhaps be only just, if I said they write better.

LETTER XII.12.

I yesterday morning received a letter from Major Melmoth, to introduce to my acquaintance Sir George Clayton, who brought it; he wanted no other introduction to me than his being dear to the most amiable woman breathing; in virtue of that claim, he may command every civility, every attention in my power. He breakfasted with me yesterday: we were two hours alone, and had a great deal of conversation; we afterwards spent the day together very agreably, on a party of pleasure in the country.

I am going with him this afternoon to visit Miss Fermor, to whom he has a letter from the divine Emily, which he is to deliver himself.

He is very handsome, but not of my favorite stile of beauty: extremely fair and blooming, with fine features, light hair and eyes; his countenance not absolutely heavy, but inanimate, and to my taste insipid: finely made, not ungenteel, but without that easy air of the world which I prefer to the most exact symmetry without it. In short, he is what the country ladies in England call a sweet pretty man. He dresses well, has the finest horses and the handsomest liveries I have seen in Canada. His manner is civil but cold, his conversation sensible but not spirited; he seems to be a man rather to approve than to love. Will you excuse me if I say, he resembles the form my imagination paints of Prometheus’s man of clay, before he stole the celestial fire to animate him?

Perhaps I scrutinize him too strictly; perhaps I am prejudiced in my judgment by the very high idea I had form’d of the man whom Emily Montague could love. I will own to you, that I thought it impossible for her to be pleased with meer beauty; and I cannot even now change my opinion; I shall find some latent fire, some hidden spark, when we are better acquainted.

I intend to be very intimate with him, to endeavour to see into his very soul; I am hard to please in a husband for my Emily; he must have spirit, he must have sensibility, or he cannot make her happy.

He thank’d me for my civility to Miss Montague: do you know I thought him impertinent? and I am not yet sure he was not so, though I saw he meant to be polite.

He comes: our horses are at the door. Adieu!

We are return’d: I every hour like him less. There were several ladies, French and English, with Miss Fermor, all on the rack to engage the Baronet’s attention; you have no notion of the effect of a title in America. To do the ladies justice however, he really look’d very handsome; the ride, and the civilities he receiv’d from a circle of pretty women, for they were well chose, gave a glow to his complexion extremely favorable to his desire of pleasing, which, through all his calmness, it was impossible not to observe; he even attempted once or twice to be lively, but fail’d: vanity itself could not inspire him with vivacity; yet vanity is certainly his ruling passion, if such a piece of still life can be said to have any passions at all.

What a charm, my dear Lucy, is there in sensibility! ’Tis the magnet which attracts all to itself: virtue may command esteem, understanding and talents admiration, beauty a transient desire; but ’tis sensibility alone which can inspire love.

Yet the tender, the sensible Emily Montague—no, my dear, ’tis impossible: she may fancy she loves him, but it is not in nature; unless she extremely mistakes his character. His approbation of her, for he cannot feel a livelier sentiment, may at present, when with her, raise him a little above his natural vegetative state, but after marriage he will certainly sink into it again.

If I have the least judgment in men, he will be a cold, civil, inattentive husband; a tasteless, insipid, silent companion; a tranquil, frozen, unimpassion’d lover; his insensibility will secure her from rivals, his vanity will give her all the drapery of happiness; her friends will congratulate her choice; she will be the envy of her own sex: without giving positive offence, he will every moment wound, because he is a stranger to, all the fine feelings of a heart like hers; she will seek in vain the friend, the lover, she expected; yet, scarce knowing of what to complain, she will accuse herself of caprice, and be astonish’d to find herself wretched with the best husband in the world.

I tremble for her happiness; I know how few of my own sex are to be found who have the lively sensibility of yours, and of those few how many wear out their hearts by a life of gallantry and dissipation, and bring only apathy and disgust into marriage. I know few men capable of making her happy; but this Sir George—my Lucy, I have not patience.

Did I tell you all the men here are in love with your friend Bell Fermor? The women all hate her, which is an unequivocal proof that she pleases the other sex.

LETTER XIII.13.

My dearest Bell will better imagine than I can describe, the pleasure it gave me to hear of her being in Canada; I am impatient to see her, but as Mrs. Melmoth comes in a fortnight to Quebec, I know she will excuse my waiting to come with her. My visit however is to Silleri; I long to see my dear girl, to tell her a thousand little trifles interesting only to friendship.

You congratulate me, my dear, on the pleasing prospect I have before me; on my approaching marriage with a man young, rich, lovely, enamor’d, and of an amiable character.

Yes, my dear, I am oblig’d to my uncle for his choice; Sir George is all you have heard; and, without doubt, loves me, as he marries me with such an inferiority of fortune. I am very happy certainly; how is it possible I should be otherwise?

I could indeed wish my tenderness for him more lively, but perhaps my wishes are romantic. I prefer him to all his sex, but wish my preference was of a less languid nature; there is something in it more like friendship than love; I see him with pleasure, but I part from him without regret; yet he deserves my affection, and I can have no objection to him which is not founded in caprice.

You say true; Colonel Rivers is very amiable; he pass’d six weeks with us, yet we found his conversation always new; he is the man on earth of whom one would wish to make a friend; I think I could already trust him with every sentiment of my soul; I have even more confidence in him than in Sir George whom I love; his manner is soft, attentive, insinuating, and particularly adapted to please women. Without designs, without pretensions; he steals upon you in the character of a friend, because there is not the least appearance of his ever being a lover: he seems to take such an interest in your happiness, as gives him a right to know your every thought. Don’t you think, my dear, these kind of men are dangerous? Take care of yourself, my dear Bell; as to me, I am secure in my situation.

Sir George is to have the pleasure of delivering this to you, and comes again in a few days; love him for my sake, though he deserves it for his own. I assure you, he is extremely worthy.

LETTER XIV.14.

Believe me, Jack, you are wrong; this vagrant taste is unnatural, and does not lead to happiness; your eager pursuit of pleasure defeats itself; love gives no true delight but where the heart is attach’d, and you do not give yours time to fix. Such is our unhappy frailty, that the tenderest passion may wear out, and another succeed, but the love of change merely as change is not in nature; where it is a real taste, ’tis a depraved one. Boys are inconstant from vanity and affectation, old men from decay of passion; but men, and particularly men of sense, find their happiness only in that lively attachment of which it is impossible for more than one to be the object. Love is an intellectual pleasure, and even the senses will be weakly affected where the heart is silent.

You will find this truth confirmed even within the walls of the seraglio; amidst this crowd of rival beauties, eager to please, one happy fair generally reigns in the heart of the sultan; the rest serve only to gratify his pride and ostentation, and are regarded by him with the same indifference as the furniture of his superb palace, of which they may be said to make a part.

With your estate, you should marry; I have as many objections to the state as you can have; I mean, on the footing marriage is at present. But of this I am certain, that two persons at once delicate and sensible, united by friendship, by taste, by a conformity of sentiment, by that lively ardent tender inclination which alone deserves the name of love, will find happiness in marriage, which is in vain sought in any other kind of attachment.

You are so happy as to have the power of chusing; you are rich, and have not the temptation to a mercenary engagement. Look round you for a companion, a confidente; a tender amiable friend, with all the charms of a mistress: above all, be certain of her affection, that you engage, that you fill her whole soul. Find such a woman, my dear Temple, and you cannot make too much haste to be happy.

I have a thousand things to say to you, but am setting off immediately with Sir George Clayton, to meet the lieutenant governor at Montreal; a piece of respect which I should pay with the most lively pleasure, if it did not give me the opportunity of seeing the woman in the world I most admire. I am not however going to set you the example of marrying: I am not so happy; she is engaged to the gentleman who goes up with me. Adieu!

LETTER XV.15.

Take care, my dear Emily, you do not fall into the common error of sensible and delicate minds, that of refining away your happiness.

Sir George is handsome as an Adonis; you allow him to be of an amiable character; he is rich, young, well born, and loves you; you will have fine cloaths, fine jewels, a fine house, a coach and six; all the douceurs of marriage, with an extreme pretty fellow, who is fond of you, whom you see with pleasure, and prefer to all his sex; and yet you are discontented, because you have not for him at twenty-four the romantic passion of fifteen, or rather that ideal passion which perhaps never existed but in imagination.

To be happy in this world, it is necessary not to raise one’s ideas too high: if I loved a man of Sir George’s fortune half as well as by your own account you love him, I should not hesitate one moment about marrying; but sit down contented with ease, affluence, and an agreeable man, without expecting to find life what it certainly is not, a state of continual rapture. ’Tis, I am afraid, my dear, your misfortune to have too much sensibility to be happy.

I could moralize exceedingly well this morning on the vanity of human wishes and expectations, and the folly of hoping for felicity in this vile sublunary world: but the subject is a little exhausted, and I have a passion for being original. I think all the moral writers, who have set off with promising to shew us the road to happiness, have obligingly ended with telling us there is no such thing; a conclusion extremely consoling, and which if they had drawn before they set pen to paper, would have saved both themselves and their readers an infinity of trouble. This fancy of hunting for what one knows is not to be found, is really an ingenious way of amusing both one’s self and the world: I wish people would either write to some purpose, or be so good as not to write at all.

I believe I shall set about writing a system of ethics myself, which shall be short, clear, and comprehensive; nearer the Epicurean perhaps than the Stoic; but rural, refined, and sentimental; rural by all means; for who does not know that virtue is a country gentlewoman? all the good mammas will tell you, there is no such being to be heard of in town.

I shall certainly be glad to see you, my dear; though I foresee strange revolutions in the state of Denmark from this event; at present I have all the men to myself, and you must know I have a prodigious aversion to divided empire: however, ’tis some comfort they all know you are going to be married. You may come, Emily; only be so obliging to bring Sir George along with you: in your present situation, you are not so very formidable.

The men here, as I said before, are all dying for me; there are many handsomer women, but I flatter them, and the dear creatures cannot resist it. I am a very good girl to women, but naturally artful (if you will allow the expression) to the other sex; I can blush, look down, stifle a sigh, flutter my fan, and seem so agreeably confused—you have no notion, my dear, what fools men are. If you had not got the start of me, I would have had your little white-haired baronet in a week, and yet I don’t take him to be made of very combustible materials; rather mild, composed, and pretty, I believe; but he has vanity, which is quite enough for my purpose.

Either your love or Colonel Rivers will have the honor to deliver this letter; ’tis rather cruel to take them both from us at once; however, we shall soon be made amends; for we shall have a torrent of beaux with the general.

Don’t you think the sun in this country vastly more chearing than in England? I am charmed with the sun, to say nothing of the moon, though to be sure I never saw a moon-light night that deserved the name till I came to America.

Mon cher pere desires a thousand compliments; you know he has been in love with you ever since you were seven years old: he is vastly better for his voyage, and the clear air of Canada, and looks ten years younger than before he set out.

Adieu! I am going to ramble in the woods, and pick berries, with a little smiling civil captain, who is enamoured of me: a pretty rural amusement for lovers!

Good morrow, my dear Emily,

LETTER XVI.16.

Your brother, my dear, is gone to Montreal with Sir George Clayton, of whom I suppose you have heard, and who is going to marry a friend of mine, to pay a visit to Monsieur le General, who is arrived there. The men in Canada, the English I mean, are eternally changing place, even when they have not so pleasing a call; travelling is cheap and amusing, the prospects lovely, the weather inviting; and there are no very lively pleasures at present to attach them either to Quebec or Montreal, so that they divide themselves between both.

This fancy of the men, which is extremely the mode, makes an agreable circulation of inamoratoes, which serves to vary the amusement of the ladies; so that upon the whole ’tis a pretty fashion, and deserves encouragement.

You expect too much of your brother, my dear; the summer is charming here, but with no such very striking difference from that of England, as to give room to say a vast deal on the subject; though I believe, if you will please to compare our letters, you will find, putting us together, we cut a pretty figure in the descriptive way; at least if your brother tells me truth.

You may expect a very well painted frost-piece from me in the winter; as to the present season, it is just like any fine autumn in England: I may add, that the beauty of the nights is much beyond my power of description: a constant Aurora borealis, without a cloud in the heavens; and a moon so resplendent that you may see to read the smallest print by its light; one has nothing to wish but that it was full moon every night. Our evening walks are delicious, especially at Silleri, where ’tis the pleasantest thing in the world to listen to soft nonsense,

(A line I stole from Philander and Sylvia): But to return:

The French ladies never walk but at night, which shews their good taste; and then only within the walls of Quebec, which does not: they saunter slowly, after supper, on a particular battery, which is a kind of little Mall: they have no idea of walking in the country, nor the least feeling of the lovely scene around them; there are many of them who never saw the falls of Montmorenci, though little more than an hour’s drive from the town. They seem born without the smallest portion of curiosity, or any idea of the pleasures of the imagination, or indeed any pleasure but that of being admired; love, or rather coquetry, dress, and devotion, seem to share all their hours: yet, as they are lively, and in general handsome, the men are very ready to excuse their want of knowledge.

There are two ladies in the province, I am told, who read; but both of them are above fifty, and they are regarded as prodigies of erudition.

Absolutely, Lucy, I will marry a savage, and turn squaw (a pretty soft name for an Indian princess!): never was any thing delightfulso delightful as their lives; they talk of French husbands, but commend me to an Indian one, who lets his wife ramble five hundred miles, without asking where she is going.

I was sitting after dinner with a book, in a thicket of hawthorn near the beach, when a loud laugh called my attention to the river, where I saw a canoe of savages making to the shore; there were six women, and two or three children, without one man amongst them: they landed, tied the canoe to the root of a tree, and finding out the most agreable shady spot amongst the bushes with which the beach was covered, which happened to be very near me, made a fire, on which they laid some fish to broil, and, fetching water from the river, sat down on the grass to their frugal repast.

I stole softly to the house, and, ordering a servant to bring some wine and cold provisions, returned to my squaws: I asked them in French if they were of Lorette; they shook their heads: I repeated the question in English, when the oldest of the women told me, they were not; that their country was on the borders of New England; that, their husbands being on a hunting party in the woods, curiosity, and the desire of seeing their brethren the English who had conquered Quebec, had brought them up the great river, down which they should return as soon as they had seen Montreal. She courteously asked me to sit down, and eat with them, which I complied with, and produced my part of the feast. We soon became good company, and brighten’d the chain of friendship with two bottles of wine, which put them into such spirits, that they danced, sung, shook me by the hand, and grew so very fond of me, that I began to be afraid I should not easily get rid of them. They were very unwilling to part with me; but, after two or three very ridiculous hours, I with some difficulty prevailed on the ladies to pursue their voyage, having first replenished their canoe with provisions and a few bottles of wine, and given them a letter of recommendation to your brother, that they might be in no distress at Montreal.

Adieu! my father is just come in, and has brought some company with him from Quebec to supper.

Don’t you think, my dear, my good sisters the squaws seem to live something the kind of life of our gypsies? The idea struck me as they were dancing. I assure you, there is a good deal of resemblance in their persons: I have seen a fine old seasoned female gypsey, of as dark a complexion as a savage: they are all equally marked as children of the sun.

LETTER XVII.17.

I study my fellow traveller closely; his character, indeed, is not difficult to ascertain; his feelings are dull, nothing makes the least impression on him; he is as insensible to the various beauties of the charming country through which we have travelled, as the very Canadian peasants themselves who inhabit it. I watched his eyes at some of the most beautiful prospects, and saw not the least gleam of pleasure there: I introduced him here to an extreme handsome French lady, and as lively as she is handsome, the wife of an officer who is of my acquaintance; the same tasteless composure prevailed; he complained of fatigue, and retired to his apartment at eight: the family are now in bed, and I have an hour to give to my dear Lucy.

He admires Emily because he has seen her admired by all the world, but he cannot taste her charms of himself; they are not of a stile to please him: I cannot support the thought of such a woman’s being so lost; there are a thousand insensible good young women to be found, who would doze away life with him and be happy.

A rich, sober, sedate, presbyterian citizen’s daughter, educated by her grandmother in the country, who would roll about with him in unweildy splendor, and dream away a lazy existence, would be the proper wife for him. Is it for him, a lifeless composition of earth and water, to unite himself to the active elements which compose my divine Emily?

Adieu! my dear! we set out early in the morning for Montreal.

LETTER XVIII.18.

No, my dear, it is impossible she can love him; his dull soul is ill suited to hers; heavy, unmeaning, formal; a slave to rules, to ceremony, to etiquette, he has not an idea above those of a gentleman usher. He has been three hours in town without seeing her; dressing, and waiting to pay his compliments first to the general, who is riding, and every minute expected back. I am all impatience, though only her friend, but think it would be indecent in me to go without him, and look like a design of reproaching his coldness. How differently are we formed! I should have stole a moment to see the woman I loved from the first prince in the universe.

The general is returned. Adieu! till our visit is over; we go from thence to Major Melmoth’s, whose family I should have told you are in town, and not half a street from us. What a soul of fire has this lover! ’Tis to profane the word to use it in speaking of him.

I am mistaken, Lucy; astonishing as it is, she loves him; this dull clod of uninformed earth has touched the lively soul of my Emily. Love is indeed the child of caprice; I will not say of sympathy, for what sympathy can there be between two hearts so different? I am hurt, she is lowered in my esteem; I expected to find in the man she loved, a mind sensible and tender as her own.

I repeat it, my dear Lucy, she loves him; I observed her when we entered the room; she blushed, she turned pale, she trembled, her voice faltered; every look spoke the strong emotion of her soul.

She is paler than when I saw her last; she is, I think, less beautiful, but more touching than ever; there is a languor in her air, a softness in her countenance, which are the genuine marks of a heart in love; all the tenderness of her soul is in her eyes.

Shall I own to you all my injustice? I hate this man for having the happiness to please her: I cannot even behave to him with the politeness due to every gentleman.

I begin to fear my weakness is greater than I supposed.

I am certainly mad, Lucy; what right have I to expect!—you will scarce believe the excess of my folly. I went after dinner to Major Melmoth’s; I found Emily at piquet with Sir George: can you conceive that I fancied myself ill used, that I scarce spoke to her, and returned immediately home, though strongly pressed to spend the evening there. I walked two or three times about my room, took my hat, and went to visit the handsomest Frenchwoman at Montreal, whose windows are directly opposite to Major Melmoth’s; in the excess of my anger, I asked this lady to dance with me to-morrow at a little ball we are to have out of town. Can you imagine any behaviour more childish? It would have been scarce pardonable at sixteen.

Adieu! my letter is called for. I will write to you again in a few days.

Major Melmoth tells me, they are to be married in a month at Quebec, and to embark immediately for England. I will not be there; I cannot bear to see her devote herself to wretchedness: she will be the most unhappy of her sex with this man; I see clearly into his character; his virtue is the meer absence of vice; his good qualities are all of the negative kind.

LETTER XIX.19.

I have but a moment, my dear, to acknowledge your last; this week has been a continual hurry.

You mistake me; it is not the romantic passion of fifteen I wish to feel, but that tender lively friendship which alone can give charms to so intimate an union as that of marriage. I wish a greater conformity in our characters, in our sentiments, in our tastes.

But I will say no more on this subject till I have the pleasure of seeing you at Silleri. Mrs. Melmoth and I come in a ship which sails in a day or two; they tell us, it is the most agreeable way of coming: Colonel Rivers is so polite, as to stay to accompany us down: Major Melmoth asked Sir George, but he preferred the pleasure of parading into Quebec, and shewing his fine horses and fine person to advantage, to that of attending his mistress: shall I own to you that I am hurt at this instance of his neglect, as I know his attendance on the general was not expected? His situation was more than a sufficient excuse; it was highly improper for two women to go to Quebec alone; it is in some degree so that any other man should accompany me at this time: my pride is extremely wounded. I expect a thousand times more attention from him since his acquisition of fortune; it is with pain I tell you, my dear friend, he seems to shew me much less. I will not descend to suppose he presumes on this increase of fortune, but he presumes on the inclination he supposes I have for him; an inclination, however, not violent enough to make me submit to the least ill treatment from him.

In my present state of mind, I am extremely hard to please; either his behaviour or my temper have suffered a change. I know not how it is, but I see his faults in a much stronger light than I have ever seen them before. I am alarmed at the coldness of his disposition, so ill suited to the sensibility of mine; I begin to doubt his being of the amiable character I once supposed: in short, I begin to doubt of the possibility of his making me happy.

You will, perhaps, call it an excess of pride, when I say, I am much less inclined to marry him than when our situations were equal. I certainly love him; I have a habit of considering him as the man I am to marry, but my affection is not of that kind which will make me easy under the sense of an obligation.

I will open all my heart to you when we meet: I am not so happy as you imagine: do not accuse me of caprice; can I be too cautious, where the happiness of my whole life is at stake?

LETTER XX.20.

I declare off at once; I will not be a squaw; I admire their talking of the liberty of savages; in the most essential point, they are slaves: the mothers marry their children without ever consulting their inclinations, and they are obliged to submit to this foolish tyranny. Dear England! where liberty appears, not as here among these odious savages, wild and ferocious like themselves, but lovely, smiling, led by the hand of the Graces. There is no true freedom any where else. They may talk of the privilege of chusing a chief; but what is that to the dear English privilege of chusing a husband?

I have been at an Indian wedding, and have no patience. Never did I see so vile an assortment.

Adieu! I shall not be in good humor this month.

LETTER XXI.21.

What you say, my dear friend, is more true than I wish it was; our English women of character are generally too reserved; their manner is cold and forbidding; they seem to think it a crime to be too attractive; they appear almost afraid to please.

’Tis to this ill-judged reserve I attribute the low profligacy of too many of our young men; the grave faces and distant behaviour of the generality of virtuous women fright them from their acquaintance, and drive them into the society of those wretched votaries of vice, whose conversation debases every sentiment of their souls.

With as much beauty, good sense, sensibility, and softness, at least, as any women on earth, no women please so little as the English: depending on their native charms, and on those really amiable qualities which envy cannot deny them, they are too careless in acquiring those enchanting nameless graces, which no language can define, which give resistless force to beauty, and even supply its place where it is wanting.

They are satisfied with being good, without considering that unadorned virtue may command esteem, but will never excite love; and both are necessary in marriage, which I suppose to be the state every woman of honor has in prospect; for I own myself rather incredulous as to the assertions of maiden aunts and cousins to the contrary. I wish my amiable countrywomen would consider one moment, that virtue is never so lovely as when dressed in smiles: the virtue of women should have all the softness of the sex; it should be gentle, it should be even playful, to please.

There is a lady here, whom I wish you to see, as the shortest way of explaining to you all I mean; she is the most pleasing woman I ever beheld, independently of her being one of the handsomest; her manner is irresistible: she has all the smiling graces of France, all the blushing delicacy and native softness of England.

Nothing can be more delicate, my dear Temple, than the manner in which you offer me your estate in Rutland, by way of anticipating your intended legacy: it is however impossible for me to accept it; my father, who saw me naturally more profuse than became my expectations, took such pains to counterwork it by inspiring me with the love of independence, that I cannot have such an obligation even to you.

Besides, your legacy is left on the supposition that you are not to marry, and I am absolutely determined you shall; so that, by accepting this mark of your esteem, I should be robbing your younger children.

I have not a wish to be richer whilst I am a batchelor, and the only woman I ever wished to marry, the only one my heart desires, will be in three weeks the wife of another; I shall spend less than my income here: shall I not then be rich? To make you easy, know I have four thousand pounds in the funds; and that, from the equality of living here, an ensign is obliged to spend near as much as I am; he is inevitably ruined, but I save money.

I pity you, my friend; I am hurt to hear you talk of happiness in the life you at present lead; of finding pleasure in possessing venal beauty; you are in danger of acquiring a habit which will vitiate your taste, and exclude you from that state of refined and tender friendship for which nature formed a heart like yours, and which is only to be found in marriage: I need not add, in a marriage of choice.

It has been said that love marriages are generally unhappy; nothing is more false; marriages of meer inclination will always be so: passion alone being concerned, when that is gratified, all tenderness ceases of course: but love, the gay child of sympathy and esteem, is, when attended by delicacy, the only happiness worth a reasonable man’s pursuit, and the choicest gift of heaven: it is a softer, tenderer friendship, enlivened by taste, and by the most ardent desire of pleasing, which time, instead of destroying, will render every hour more dear and interesting.

If, as you possibly will, you should call me romantic, hear a man of pleasure on the subject, the Petronius of the last age, the elegant, but voluptuous St. Evremond, who speaks in the following manner of the friendship between married persons:

“I believe it is this pleasing intercourse of tenderness, this reciprocation of esteem, or, if you will, this mutual ardor of preventing each other in every endearing mark of affection, in which consists the sweetness of this second species of friendship.

“I do not speak of other pleasures, which are not so much in themselves as in the assurance they give of the intire possession of those we love: this appears to me so true, that I am not afraid to assert, the man who is by any other means certainly assured of the tenderness of her he loves, may easily support the privation of those pleasures; and that they ought not to enter into the account of friendship, but as proofs that it is without reserve.

“’Tis true, few men are capable of the purity of these sentiments, and ’tis for that reason we so very seldom see perfect friendship in marriage, at least for any long time: the object which a sensual passion has in view cannot long sustain a commerce so noble as that of friendship.”

You see, the pleasures you so much boast are the least of those which true tenderness has to give, and this in the opinion of a voluptuary.

My dear Temple, all you have ever known of love is nothing to that sweet consent of souls in unison, that harmony of minds congenial to each other, of which you have not yet an idea.

You have seen beauty, and it has inspired a momentary emotion, but you have never yet had a real attachment; you yet know nothing of that irresistible tenderness, that delirium of the soul, which, whilst it refines, adds strength to passion.

I perhaps say too much, but I wish with ardor to see you happy; in which there is the more merit, as I have not the least prospect of being so myself.

I wish you to pursue the plan of life which I myself think most likely to bring nappinesshappiness, because I know our souls to be of the same frame: we have taken different roads, but you will come back to mine. Awake to delicate pleasures, I have no taste for any other; there are no other for sensible minds. My gallantries have been few, rather (if it is allowed to speak thus of one’s self even to a friend) from elegance of taste than severity of manners; I have loved seldom, because I cannot love without esteem.

Believe me, Jack, the meer pleasure of loving, even without a return, is superior to all the joys of sense where the heart is untouched: the French poet does not exaggerate when he says,

You will perhaps call me mad; I am just come from a woman who is capable of making all mankind so. Adieu!

LETTER XXII.22.

I have been rambling about amongst the peasants, and asking them a thousand questions, in order to satisfy your inquisitive friend. As to my father, though, properly speaking, your questions are addressed to him, yet, being upon duty, he begs that, for this time, you will accept of an answer from me.

The Canadians live a good deal like the ancient patriarchs; the lands were originally settled by the troops, every officer became a seigneur, or lord of the manor, every soldier took lands under his commander; but, as avarice is natural to mankind, the soldiers took a great deal more than they could cultivate, by way of providing for a family: which is the reason so much land is now waste in the finest part of the province: those who had children, and in general they have a great number, portioned out their lands amongst them as they married, and lived in the midst of a little world of their descendents.descendants.

There are whole villages, and there is even a large island, that of Coudre, where the inhabitants are all the descendentsdescendants of one pair, if we only suppose that their sons went to the next village for wives, for I find no tradition of their having had a dispensation to marry their sisters.

The corn here is very good, though not equal to ours; the harvest not half so gay as in England, and for this reason, that the lazy creatures leave the greatest part of their land uncultivated, only sowing as much corn of different sorts as will serve themselves; and being too proud and too idle to work for hire, every family gets in its own harvest, which prevents all that jovial spirit which we find when the reapers work together in large parties.

Idleness is the reigning passion here, from the peasant to his lord; the gentlemen never either ride on horseback or walk, but are driven about like women, for they never drive themselves, lolling at their ease in a calache: the peasants, I mean the masters of families, are pretty near as useless as their lords.

You will scarce believe me, when I tell you, that I have seen, at the farm next us, two children, a very beautiful boy and girl, of about eleven years old, assisted by their grandmother, reaping a field of oats, whilst the lazy father, a strong fellow of thirty two, lay on the grass, smoaking his pipe, about twenty yards from them: the old people and children work here; those in the age of strength and health only take their pleasure.

A propos to smoaking, ’tis common to see here boys of three years old, sitting at their doors, smoaking their pipes, as grave and composed as little old Chinese men on a chimney.

You ask me after our fruits: we have, as I am told, an immensity of cranberries all the year; when the snow melts away in spring, they are said to be found under it as fresh and as good as in autumn: strawberries and rasberries grow wild in profusion; you cannot walk a step in the fields without treading on the former: great plenty of currants, plumbs, apples, and pears; a few cherries and grapes, but not in much perfection: excellent musk melons, and water melons in abundance, but not so good in proportion as the musk. Not a peach, nor any thing of the kind; this I am however convinced is less the fault of the climate than of the people, who are too indolent to take pains for any thing more than is absolutely necessary to their existence. They might have any fruit here but gooseberries, for which the summer is too hot; there are bushes in the woods, and some have been brought from England, but the fruit falls off before it is ripe. The wild fruits here, especially those of the bramble kind, are in much greater variety and perfection than in England.

When I speak of the natural productions of the country, I should not forget that hemp and hops grow every where in the woods; I should imagine the former might be cultivated here with great success, if the people could be persuaded to cultivate any thing.

A little corn of every kind, a little hay, a little tobacco, half a dozen apple trees, a few onions and cabbages, make the whole of a Canadian plantation. There is scarce a flower, except those in the woods, where there is a variety of the most beautiful shrubs I ever saw; the wild cherry, of which the woods are full, is equally charming in flower and in fruit; and, in my opinion, at least equals the arbutus.

They sow their wheat in spring, never manure the ground, and plough it in the slightest manner; can it then be wondered at that it is inferior to ours? They fancy the frost would destroy it if sown in autumn; but this is all prejudice, as experience has shewn. I myself saw a field of wheat this year at the governor’s farm, which was manured and sown in autumn, as fine as I ever saw in England.

I should tell you, they are so indolent as never to manure their lands, or even their gardens; and that, till the English came, all the manure of Quebec was thrown into the river.

You will judge how naturally rich the soil must be, to produce good crops without manure, and without ever lying fallow, and almost without ploughing; yet our political writers in England never speak of Canada without the epithet of barren. They tell me this extreme fertility is owing to the snow, which lies five or six months on the ground. Provisions are dear, which is owing to the prodigious number of horses kept here; every family having a carriage, even the poorest peasant; and every son of that peasant keeping a horse for his little excursions of pleasure, besides those necessary for the business of the farm. The war also destroyed the breed of cattle, which I am told however begins to encrease; they have even so far improved in corn, as to export some this year to Italy and Spain.

Don’t you think I am become an excellent farmeress? ’Tis intuition; some people are born learned: are you not all astonishment at my knowledge? I never was so vain of a letter in my life.

Shall I own the truth? I had most of my intelligence from old John, who lived long with my grandfather in the country; and who, having little else to do here, has taken some pains to pick up a competent knowledge of the state of agriculture five miles round Quebec.

Adieu! I am tired of the subject.

Now I think of it, why did you not write to your brother? Did you chuse me to expose my ignorance? If so, I flatter myself you are a little taken in, for I think John and I figure in the rural way.

LETTER XXIII.23.

O to be sure! we are vastly to be pitied: no beaux at all with the general; only about six to one; a very pretty proportion, and what I hope always to see. We, the ladies I mean, drink chocolate with the general to-morrow, and he gives us a ball on Thursday; you would not know Quebec again; nothing but smiling faces now; all so gay as never was, the sweetest country in the world; never expect to see me in England again; one is really somebody here: I have been asked to dance by only twenty-seven.

On the subject of dancing, I am, as it were, a little embarrased:embarrassed: you will please to observe that, in the time of scarcity, when all the men were at Montreal, I suffered a foolish little captain to sigh and say civil things to me, pour passer le tems, and the creature takes the airs of a lover, to which he has not the least pretensions, and chuses to be angry that I won’t dance with him on Thursday, and I positively won’t.

It is really pretty enough that every absurd animal, who takes upon him to make love to one, is to fancy himself entitled to a return: I have no patience with the men’s ridiculousness: have you, Lucy?

But I see a ship coming down under full sail; it may be Emily and her friends: the colours are all out, they slacken sail; they drop anchor opposite the house; ’tis certainly them; I must fly to the beach: music as I am a person, and an awning on the deck: the boat puts off with your brother in it. Adieu for a moment: I must go and invite them on shore.

’Twas Emily and Mrs. Melmoth, with two or three very pretty French women; your brother is a happy man: I found tea and coffee under the awning, and a table loaded with Montreal fruit, which is vastly better than ours; by the way, the colonel has boughtbrought me an immensity; he is so gallant and all that: we regaled ourselves, and landed; they dine here, and we dance in the evening; we are to have a syllabub in the wood: my father has sent for Sir George and Major Melmoth, and half a dozen of the most agreable men, from Quebec: he is enchanted with his little Emily, he loved her when she was a child. I cannot tell you how happy I am; my Emily is handsomer than ever; you know how partial I am to beauty: I never had a friendship for an ugly woman in my life.

Your brother looks like an angel this morning; he is not drest, he is not undrest, but somehow, easy, elegant and enchanting: he has no powder, and his hair a little degagée, blown about by the wind, and agreably disordered; such fire in his countenance; his eyes say a thousand agreable things; he is in such spirits as I never saw him: not a man of them has the least chance to-day. I shall be in love with him if he goes on at this rate: not that it will be to any purpose in the world; he never would even flirt with me, though I have made him a thousand advances.

My heart is so light, Lucy, I cannot describe it: I love Emily at my soul: ’tis three years since I saw her, and there is something so romantic in finding her in Canada: there is no saying how happy I am: I want only you, to be perfectly so.

The messenger is returned; Sir George is gone with a party of French ladies to Lake Charles: Emily blushed when the message was delivered; he might reasonably suppose they would be here to-day, as the wind was fair: your brother dances with my sweet friend; she loses nothing by the exchange; she is however a little piqued at this appearance of disrespect.

Sir George came just as we sat down to supper; he did right, he complained first, and affected to be angry she had not sent an express from Point au Tremble. He was however gayer than usual, and very attentive to his mistress; your brother seemed chagrined at his arrival; Emily perceived it, and redoubled her politeness to him, which in a little time restored part of his good humor: upon the whole, it was an agreable evening, but it would have been more so, if Sir George had come at first, or not at all.

The ladies lie here, and we go all together in the morning to Quebec; the gentlemen are going.

I steal a moment to seal, and give this to the colonel, who will put it in his packet to-morrow.

LETTER XXIV.24.

Would you believe it possible, my dear, that Sir George should decline attending Emily Montague from Montreal, and leave the pleasing commission to me? I am obliged to him for the three happiest days of my life, yet am piqued at his chusing me for a cecisbeo to his mistress: he seems to think me a man sans consequence, with whom a lady may safely be trusted; there is nothing very flattering in such a kind of confidence: let him take care of himself, if he is impertinent, and sets me at defiance; I am not vain, but set our fortunes aside, and I dare enter the lists with Sir George Clayton. I cannot give her a coach and six; but I can give her, what is more conducive to happiness, a heart which knows how to value her perfections.

I never had so pleasing a journey; we were three days coming down, because we made it a continual party of pleasure, took music with us, landed once or twice a day, visited the French families we knew, lay both nights on shore, and danced at the seigneur’s of the village.

This river, from Montreal to Quebec, exhibits a scene perhaps not to be matched in the world: it is settled on both sides, though the settlements are not so numerous on the south shore as on the other: the lovely confusion of woods, mountains, meadows, corn fields, rivers (for there are several on both sides, which lose themselves in the St. Lawrence), intermixed with churches and houses breaking upon you at a distance through the trees, form a variety of landscapes, to which it is difficult to do justice.

This charming scene, with a clear serene sky, a gentle breeze in our favor, and the conversation of half a dozen fine women, would have made the voyage pleasing to the most insensible man on earth: my Emily too of the party, and most politely attentive to the pleasure she saw I had in making the voyage agreable to her.

I every day love her more; and, without considering the impropriety of it, I cannot help giving way to an inclination, in which I find such exquisite pleasure; I find a thousand charms in the least trifle I can do to oblige her.

Don’t reason with me on this subject: I know it is madness to continue to see her; but I find a delight in her conversation, which I cannot prevail on myself to give up till she is actually married.

I respect her engagements, and pretend to no more from her than her friendship; but, as to myself, will love her in whatever manner I please: to shew you my prudence, however, I intend to dance with the handsomest unmarried Frenchwoman here on Thursday, and to shew her an attention which shall destroy all suspicion of my tenderness for Emily. I am jealous of Sir George, and hate him; but I dissemble it better than I thought it possible for me to do.

My Lucy, I am not happy; my mind is in a state not to be described; I am weak enough to encourage a hope for which there is not the least foundation; I misconstrue her friendship for me every moment; and that attention which is meerly gratitude for my apparent anxiety to oblige. I even fancy her eyes understand mine, which I am afraid speak too plainly the sentiments of my heart.

I love her, my dear girl, to madness; these three days—

I am interrupted. Adieu!

’Tis Capt. Fermor, who insists on my dining at Silleri. They will eternally throw me in the way of this lovely woman: of what materials do they suppose me formed?

LETTER XXV.25.

An enchanting ball, my dear; your little friend’s head is turned. I was more admired than Emily, which to be sure did not flatter my vanity at all: I see she must content herself with being beloved, for without coquetry ’tis in vain to expect admiration.

We had more than three hundred persons at the ball; above three fourths men; all gay and well dressed, an elegant supper; in short, it was charming.

I am half inclined to marry; I am not at all acquainted with the man I have fixed upon, I never spoke to him till last night, nor did he take the least notice of me, more than of other ladies, but that is nothing; he pleases me better than any man I have seen here; he is not handsome, but well made, and looks like a gentleman; he has a good character, is heir to a very pretty estate. I will think further of it: there is nothing more easy than to have him if I chuse it: ’tis only saying to some of his friends, that I think Captain Fitzgerald the most agreable fellow here, and he will immediately be astonished he did not sooner find out I was the handsomest woman. I will consider this affair seriously; one must marry, ’tis the mode; every body marries; why don’t you marry, Lucy?

This brother of yours is always here; I am surprized Sir George is not jealous, for he pays no sort of attention to me, ’tis easy to see why he comes; I dare say I shan’t see him next week: Emily is going to Mrs. Melmoth’s, where she stays till to-morrow sevennight; she goes from hence as soon as dinner is over.

Adieu! I am fatigued; we danced till morning; I am but this moment up.

Your brother danced with Mademoiselle Clairaut; do you know I was piqued he did not give me the preference, as Emily danced with her lover? not but that I had perhaps a partner full as agreable, at least I have a mind to think so.

I hear it whispered that the whole affair of the wedding is to be settled next week; my father is in the secret, I am not. Emily looks ill this morning; she was not gay at the ball. I know not why, but she is not happy. I have my fancies, but they are yet only fancies.

Adieu! my dear girl; I can no more.

LETTER XXVI.26.

I am going, my Lucy.—I know not well whither I am going, but I will not stay to see this marriage. Could you have believed it possible—But what folly! Did I not know her situation from the first? Could I suppose she would break off an engagement of years, with a man who gives so clear a proof that he prefers her to all other women, to humor the frenzy of one who has never even told her he loved her?

Captain Fermor assures me all is settled but the day, and that she has promised to name that to-morrow.

I will leave Quebec to-night; no one shall know the road I take: I do not yet know it myself; I will cross over to Point Levi with my valet de chambre, and go wherever chance directs me. I cannot bear even to hear the day named. I am strongly inclined to write to her; but what can I say? I should betray my tenderness in spite of myself, and her compassion would perhaps disturb her approaching happiness: were it even possible she should prefer me to Sir George, she is too far gone to recede.

My Lucy, I never till this moment felt to what an excess I loved her.

Adieu! I shall be about a fortnight absent: by that time she will be embarked for England. I cannot bring myself to see her the wife of another. Do not be alarmed for me; reason and the impossibility of success will conquer my passion for this angelic woman; I have been to blame in allowing myself to see her so often.

LETTER XXVII.27.

I think I breathe a freer air now I am out of Quebec. I cannot bear wherever I go to meet this Sir George; his triumphant air is insupportable; he has, or I fancy he has, all the insolence of a happy rival; ’tis unjust, but I cannot avoid hating him; I look on him as a man who has deprived me of a good to which I foolishly fancy I had pretensions.

My whole behaviour has been weak to the last degree: I shall grow more reasonable when I no longer see this charming woman; I ought sooner to have taken this step.

I have found here an excuse for my excursion; I have heard of an estate to be sold down the river; and am told the purchase will be less expence than clearing any lands I might take up. I will go and see it; it is an object, a pursuit, and will amuse me.

I am going to send my servant back to Quebec; my manner of leaving it must appear extraordinary to my friends; I have therefore made this estate my excuse. I have written to Miss Fermor that I am going to make a purchase; have begged my warmest wishes to her lovely friend, for whose happiness no one on earth is more anxious; but have told her Sir George is too much the object of my envy, to expect from me very sincere congratulations.

Adieu! my servant waits for this. You shall hear an account of my adventures when I return to Quebec.

LETTER XXVIII.28.

I must see you, my dear, this evening; my mind is in an agitation not to be expressed; a few hours will determine my happiness or misery for ever; I am displeased with your father for precipitating a determination which cannot be made with too much caution.

I have a thousand things to say to you, which I can say to no one else.

Be at home, and alone; I will come to you as soon as dinner is over.

LETTER XXIX.29.

I will be at home, my dear, and denied to every body but you.

I pity you, my dear Emily; but I am unable to give you advice.

The world would wonder at your hesitating a moment.

LETTER XXX.30.

My visit to you is prevented by an event beyond my hopes. Sir George has this moment a letter from his mother, desiring him earnestly to postpone his marriage till spring, for some reasons of consequence to his fortune, with the particulars of which she will acquaint him by the next packet.

He communicated this intelligence to me with a grave air, but with a tranquillity not to be described, and I received it with a joy I found it impossible wholly to conceal.

I have now time to consult both my heart and my reason at leisure, and to break with him, if necessary, by degrees.

What an escape have I had! I was within four and twenty hours of either determining to marry a man with whom I fear I have little chance to be happy, or of breaking with him in a manner that would have subjected one or both of us to the censures of a prying impertinent world, whose censures the most steady temper cannot always contemn.

I will own to you, my dear, I every hour have more dread of this marriage: his present situation has brought his faults into full light. Captain Clayton, with little more than his commission, was modest, humble, affable to his inferiors, polite to all the world; and I fancied him possessed of those more active virtues, which I supposed the smallness of his fortune prevented from appearing. ’Tis with pain I see that Sir George, with a splendid income, is avaricious, selfish, proud, vain, and profuse; lavish to every caprice of vanity and ostentation which regards himself, coldly inattentive to the real wants of others.

Is this a character to make your Emily happy? We were not formed for each other: no two minds were ever so different; my happiness is in friendship, in the tender affections, in the sweets of dear domestic life; his in the idle parade of affluence, in dress, in equipage, in all that splendor, which, whilst it excites envy, is too often the mark of wretchedness.

Shall I say more? Marriage is seldom happy where there is a great disproportion of fortune. The lover, after he loses that endearing character in the husband, which in common minds I am afraid is not long, begins to reflect how many more thousands he might have expected; and perhaps suspects his mistress of those interested motives in marrying, of which he now feels his own heart capable. Coldness, suspicion, and mutual want of esteem and confidence, follow of course.

I will come back with you to Silleri this evening; I have no happiness but when I am with you. Mrs. Melmoth is so fond of Sir George, she is eternally persecuting me with his praises; she is extremely mortified at this delay, and very angry at the manner in which I behave upon it.

Come to us directly, my dear Bell, and rejoice with your faithful

LETTER XXXI.31.

I congratulate you, my dear; you will at least have the pleasure of being five or six months longer your own mistress; which, in my opinion, when one is not violently in love, is a consideration worth attending to. You will also have time to see whether you like any body else better; and you know you can take him if you please at last.

Send him up to his regiment at Montreal with the Melmoths; stay the winter with me, flirt with somebody else to try the strength of your passion, and, if it holds out against six months absence, and the attention of an agreable fellow, I think you may safely venture to marry him.

A propos to flirting, have you seen Colonel Rivers? He has not been here these two days. I shall begin to be jealous of this little impertinent Mademoiselle Clairaut. Adieu!

Rivers is absurd. I have a mighty foolish letter from him; he is rambling about the country, buying estates: he had better have been here, playing the fool with us; if I knew how to write to him I would tell him so, but he is got out of the range of human beings, down the river, Heaven knows where; he says a thousand civil things to you, but I will bring the letter with me to save the trouble of repeating them.

I have a sort of an idea he won’t be very unhappy at this delay; I want vastly to send him word of it.

LETTER XXXII.32.

I am at present, my dear Lucy, in the wildest country on earth; I mean of those which are inhabited at all: ’tis for several leagues almost a continual forest, with only a few straggling houses on the river side; ’tis however of not the least consequence to me, all places are equal to me where Emily is not.

I seek amusement, but without finding it: she is never one moment from my thoughts; I am every hour on the point of returning to Quebec; I cannot support the idea of her leaving the country without my seeing her.

’Tis a lady who has this estate to sell: I am at present at her house; she is very amiable; a widow about thirty, with an agreable person, great vivacity, an excellent understanding, improved by reading, to which the absolute solitude of her situation has obliged her; she has an open pleasing countenance, with a candor and sincerity in her conversation which would please me, if my mind was in a state to be pleased with any thing. Through all the attention and civility I think myself obliged to shew her, she seems to perceive the melancholy which I cannot shake off: she is always contriving some little party for me, as if she knew how much I am in want of amusement.

Madame Des Roches is very kind; she sees my chagrin, and takes every method to divert it: she insists on my going in her shallop to see the last settlement on the river, opposite the Isle of Barnaby; she does me the honor to accompany me, with a gentleman and lady who live about a mile from her.

I have been paying a very singular visit; ’tis to a hermit, who has lived sixty years alone on this island; I came to him with a strong prejudice against him; I have no opinion of those who fly society; who seek a state of all others the most contrary to our nature. Were I a tyrant, and wished to inflict the most cruel punishment human nature could support, I would seclude criminals from the joys of society, and deny them the endearing sight of their species.

I am certain I could not exist a year alone: I am miserable even in that degree of solitude to which one is confined in a ship; no words can speak the joy which I felt when I came to America, on the first appearance of something like the chearful haunts of men; the first man, the first house, nay the first Indian fire of which I saw the smoke rise above the trees, gave me the most lively transport that can be conceived; I felt all the force of those ties which unite us to each other, of that social love to which we owe all our happiness here.

But to my hermit: his appearance disarmed my dislike; he is a tall old man, with white hair and beard, the look of one who has known better days, and the strongest marks of benevolence in his countenance. He received me with the utmost hospitality, spread all his little stores of fruit before me, fetched me fresh milk, and water from a spring near his house.

After a little conversation, I expressed my astonishment, that a man of whose kindness and humanity I had just had such proof, could find his happiness in flying mankind: I said a good deal on the subject, to which he listened with the politest attention.

“You appear,” said he, “of a temper to pity the miseries of others. My story is short and simple: I loved the most amiable of women; I was beloved. The avarice of our parents, who both had more gainful views for us, prevented an union on which our happiness depended. My Louisa, who was threatened with an immediate marriage with a man she detested, proposed to me to fly the tyranny of our friends: she had an uncle at Quebec, to whom she was dear. The wilds of Canada, said she, may afford us that refuge our cruel country denies us. After a secret marriage, we embarked. Our voyage was thus far happy; I landed on the opposite shore, to seek refreshments for my Louisa; I was returning, pleased with the thought of obliging the object of all my tenderness, when a beginning storm drove me to seek shelter in this bay. The storm encreased, I saw it’sits progress with agonies not to be described; the ship, which was in sight, was unable to resist its fury; the sailors crowded into the boat; they had the humanity to place my Louisa there; they made for the spot where I was, my eyes were wildly fixed on them; I stood eagerly on the utmost verge of the water, my arms stretched out to receive her, my prayers ardently addressed to Heaven, when an immense wave broke over the boat; I heard a general shriek; I even fancied I distinguished my Louisa’s cries; it subsided, the sailors again exerted all their force; a second wave—I saw them no more.

“Never will that dreadful scene be absent one moment from my memory: I fell senseless on the beach; when I returned to life, the first object I beheld was the breathless body of my Louisa at my feet. Heaven gave me the wretched consolation of rendering to her the last sad duties. In that grave all my happiness lies buried. I knelt by her, and breathed a vow to Heaven, to wait here the moment that should join me to all I held dear. I every morning visit her loved remains, and implore the God of mercy to hasten my dissolution. I feel that we shall not long be separated; I shall soon meet her, to part no more.”

He stopped, and, without seeming to remember he was not alone, walked hastily towards a little oratory he has built on the beach, near which is the grave of his Louisa; I followed him a few steps, I saw him throw himself on his knees; and, respecting his sorrow, returned to the house.

Though I cannot absolutely approve, yet I more than forgive, I almost admire, his renouncing the world in his situation. Devotion is perhaps the only balm for the wounds given by unhappy love; the heart is too much softened by true tenderness to admit any common cure.

I am returned to Madame Des Roches and her friends, who declined visiting the hermit. I found in his conversation all which could have adorned society; he was pleased with the sympathy I shewed for his sufferings; we parted with regret. I wished to have made him a present, but he will receive nothing.

A ship for England is in sight. Madame Des Roches is so polite to send off this letter; we return to her house in the morning.

LETTER XXXIII.33.

I have no patience with this foolish brother of yours; he is rambling about in the woods when we want him here: we have a most agreeable assembly every Thursday at the General’s, and have had another ball since he has been gone on this ridiculous ramble; I miss the dear creature wherever I go. We have nothing but balls, cards, and parties of pleasure; but they are nothing without my little Rivers.

I have been making the tour of the three religions this morning, and, as I am the most constant creature breathing; am come back only a thousand times more pleased with my own. I have been at mass, at church, and at the presbyterian meeting: an idea struck me at the last, in regard to the drapery of them all; that the Romish religion is like an over-dressed, tawdry, rich citizen’s wife; the presbyterian like a rude aukward country girl; the church of England like an elegant well-dressed woman of quality, “plain in her neatness” (to quote Horace, who is my favorite author). There is a noble, graceful simplicity both in the worship and the ceremonies of the church of England, which, even if I were a stranger to her doctrines, would prejudice me strongly in her favor.

Sir George sets out for Montreal this evening, so do the house of Melmoth; I have however prevailed on Emily to stay a month or two longer with me. I am rejoiced Sir George is going away; I am tired of seeing that eternal smile, that countenance of his, which attempts to speak, and says nothing. I am in doubt whether I shall let Emily marry him; she will die in a week, of no distemper but his conversation.

They dine with us. I am called down. Adieu!

Heaven be praised, our lover is gone; they parted with great philosophy on both sides: they are the prettiest mild pair of inamoratoes one shall see.

Your brother’s servant has just called to tell me he is going to his master. I have a great mind to answer his letter, and order him back.

LETTER XXXIV.34.

I have been looking at the estate Madame Des Roches has to sell; it is as wild as the lands to which I have a right; I hoped this would have amused my chagrin, but am mistaken: nothing interests me, nothing takes up my attention one moment: my mind admits but one idea. This charming woman follows me wherever I go; I wander about like the first man when driven out of paradise: I vainly fancy every change of place will relieve the anxiety of my mind.

Madame Des Roches smiles, and tells me I am in love; ’tis however a smile of tenderness and compassion: your sex have great penetration in whatever regards the heart.

I have this moment a letter from Miss Fermor, to press my return to Quebec; she tells me, Emily’s marriage is postponed till spring. My Lucy! how weak is the human heart! In spite of myself, a ray of hope—I set off this instant: I cannot conceal my joy.

LETTER XXXV.35.

You have no idea, Ned, how much your absence is lamented by the dowagers, to whom, it must be owned, your charity has been pretty extensive.

It would delight you to see them condoling with each other on the loss of the dear charming man, the man of sentiment, of true taste, who admires the maturer beauties, and thinks no woman worth pursuing till turned of twenty-five: ’tis a loss not to be made up; for your taste, it must be owned, is pretty singular.

I have seen your last favorite, Lady H——, who assures me, on the word of a woman of honour, that, had you staid seven years in London, she does not think she should have had the least inclination to change: but an absent lover, she well observed, is, properly speaking, no lover at all. “Bid Colonel Rivers remember,” said she, “what I have read somewhere, the parting words of a French lady to a bishop of her acquaintance, Let your absence be short, my lord; and remember that a mistress is a benefice which obliges to residence.”

I am told, you had not been gone a week before Jack Willmott had the honor of drying up the fair widow’s tears.

I am going this evening to Vauxhall, and to-morrow propose setting out for my house in Rutland, from whence you shall hear from me again.

Adieu! I never write long letters in London. I should tell you, I have been to see Mrs. Rivers and your sister; the former is well, but very anxious to have you in England again; the latter grows so very handsome, I don’t intend to repeat my visits often.

LETTER XXXVI.36.

I am this moment arrived from a ramble down the river; but, a ship being just going, must acknowledge your last.

You make me happy in telling me my dear Lady H—— has given my place in her heart to so honest a fellow as Jack Willmott; and I sincerely wish the ladies always chose their favorites as well.

I should be very unreasonable indeed to expect constancy at almost four thousand miles distance, especially when the prospect of my return is so very uncertain.

My voyage ought undoubtedly to be considered as an abdication: I am to all intents and purposes dead in law as a lover; and the lady has a right to consider her heart as vacant, and to proceed to a new election.

I claim no more than a share in her esteem and remembrance, which I dare say I shall never want.

That I have amused myself a little in the dowager way, I am very far from denying; but you will observe, it was less from taste than the principle of doing as little mischief as possible in my few excursions to the world of gallantry. A little deviation from the exact rule of right we men all allow ourselves in love affairs; but I was willing to keep as near it as I could. Married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit; I abhor the seduction of innocence; I am too delicate, and (with all my modesty) too vain, to be pleased with venal beauty: what was I then to do, with a heart too active to be absolutely at rest, and which had not met with it’sits counterpart? Widows were, I thought, fair prey, as being sufficiently experienced to take care of themselves.

I have said married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit: I should have explained myself; I mean in England, for my ideas on this head change as soon as I land at Calais.

Such is the amazing force of local prejudice, that I do not recollect having ever made love to an English married woman, or a French unmarried one. Marriages in France being made by the parents, and therefore generally without inclination on either side, gallantry seems to be a tacit condition, though not absolutely expressed in the contract.

But to return to my plan: I think it an excellent one; and would recommend it to all those young men about town, who, like me, find in their hearts the necessity of loving, before they meet with an object capable of fixing them for life.

By the way, I think the widows ought to raise a statue to my honor, for having done my possible to prove that, for the sake of decorum, morals, and order, they ought to have all the men to themselves.

I have this moment your letter from Rutland. Do you know I am almost angry? Your ideas of love are narrow and pedantic; custom has done enough to make the life of one half of our species tasteless; but you would reduce them to a state of still greater insipidity than even that to which our tyranny has doomed them.

You would limit the pleasure of loving and being beloved, and the charming power of pleasing, to three or four years only in the life of that sex which is peculiarly formed to feel tenderness; women are born with more lively affections than men, which are still more softened by education; to deny them the privilege of being amiable, the only privilege we allow them, as long as nature continues them so, is such a mixture of cruelty and false taste as I should never have suspected you of, notwithstanding your partiality for unripened beauty.

As to myself, I persist in my opinion, that women are most charming when they join the attractions of the mind to those of the person, when they feel the passion they inspire; or rather, that they are never charming till then.

A woman in the first bloom of youth resembles a tree in blossom; when mature, in fruit: but a woman who retains the charms of her person till her understanding is in its full perfection, is like those trees in happier climes, which produce blossoms and fruit together.

You will scarce believe, Jack, that I have lived a week tête à tête, in the midst of a wood, with just the woman I have been describing; a widow extremely my taste, mature, five or six years more so than you say I require, lively, sensible, handsome, without saying one civil thing to her; yet nothing can be more certain.

I could give you powerful reasons for my insensibility; but you are a traitor to love, and therefore have no right to be in any of his secrets.

I will excuse your visits to my sister; as well as I love you myself, I have a thousand reasons for chusing she should not be acquainted with you.

What you say in regard to my mother, gives me pain; I will never take back my little gift to her; and I cannot live in England on my present income, though it enables me to live en prince in Canada.

Adieu! I have not time to say more. I have stole this half hour from the loveliest woman breathing, whom I am going to visit: surely you are infinitely obliged to me. To lessen the obligation, however, my calash is not yet come to the door.

LETTER XXXVII.37.

Our wanderer is returned, my dear, and in such spirits as you can’t conceive: he passed yesterday with us; he likes to have us to himself, and he had yesterday; we walked à trio in the wood, and were foolish; I have not passed so agreable a day since I came to Canada: I love mightily to be foolish, and the people here have no taste that way at all: your brother is divinely so upon occasion. The weather was, to use the Canadian phrase, superbe et magnifique. We shall not, I am told, have much more in the same magnifique style, so we intend to make the most of it: I have ordered your brother to come and walk with us from morning till night; every day and all the day.

The dear man was amazingly overjoyed to see us again; we shared in his joy, though my little Emily took some pains to appear tranquil on the occasion: I never saw more pleasure in the countenances of two people in my life, nor more pains taken to suppress it.

Do you know Fitzgerald is really an agreable fellow? I have an admirable natural instinct; I perceived he had understanding, from his aquiline nose and his eagle eye, which are indexes I never knew fail. I believe we are going to be great; I am not sure I shall not admit him to make up a partie quarrée with your brother and Emily: I told him my original plot upon him, and he was immensely pleased with it. I almost fancy he can be foolish; in that case, my business is done: if with his other merits he has that, I am a lost woman.

He has excellent sense, great good nature, and the true princely spirit of an Irishman: he will be ruined here, but that is his affair, not mine. He changed quarters with an officer now at Montreal; and, because the lodgings were to be furnished, thought himself obliged to leave three months wine in the cellars.

His person is pleasing; he has good eyes and teeth (the only beauties I require), is marked with the small pox, which in men gives a sensible look; very manly, and looks extremely like a gentleman.

He comes, the conqueror comes.

I see him plainly through the trees; he is now in full view, within twenty yards of the house. He looks particularly well on horseback, Lucy; which is one certain proof of a good education. The fellow is well born, and has ideas of things: I think I shall admit him of my train.

Emily wonders I have never been in love: the cause is clear; I have prevented any attachment to one man, by constantly flirting with twenty: ’tis the most sovereign receipt in the world. I think too, my dear, you have maintained a sort of running fight with the little deity: our hour is not yet come. Adieu!

LETTER XXXVIII.38.

I am returned, my dear, and have had the pleasure of hearing you and my mother are well, though I have had no letters from either of you.

Mr. Temple, my dearest Lucy, tells me he has visited you. Will you pardon me a freedom which nothing but the most tender friendship can warrant, when I tell you that I would wish you to be as little acquainted with him as politeness allows? He is a most agreable man, perhaps too agreable, with a thousand amiable qualities; he is the man I love above all others; and, where women are not concerned, a man of the most unblemished honor: but his manner of life is extremely libertine, and his ideas of women unworthy the rest of his character; he knows not the perfections which adorn the valuable part of your sex, he is a stranger to your virtues, and incapable, at least I fear so, of that tender affection which alone can make an amiable woman happy. With all this, he is polite and attentive, and has a manner, which, without intending it, is calculated to deceive women into an opinion of his being attached when he is not: he has all the splendid virtues which command esteem; is noble, generous, disinterested, open, brave; and is the most dangerous man on earth to a woman of honor, who is unacquainted with the arts of man.

Do not however mistake me, my Lucy; I know him to be as incapable of forming improper designs on you, even were you not the sister of his friend, as you are of listening to him if he did: ’tis for your heart alone I am alarmed; he is formed to please; you are young and inexperienced, and have not yet loved; my anxiety for your peace makes me dread your loving a man whose views are not turned to marriage, and who is therefore incapable of returning properly the tenderness of a woman of honor.

I have seen my divine Emily: her manner of receiving me was very flattering; I cannot doubt her friendship for me; yet I am not absolutely content. I am however convinced, by the easy tranquillity of her air, and her manner of bearing this delay of their marriage, that she does not love the man for whom she is intended: she has been a victim to the avarice of her friends. I would fain hope—yet what have I to hope? If I had even the happiness to be agreable to her, if she was disengaged from Sir George, my fortune makes it impossible for me to marry her, without reducing her to indigence at home, or dooming her to be an exile in Canada for life. I dare not ask myself what I wish or intend: yet I give way in spite of me to the delight of seeing and conversing with her.

I must not look forward; I will only enjoy the present pleasure of believing myself one of the first in her esteem and friendship, and of shewing her all those little pleasing attentions so dear to a sensible heart; attentions in which her lover is astonishingly remiss: he is at Montreal, and I am told was gay and happy on his journey thither, though he left his mistress behind.

I have spent two very happy days at Silleri, with Emily and your friend Bell Fermor: to-morrow I meet them at the governor’s, where there is a very agreable assembly on Thursday evenings. Adieu!

I shall write again by a ship which sails next week.

LETTER XXXIX.39.

I have this moment a letter from Madame Des Roches, the lady at whose house I spent a week, and to whom I am greatly obliged. I am so happy as to have an opportunity of rendering her a service, in which I must desire your assistance.

’Tis in regard to some lands belonging to her, which, not being settled, some other person has applied for a grant of at home. I send you the particulars, and beg you will lose no time in entering a caveat, and taking other proper steps to prevent what would be an act of great injustice: the war and the incursions of the Indians in alliance with us have hitherto prevented these lands from being settled, but Madame Des Roches is actually in treaty with some Acadians to settle them immediately. Employ all your friends as well as mine if necessary; my lawyer will direct you in what manner to apply, and pay the expences attending the application. Adieu!

LETTER XL.40.

I danced last night till four o’clock in the morning (if you will allow the expression), without being the least fatigued: the little Fitzgerald was my partner, who grows upon me extremely; the monkey has a way of being attentive and careless by turns, which has an amazing effect; nothing attaches a woman of my temper so much to a lover as her being a little in fear of losing him; and he keeps up the spirit of the thing admirably.

Your brother and Emily danced together, and I think I never saw either of them look so handsome; she was a thousand times more admired at this ball than the first, and reason good, for she was a thousand times more agreable; your brother is really a charming fellow, he is an immense favorite with the ladies; he has that very pleasing general attention, which never fails to charm women; he can even be particular to one, without wounding the vanity of the rest: if he was in company with twenty, his mistress of the number, his manner would be such, that every woman there would think herself the second in his esteem; and that, if his heart had not been unluckily pre-engaged, she herself should have been the object of his tenderness.

His eyes are of immense use to him; he looks the civilest things imaginable; his whole countenance speaks whatever he wishes to say; he has the least occasion for words to explain himself of any man I ever knew.

Fitzgerald has eyes too, I assure you, and eyes that know how to speak; he has a look of saucy unconcern and inattention, which is really irresistible.

We have had a great deal of snow already, but it melts away; ’tis a lovely day, but an odd enough mixture of summer and winter; in some places you see half a foot of snow lying, in others the dust is even troublesome.

Adieu! there are a dozen or two of beaux at the door.

LETTER XLI.41.

The savages assure us, my dear, on the information of the beavers, that we shall have a very mild winter: it seems, these creatures have laid in a less winter stock than usual. I take it very ill, Lucy, that the beavers have better intelligence than we have.

We are got into a pretty composed easy way; Sir George writes very agreable, sensible, sentimental, gossiping letters, once a fortnight, which Emily answers in due course, with all the regularity of a counting-house correspondence; he talks of coming down after Christmas: we expect him without impatience; and in the mean time amuse ourselves as well as we can, and soften the pain of absence by the attention of a man that I fancy we like quite as well.

With submission to the beavers, the weather is very cold, and we have had a great deal of snow already; but they tell me ’tis nothing to what we shall have: they are taking precautions which make me shudder beforehand, pasting up the windows, and not leaving an avenue where cold can enter.

I like the winter carriages immensely; the open carriole is a kind of one-horse chaise, the covered one a chariot, set on a sledge to run on the ice; we have not yet had snow enough to use them, but I like their appearance prodigiously; the covered carrioles seem the prettiest things in nature to make love in, as there are curtains to draw before the windows: we shall have three in effect, my father’s, Rivers’s, and Fitzgerald’s; the two latter are to be elegance itself, and entirely for the service of the ladies: your brother and Fitzgerald are trying who shall be ruined first for the honor of their country. I will bet three to one upon Ireland. They are every day contriving parties of pleasure, and making the most gallant little presents imaginable to the ladies.

Adieu! my dear.

LETTER XLII.42.

I shall not, my dear, have above one more opportunity of writing to you by the ships; after which we can only write by the packet once a month.

My Emily is every day more lovely; I see her often, and every hour discover new charms in her; she has an exalted understanding, improved by all the knowledge which is becoming in your sex; a soul awake to all the finer sensations of the heart, checked and adorned by the native lovelinessgentleness of woman: she is extremely handsome, but she would please every feeling heart if she was not; she has the soul of beauty: without feminine softness and delicate sensibility, no features can give loveliness; with them, very indifferent ones can charm: that sensibility, that softness, never were so lovely as in my Emily. I can write on no other subject. Were you to see her, my Lucy, you would forgive me. My letter is called for. Adieu!

Your friend Miss Fermor will write you every thing.

LETTER XLIII.43.

Mr. Melmoth and I, my dear Emily, expected by this time to have seen you at Montreal. I allow something to your friendship for Miss Fermor; but there is also something due to relations who tenderly love you, and under whose protection your uncle left you at his death.

I should add, that there is something due to Sir George, had I not already displeased you by what I have said on the subject.

You are not to be told, that in a week the road from hence to Quebec will be impassable for at least a month, till the rivers are sufficiently froze to bear carriages.

I will own to you, that I am a little jealous of your attachment to Miss Fermor, though no one can think her more amiable than I do.

If you do not come this week, I would wish you to stay till Sir George comes down, and return with him; I will entreat the favor of Miss Fermor to accompany you to Montreal, which we will endeavour to make as agreable to her as we can.

I have been ill of a slight fever, but am now perfectly recovered. Sir George and Mr. Melmoth are well, and very impatient to see you here.

LETTER XLIV.44.

I have a thousand reasons, my dearest Madam, for intreating you to excuse my staying some time longer at Quebec. I have the sincerest esteem for Sir George, and am not insensible of the force of our engagements; but do not think his being there a reason for my coming: the kind of suspended state, to say no more, in which those engagements now are, call for a delicacy in my behaviour to him, which is so difficult to observe without the appearance of affectation, that his absence relieves me forfrom a very painful kind of restraint: for the same reason, ’tis impossible for me to come up at the time he does, if I do come, even though Miss Fermor should accompany me.

A moment’s reflexion will convince you of the propriety of my staying here till his mother does me the honor again to approve his choice; or till our engagement is publicly known to be at an end. Mrs. Clayton is a prudent mother, and a woman of the world, and may consider that Sir George’s situation is changed since she consented to his marriage.

I am not capricious; but I will own to you, that my esteem for Sir George is much lessened by his behaviour since his last return from New-York: he mistakes me extremely, if he supposes he has the least additional merit in my eyes from his late acquisition of fortune: on the contrary, I now see faults in him which were concealed by the mediocrity of his situation before, and which do not promise happiness to a heart like mine, a heart which has little taste for the false glitter of life, and the most lively one possible for the calm real delights of friendship, and domestic felicity.

Accept my sincerest congratulations on your return of health; and believe me,

LETTER XLV.45.

I have been seeing the last ship go out of the port, Lucy; you have no notion what a melancholy sight it is: we are now left to ourselves, and shut up from all the world for the winter: somehow we seem so forsaken, so cut off from the rest of human kind, I cannot bear the idea: I sent a thousand sighs and a thousand tender wishes to dear England, which I never loved so much as at this moment.

Do you know, my dear, I could cry if I was not ashamed? I shall not absolutely be in spirits again this week.

’Tis the first time I have felt any thing like bad spirits in Canada: I followed the ship with my eyes till it turned Point Levi, and, when I lost sight of it, felt as if I had lost every thing dear to me on earth. I am not particular: I see a gloom on every countenance; I have been at church, and think I never saw so many dejected faces in my life.

Adieu! for the present: it will be a fortnight before I can send this letter; another agreable circumstance that: would to Heaven I were in England, though I changed the bright sun of Canada for a fog!

We have had a week’s snow without intermission: happily for us, your brother and the Fitz have been weather-bound all the time at Silleri, and cannot possibly get away.

We have amused ourselves within doors, for there is no stirring abroad, with playing at cards, playing at shuttlecock, playing the fool, making love, and making moral reflexions: upon the whole, the week has not been very disagreable.

The snow is when we wake constantly up to our chamber windows; we are literally dug out of it every morning.

As to Quebec, I give up all hopes of ever seeing it again: but my comfort is, that the people there cannot possibly get to their neighbors; and I flatter myself very few of them have been half so well entertained at home.

We shall be abused, I know, for (what is really the fault of the weather) keeping these two creatures here this week; the ladies hate us for engrossing two such fine fellows as your brother and Fitzgerald, as well as for having vastly more than our share of all the men: we generally go out attended by at least a dozen, without any other woman but a lively old French lady, who is a flirt of my father’s, and will certainly be my mamma.

We sweep into the general’s assembly on Thursdays with such a train of beaux as draws every eye upon us: the rest of the fellows crowd round us; the misses draw up, blush, and flutter their fans; and your little Bell sits down with such a saucy impertinent consciousness in her countenance as is really provoking: Emily on the contrary looks mild and humble, and seems by her civil decent air to apologize to them for being so much more agreable than themselves, which is a fault I for my part am not in the least inclined to be ashamed of.

Your idea of Quebec, my dear, is perfectly just; it is like a third or fourth rate country town in England; much hospitality, little society; cards, scandal, dancing, and good chear; all excellent things to pass away a winter evening, and peculiarly adapted to what I am told, and what I begin to feel, of the severity of this climate.

I am told they abuse me, which I can easily believe, because my impertinence to them deserves it: but what care I, you know, Lucy, so long as I please myself, and am at Silleri out of the sound?

They are squabbling at Quebec, I hear, about I cannot tell what, therefore shall not attempt to explain: some dregs of old disputes, it seems, which have had not time to settle: however, we new comers have certainly nothing to do with these matters: you can’t think how comfortable we feel at Silleri, out of the way.

My father says, the politics of Canada are as complex and as difficult to be understood as those of the Germanic system.

For my part, I think no politics worth attending to but those of the little commonwealth of woman: if I can maintain my empire over hearts, I leave the men to quarrel for every thing else.

I observe a strict neutrality, that I may have a chance for admirers amongst both parties. Adieu! the post is just going out.

LETTER XLVI.46.

There is something, my dear Emily, in what you say as to the delicacy of your situation; but, whilst you are so very exact in acting up to it on one side, do you not a little overlook it on the other?

I am extremely unwilling to say a disagreable thing to you, but Miss Fermor is too young as well as too gay to be a protection—the very particular circumstance you mention makes Mr. Melmoth’s the only house in Canada in which, if I have any judgment, you can with propriety live till your marriage takes place.

You extremely injure Sir George in supposing it possible he should fail in his engagements: and I see with pain that you are more quicksighted to his failings than is quite consistent with that tenderness, which (allow me to say) he has a right to expect from you. He is like other men of his age and fortune; he is the very man you so lately thought amiable, and of whose love you cannot without injustice have a doubt.

Though I approve your contempt of the false glitter of the world, yet I think it a little strained at your time of life: did I not know you as well as I do, I should say that philosophy in a young and especially a female mind, is so out of season, as to be extremely suspicious. The pleasures which attend on affluence are too great, and too pleasing to youth, to be overlooked, except when under the influence of a livelier passion.

Take care, my Emily; I know the goodness of your heart, but I also know it’sits sensibility; remember that, if your situation requires great circumspection in your behaviour to Sir George, it requires much greater to every other person: it is even more delicate than marriage itself.

I shall expect you and Miss Fermor as soon as the roads are such that you can travel agreably; and, as you object to Sir George as a conductor, I will entreat Captain Fermor to accompany you hither.

LETTER XLVII.47.

I entreat you, my dearest Madam, to do me the justice to believe I see my engagement to Sir George in as strong a light as you can do; if there is any change in my behaviour to him, it is owing to the very apparent one in his conduct to me, of which no one but myself can be a judge. As to what you say in regard to my contempt of affluence, I can only say it is in my character, whether it is generally in the female one or not.

Were the cruel hint you are pleased to give just, be assured Sir George should be the first person to whom I would declare it. I hope however it is possible to esteem merit without offending even the most sacred of all engagements.

A gentleman waits for this. I have only time to say, that Miss Fermor thanks you for your obliging invitation, and promises she will accompany me to Montreal as soon as the river St. Lawrence will bear carriages, as the upper road is extremely inconvenient.

LETTER XLVIII.48.

After a fortnight’s snow, we have had near as much clear blue sky and sunshine: the snow is six feet deep, so that we may be said to walk on our own heads; that is, speaking en philosophe, we occupy the space we should have done in summer if we had done so; or, to explain it more clearly, our heels are now where our heads should be.

The scene is a little changed for the worse: the lovely landscape is now one undistinguished waste of snow, only a little diversified by the great variety of ever-greens in the woods: the romantic winding path down the side of the hill to our farm, on which we used to amuse ourselves with seeing the beaux serpentize, is now a confused, frightful, rugged precipice, which one trembles at the idea of ascending.

There is something exceedingly agreable in the whirl of the carrioles, which fly along at the rate of twenty miles an hour; and really hurry one out of one’s senses.

Our little coterie is the object of great envy; we live just as we like, without thinking of other people, which I am not sure here is prudent, but it is pleasant, which is a better thing.

Emily, who is the civilest creature breathing, is for giving up her own pleasure to avoid offending others, and wants me, every time we make a carrioling-party, to invite all the misses of Quebec to go with us, because they seem angry at our being happy without them: but for that very reason I persist in my own way, and consider wisely, that, though civility is due to other people, yet there is also some civility due to one’s self.

I agree to visit every body, but think it mighty absurd I must not take a ride without asking a hundred people I scarce know to go with me: yet this is the style here; they will neither be happy themselves, nor let any body else. Adieu!

I will never take a beaver’s word again as long as I live: there is no supporting this cold; the Canadians say it is seventeen years since there has been so severe a season. I thought beavers had been people of more honor.

Adieu! I can no more: the ink freezes as I take it from the standish to the paper, though close to a large stove. Don’t expect me to write again till May; one’s faculties are absolutely congealed this weather.

LETTER XLIX.49.

It is with difficulty I breathe, my dear; the cold is so amazingly intense as almost totally to stop respiration. I have business, the business of pleasure, at Quebec; but have not courage to stir from the stove.

We have had five days, the severity of which none of the natives remember to have ever seen equaled: ’tis said, the cold is beyond all the thermometers here, tho’ intended for the climate.

The strongest wine freezes in a room which has a stove in it; even brandy is thickened to the consistence of oil: the largest wood fire, in a wide chimney, does not throw out it’sits heat a quarter of a yard.

I must venture to Quebec to-morrow, or have company at home: amusements are here necessary to life; we must be jovial, or the blood will freeze in our veins.

I no longer wonder the elegant arts are unknown here; the rigour of the climate suspends the very powers of the understanding; what then must become of those of the imagination? Those who expect to see

will find themselves extremely disappointed. Genius will never mount high, where the faculties of the mind are benumbed half the year.

’Tis sufficient employment for the most lively spirit here to contrive how to preserve an existence, of which there are moments that one is hardly conscious: the cold really sometimes brings on a sort of stupefaction.

We had a million of beaux here yesterday, notwithstanding the severe cold: ’tis the Canadian custom, calculated I suppose for the climate, to visit all the ladies on New-year’s-day, who sit dressed in form to be kissed: I assure you, however, our kisses could not warm them; but we were obliged, to our eternal disgrace, to call in rasberry brandy as an auxiliary.

You would have died to see the men; they look just like so many bears in their open carrioles, all wrapped in furs from head to foot; you see nothing of the human form appear, but the tip of a nose.

They have intire coats of beaver skin, exactly like Friday’s in Robinson Crusoe, and casques on their heads like the old knights errant in romance; you never saw such tremendous figures; but without this kind of cloathing it would be impossible to stir out at present.

The ladies are equally covered up, tho’ in a less unbecoming style; they have long cloth cloaks with loose hoods, like those worn by the market-women in the north of England. I have one in scarlet, the hood lined with sable, the prettiest ever seen here, in which I assure you I look amazingly handsome; the men think so, and call me the Little red riding-hood; a name which becomes me as well as the hood.

The Canadian ladies wear these cloaks in India silk in summer, which, fluttering in the wind, look really graceful on a fine woman.

Besides our riding-hoods, when we go out, we have a large buffaloe’s skin under our feet, which turns up, and wraps round us almost to our shoulders; so that, upon the whole, we are pretty well guarded from the weather as well as the men.

Our covered carrioles too have not only canvas windows (we dare not have glass, because we often overturn), but cloth curtains to draw all round us; the extreme swiftness of these carriages also, which dart along like lightening, helps to keep one warm, by promoting the circulation of the blood.

I pity the Fitz; no tiger was ever so hard-hearted as I am this weather: the little god has taken his flight, like the swallows. I say nothing, but cruelty is no virtue in Canada; at least at this season.

I suppose Pygmalion’s statue was some frozen Canadian gentlewoman, and a sudden warm day thawed her. I love to expound ancient fables, and I think no exposition can be more natural than this.

Would you know what makes me chatter so this morning? Papa has made me take some excellent liqueur; ’tis the mode here; all the Canadian ladies take a little, which makes them so coquet and agreable. Certainly brandy makes a woman talk like an angel. Adieu!

LETTER L.50.

I don’t quite agree with you, my dear; your brother does not appear to me to have the least scruple of that foolish false modesty which stands in a man’s way.

He is extremely what the French call awakened; he is modest, certainly; that is, he is not a coxcomb, but he has all that proper self-confidence which is necessary to set his agreable qualities in full light: nothing can be a stronger proof of this, than that, wherever he is, he always takes your attention in a moment, and this without seeming to solicit it.

I am very fond of him, though he never makes love to me, in which circumstance he is very singular: our friendship is quite platonic, at least on his side, for I am not quite so sure on the other. I remember one day in summer we were walking tête à tête in the road to Cape Rouge, when he wanted me to strike into a very beautiful thicket: “Positively, Rivers,” said I, “I will not venture with you into that wood.” “Are you afraid of me, Bell?” “No, but extremely of myself.”

I have loved him ever since a little scene that passed here three or four months ago: a very affecting story, of a distressed family in our neighbourhood, was told him and Sir George; the latter preserved all the philosophic dignity and manly composure of his countenance, very coldly expressed his concern, and called another subject: your brother changed color, his eyes glistened; he took the first opportunity to leave the room, he sought these poor people, he found, he relieved them; which we discovered by accident a month after.

The weather, tho’ cold beyond all that you in England can form an idea of, is yet mild to what it has been the last five or six days; we are going to Quebec, to church.

Emily and I have been talking religion all the way home: we are both mighty good girls, as girls go in these degenerate days; our grandmothers to be sure—but it’s folly to look back.

We have been saying, Lucy, that ’tis the strangest thing in the world people should quarrel about religion, since we undoubtedly all mean the same thing; all good minds in every religion aim at pleasing the Supreme Being; the means we take differ according to the country where we are born, and the prejudices we imbibe from education; a consideration which ought to inspire us with kindness and indulgence to each other.

If we examine each other’s sentiments with candor, we shall find much less difference in essentials than we imagine;

There is, I think, a very pretty Sunday reflexion for you, Lucy.

You must know, I am extremely religious; and for this amongst other reasons, that I think infidelity a vice peculiarly contrary to the native softness of woman: it is bold, daring, masculine; and I should almost doubt the sex of an unbeliever in petticoats.

Women are religious as they are virtuous, less from principles founded on reasoning and argument, than from elegance of mind, delicacy of moral taste, and a certain quick perception of the beautiful and becoming in every thing.

This instinct, however, for such it is, is worth all the tedious reasonings of the men; which is a point I flatter myself you will not dispute with me.

This is the first day I have ventured in an open carriole; we have been running a race on the snow, your brother and I against Emily and Fitzgerald: we conquered from Fitzgerald’s complaisance to Emily. I shall like it mightily, well wrapt up: I set off with a crape over my face to keep off the cold, but in three minutes it was a cake of solid ice, from my breath which froze upon it; yet this is called a mild day, and the sun shines in all his glory.

We are just come from the general’s assembly; much company, and we danced till this minute; for I believe we have not been more coming these four miles.

Fitzgerald is the very pink of courtesy; he never uses his covered carriole himself, but devotes it intirely to the ladies; it stands at the general’s door in waiting on Thursdays: if any lady comes out before her carriole arrives, the servants call out mechanically, “Captain Fitzgerald’s carriole here, for a lady.” The Colonel is equally gallant, but I generally lay an embargo on his: they have each of them an extreme pretty one for themselves, or to drive a fair lady a morning’s airing, when she will allow them the honor, and the weather is mild enough to permit it.

LETTER LI.51.

You mistake me extremely, Jack, as you generally do: I have by no means forsworn marriage: on the contrary, though happiness is not so often found there as I wish it was, yet I am convinced it is to be found no where else; and, poor as I am, I should not hesitate about trying the experiment myself to-morrow, if I could meet with a woman to my taste, unappropriated, whose ideas of the state agreed with mine, which I allow are something out of the common road: but I must be certain those ideas are her own, therefore they must arise spontaneously, and not in complaisance to mine; for which reason, if I could, I would endeavour to lead my mistress into the subject, and know her sentiments on the manner of living in that state before I discovered my own.

I must also be well convinced of her tenderness before I make a declaration of mine: she must not distinguish me because I flatter her, but because she thinks I have merit; those fancied passions, where gratified vanity assumes the form of love, will not satisfy my heart: the eyes, the air, the voice of the woman I love, a thousand little indiscretions dear to the heart, must convince me I am beloved, before I confess I love.

Though sensible of the advantages of fortune, I can be happy without it: if I should ever be rich enough to live in the world, no one will enjoy it with greater gust; if not, I can with great spirit, provided I find such a companion as I wish, retire from it to love, content, and a cottage: by which I mean to the life of a little country gentleman.

You ask me my opinion of the winter here. If you can bear a degree of cold, of which Europeans can form no idea, it is far from being unpleasant; we have settled frost, and an eternal blue sky. Travelling in this country in winter is particularly agreable: the carriages are easy, and go on the ice with an amazing velocity, though drawn only by one horse.

The continual plain of snow would be extremely fatiguing both to the eye and imagination, were not both relieved, not only by the woods in prospect, but by the tall branches of pines with which the road is marked out on each side, and which form a verdant avenue agreably contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the snow, on which, when the sun shines, it is almost impossible to look steadily even for a moment.

Were it not for this method of marking out the roads, it would be impossible to find the way from one village to another.

The eternal sameness however of this avenue is tiresome when you go far in one road.

I have passed the last two months in the most agreable manner possible, in a little society of persons I extremely love: I feel myself so attached to this little circle of friends, that I have no pleasure in any other company, and think all the time absolutely lost that politeness forces me to spend any where else. I extremely dread our party’s being dissolved, and wish the winter to last for ever, for I am afraid the spring will divide us.

LETTER LII.52.

I begin not to disrelish the winter here; now I am used to the cold, I don’t feel it so much: as there is no business done here in the winter, ’tis the season of general dissipation; amusement is the study of every body, and the pains people take to please themselves contribute to the general pleasure: upon the whole, I am not sure it is not a pleasanter winter than that of England.

Both our houses and our carriages are uncommonly warm; the clear serene sky, the dry pure air, the little parties of dancing and cards, the good tables we all keep, the driving about on the ice, the abundance of people we see there, for every body has a carriole, the variety of objects new to an European, keep the spirits in a continual agreable hurry, that is difficult to describe, but very pleasant to feel.

Sir George (would you believe it?) has written Emily a very warm letter; tender, sentimental, and almost impatient; Mrs. Melmoth’s dictating, I will answer for it; not at all in his own composed agreable style. He talks of coming down in a few days: I have a strong notion he is coming, after his long tedious two years siege, to endeavor to take us by storm at last; he certainly prepares for a coup de main. He is right, all women hate a regular attack.

Adieu for the present.

We sup at your brother’s to-night, with all the beau monde of Quebec: we shall be superbly entertained, I know. I am malicious enough to wish Sir George may arrive during the entertainment, because I have an idea it will mortify him; though I scarce know why I think so. Adieu!

LETTER LIII.53.

We passed a most agreable evening with your brother, though a large company, which is seldom the case: a most admirable supper, excellent wine, an elegant desertdessert of preserved fruits, and every body in spirits and good humor.

The Colonel was the soul of our entertainment: amongst his other virtues, he has the companionable and convivial ones to an immense degree, which I never had an opportunity of discovering so clearly before. He seemed charmed beyond words to see us all so happy: we staid till four o’clock in the morning, yet all complained to-day we came away too soon.

I need not tell you we had fiddles, for there is no entertainment in Canada without them: never was such a race of dancers.

The dear man is come, and with an equipage which puts the Empress of Russia’s tranieau to shame. America never beheld any thing so brilliant:

Your brother’s and Fitzgerald’s will never dare to appear now; they sink into nothing.

Emily has been in tears in her chamber; ’tis a letter of Mrs. Melmoth’s which has had this agreable effect; some wise advice, I suppose. Lord! how I hate people that give advice! don’t you, Lucy?

I don’t like this lover’s coming; he is almost as bad as a husband: I am afraid he will derange our little coterie; and we have been so happy, I can’t bear it.

Good night, my dear.

LETTER LIV.54.

We have passed a mighty stupid day; Sir George is civil, attentive, and dull; Emily pensive, thoughtful, and silent; and my little self as peevish as an old maid: nobody comes near us, not even your brother, because we are supposed to be settling preliminaries; for you must know Sir George has graciously condescended to change his mind, and will marry her, if she pleases, without waiting for his mother’s letter, which resolution he has communicated to twenty people at Quebec in his way hither; he is really extremely obliging. I suppose the Melmoths have spirited him up to this.

Emily is strangely reserved to me; she avoids seeing me alone, and when it happens talks of the weather; papa is however in her confidence: he is as strong an advocate for this milky baronet as Mrs. Melmoth.

All is over, Lucy; that is to say, all is fixed: they are to be married on Monday next at the Recollects church, and to set off immediately for Montreal: my father has been telling me the whole plan of operations: we go up with them, stay a fortnight, then all come down, and show away till summer, when the happy pair embark in the first ship for England.

Emily is really what one would call a prudent pretty sort of woman, I did not think it had been in her: she is certainly right, there is danger in delay; she has a thousand proverbs on her side; I thought what all her fine sentiments would come to; she should at least have waited for mamma’s consent; this hurry is not quite consistent with that extreme delicacy on which she piques herself; it looks exceedingly as if she was afraid of losing him.

I don’t love her half so well as I did three days ago; I hate discreet young ladies that marry and settle; give me an agreable fellow and a knapsack.

My poor Rivers! what will become of him when we are gone? he has neglected every body for us.

As she loves the pleasures of conversation, she will be amazingly happy in her choice;

He is to be sure a most entertaining creature.

Adieu! I have no patience.

After all, I am a little droll; I am angry with Emily for concluding an advantageous match with a man she does not absolutely dislike, which all good mammas say is sufficient; and this only because it breaks in on a little circle of friends, in whose society I have been happy. O! self! self! I would have her hazard losing a fine fortune and a coach and six, that I may continue my coterie two or three months longer.

Adieu! I will write again as soon as we are married. My next will, I suppose, be from Montreal. I die to see your brother and my little Fitzgerald; this man gives me the vapours. Heavens! Lucy, what a difference there is in men!

THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE.

Vol. II

LETTER LV.55.

So, my dear, we went on too fast, it seems: Sir George was so obliging as to settle all without waiting for Emily’s consent; not having supposed her refusal to be in the chapter of possibilities: after having communicated their plan of operations to me as an affair settled, papa was dispatched, as Sir George’s ambassador, to inform Emily of his gracious intentions in her favor.

She received him with proper dignity, and like a girl of true spirit told him, that as the delay was originally from Sir George, she should insist on observing the conditions very exactly, and was determined to wait till spring, whatever might be the contents of Mrs. Clayton’s expected letter; reserving to herself also the privilege of refusing him even then, if upon mature deliberation she should think proper so to do.

She has further insisted, that till that time he shall leave Silleri; take up his abode at Quebec, unless, which she thinks most adviseable, he should return to Montreal for the winter; and never attempt seeing her without witnesses, as their present situation is particularly delicate, and that whilst it continues they can have nothing to say to each other which their common friends may not with propriety hear: all she can be prevailed on to consent to in his favor, is to allow him en attendant to visit here like any other gentleman.

I wish she would send him back to Montreal, for I see plainly he will spoil all our little parties.

Emily is a fine girl, Lucy, and I am friends with her again; so, my dear, I shall revive my coterie, and be happy two or three months longer. I have sent to ask my two sweet fellows at Quebec to dine here: I really long to see them; I shall let them into the present state of affairs here, for they both despise Sir George as much as I do; the creature looks amazingly foolish, and I enjoy his humiliation not a little: such an animal to set up for being beloved indeed! O to be sure!

Emily has sent for me to her apartment. Adieu for a moment.

She has shewn me Mrs. Melmoth’s letter on the subject of concluding the marriage immediately: it is in the true spirit of family impertinence. She writes with the kind discreet insolence of a relation; and Emily has answered her with the genuine spirit of an independent Englishwoman, who is so happy as to be her own mistress, and who is therefore determined to think for herself.

She has refused going to Montreal at all this winter; and has hinted, though not impolitely, that she wants no guardian of her conduct but herself; adding a compliment to my ladyship’s discretion so very civil, it is impossible for me to repeat it with decency.

O Heavens! your brother and Fitzgerald! I fly. The dear creatures! my life has been absolute vegetation since they absented themselves.

LETTER LVI.56.

We have the same parties and amusements we used to have, my dear, but there is by no means the same spirit in them; constraint and dullness seem to have taken the place of that sweet vivacity and confidence which made our little society so pleasing: this odious man has infected us all; he seems rather a spy on our pleasures than a partaker of them; he is more an antidote to joy than a tall maiden aunt.

I wish he would go; I say spontaneously every time I see him, without considering I am impolite, “La! Sir George, when do you go to Montreal?” He reddens, and gives me a peevish answer; and I then, and not before, recollect how very impertinent the question is.

But pray, my dear, because he has no taste for social companionable life, has he therefore a right to damp the spirit of it in those that have? I intend to consult some learned casuist on this head.

He takes amazing pains to please in his way, is curled, powdered, perfumed, and exhibits every day in a new suit of embroidery; but with all this, has the mortification to see your brother please more in a plain coat. I am lazy. Adieu!

LETTER LVII.57.

So you intend, my dear Jack, to marry when you are quite tired of a life of gallantry: the lady will be much obliged to you for a heart, the refuse of half the prostitutes in town; a heart, the best feelings of which will be entirely obliterated; a heart hardened by a long commerce with the most unworthy of the sex; and which will bring disgust, suspicion, coldness, and depravity of taste, to the bosom of sensibility and innocence.

For my own part, though fond of women to the greatest degree, I have had, considering my profession and complexion, very few intrigues. I have always had an idea I should some time or other marry, and have been unwilling to bring to a state in which I hoped for happiness from mutual affection, a heart worn out by a course of gallantries: to a contrary conduct is owing most of our unhappy marriages; the woman brings with her all her stock of tenderness, truth, and affection; the man’s is exhausted before they meet: she finds the generous delicate tenderness of her soul, not only unreturned, but unobserved; she fancies some other woman the object of his affection, she is unhappy, she pines in secret; he observes her discontent, accuses her of caprice; and her portion is wretchedness for life.

If I did not ardently wish your happiness, I should not thus repeatedly combat a prejudice, which, as you have sensibility, will infallibly make the greater part of your life a scene of insipidity and regret.

You are right, Jack, as to the savages; the only way to civilize them is to feminize their women; but the task is rather difficult: at present their manners differ in nothing from those of the men; they even add to the ferocity of the latter.

You desire to know the state of my heart: excuse me, Jack; you know nothing of love; and we who do, never disclose it’sits mysteries to the prophane: besides, I always chuse a female for the confidante of my sentiments; I hate even to speak of love to one of my own sex.

Adieu! I am going a party with half a dozen ladies, and have not another minute to spare.

LETTER LVIII.58.

I every hour, my dear, grow more in love with French manners; there is something charming in being young and sprightly all one’s life: it would appear absurd in England to hear, what I have just heard, a fat virtuous lady of seventy toast Love and Opportunity to a young fellow; but ’tis nothing here: they dance too to the last gasp; I have seen the daughter, mother, and grand-daughter, in the same French country dance.

They are perfectly right; and I honor them for their good sense and spirit, in determining to make life agreable as long as they can.

A propos to age, I am resolved to go home, Lucy; I have found three grey hairs this morning; they tell me ’tis common; this vile climate is at war with beauty, makes one’s hair grey, and one’s hands red. I won’t stay, absolutely.

Do you know there is a very pretty fellow here, Lucy, Captain Howard, who has taken a fancy to make people believe he and I are on good terms? He affects to sit by me, to dance with me, to whisper nothing to me, to bow with an air of mystery, and to shew me all the little attentions of a lover in public, though he never yet said a civil thing to me when we were alone.

I was standing with him this morning near the brow of the hill, leaning against a tree in the sunshine, and looking down the precipice below, when I said something of the lover’s leap, and in play, as you will suppose, made a step forwards: we had been talking of indifferent things, his air was till then indolence itself; but on this little motion of mine, though there was not the least danger, he with the utmost seeming eagerness catched hold of me as if alarmed at the very idea, and with the most passionate air protested his life depended on mine, and that he would not live an hour after me. I looked at him with astonishment, not being able to comprehend the meaning of this sudden flight, when turning my head, I saw a gentleman and lady close behind us, whom he had observed though I had not. They were retiring: “Pray approach, my dear Madam,” said I; “we have no secrets, this declaration was intended for you to hear; we were talking of the weather before you came.”

He affected to smile, though I saw he was mortified; but as his smile shewed the finest teeth imaginable I forgave him: he is really very handsome, and ’tis pity he has this foolish quality of preferring the shadow to the substance.

I shall, however, desire him to flirt elsewhere, as this badinage, however innocent, may hurt my character, and give pain to my little Fitzgerald: I believe I begin to love this fellow, because I begin to be delicate on the subject of flirtations, and feel my spirit of coquetry decline every day.

Mrs. Clayton has wrote, my dear; and has at last condescended to allow Emily the honor of being her daughter-in-law, in consideration of her son’s happiness, and of engagements entered into with her own consent; though she very prudently observes, that what was a proper match for Captain Clayton is by no means so for Sir George; and talks something of an offer of a citizen’s daughter with fifty thousand pounds, and the promise of an Irish title. She has, however, observed that indiscreet engagements are better broke than kept.

Sir George has shewn the letter, a very indelicate one in my opinion, to my father and me; and has talked a great deal of nonsense on the subject. He wants to shew it to Emily, and I advise him to it, because I know the effect it will have. I see plainly he wishes to make a great merit of keeping his engagement, if he does keep it: he hinted a little fear of breaking her heart; and I am convinced, if he thought she could survive his infidelity, all his tenderness and constancy would cede to filial duty and a coronet.

After much deliberation, Sir George has determined to write to Emily, inclose his mother’s letter, and call in the afternoon to enjoy the triumph of his generosity in keeping his engagement, when it is in his power to do so much better: ’tis a pretty plan, and I encourage him in it; my father, who wishes the match, shrugs his shoulders, and frowns at me; but the little man is fixed as fate in his resolve, and is writing at this moment in my father’s apartment. I long to see his letter; I dare say it will be a curiosity: ’tis short, however, for he is coming out of the room already.

Adieu! my father calls for this letter; it is to go in one of his to New York, and the person who takes it waits for it at the door.

LETTER LIX.59.

I send you the inclosed from my mother: I thought it necessary you should see it, though not even a mother’s wishes shall ever influence me to break those engagements which I have had the happiness of entering into with the most charming of women, and which a man of honor ought to hold sacred.

I do not think happiness intirely dependent on rank or fortune, and have only to wish my mother’s sentiments on this subject more agreable to my own, as there is nothing I so much wish as to oblige her: at all events, however, depend on my fulfilling those promises, which ought to be the more binding, as they were made at a time when our situations were more equal.

I am happy in an opportunity of convincing you and the world, that interest and ambition have no power over my heart, when put in competition with what I owe to my engagements; being with the greatest truth,

You will do me the honor to name the day to make me happy.

LETTER LX.60.

I have read MrsMrs. Clayton’s letter with attention; and am of her opinion, that indiscreet engagements are better broke than kept.

I have the less reason to take ill your breaking the kind of engagement between us at the desire of your family, as I entered into it at first entirely in compliance with mine. I have ever had the sincerest esteem and friendship for you, but never that romantic love which hurries us to forget all but itself: I have therefore no reason to expect in you the imprudent disinterestedness that passion occasions.

A fuller explanation is necessary on this subject than it is possible to enter into in a letter: if you will favor us with your company this afternoon at Silleri, we may explain our sentiments more clearly to each other: be assured, I never will prevent your complying in every instance with the wishes of so kind and prudent a mother.

LETTER LXI.61.

I have been with Emily, who has been reading MrsMrs. Clayton’s letter; I saw joy sparkle in her eyes as she went on, her little heart seemed to flutter with transport; I see two things very clearly, one of which is, that she never loved this little insipid Baronet; the other I leave your sagacity to find out. All the spirit of her countenance is returned: she walks in air; her cheeks have the blush of pleasure; I never saw so astonishing a change. I never felt more joy from the acquisition of a new lover, than she seems to find in the prospect of losing an old one.

She has written to Sir George, and in a style that I know will hurt him; for though I believe he wishes her to give him up, yet his vanity would desire it should cost her very dear; and appear the effort of disinterested love, and romantic generosity, not what it really is, the effect of the most tranquil and perfect indifference.

By the way, a disinterested mistress is, according to my ideas, a mistress who fancies she loves: we may talk what we please, at a distance, of sacrificing the dear man to his interest, and promoting his happiness by destroying our own; but when it comes to the point, I am rather inclined to believe all women are of my way of thinking; and let me die if I would give up a man I loved to the first dutchess in Christendom: ’tis all mighty well in theory; but for the practical part, let who will believe it for Bell.

Indeed when a woman finds her lover inclined to change, ’tis good to make a virtue of necessity, and give the thing a sentimental turn, which gratifies his vanity, and does not wound one’s own.

Adieu! I see Sir George and his fine carriole; I must run, and tell Emily.

LETTER LXII.62.

Yes, my Lucy, your brother tenderly regrets the absence of a sister endeared to him much more by her amiable qualities than by blood; who would be the object of his esteem and admiration, if she was not that of his fraternal tenderness; who has all the blooming graces, simplicity, and innocence of nineteen, with the accomplishments and understanding of five and twenty; who joins the strength of mind so often confined to our sex, to the softness, delicacy, and vivacity of her own; who, in short, is all that is estimable and lovely; and who, except one, is the most charming of her sex: you will forgive the exception, Lucy; perhaps no man but a brother would make it.

My sweet Emily appears every day more amiable; she is now in the full tyranny of her charms, at the age when the mind is improved, and the person in its perfection. I every day see in her more indifference to her lover, a circumstance which gives me a pleasure which perhaps it ought not: there is a selfishness in it, for which I am afraid I ought to blush.

You judge perfectly well, my dear, in checking the natural vivacity of your temper, however pleasing it is to all who converse with you: coquetry is dangerous to English women, because they have sensibility; it is more suited to the French, who are naturally something of the salamander kind.

I have this moment a note from Bell Fermor, that she must see me this instant. I hope my Emily is well: Heaven preserve the most perfect of all its works.

LETTER LXIII.63.

We have passed three or four droll days, my dear. Emily persists in resolving to break with Sir George; he thinks it decent to combat her resolution, lest he should lose the praise of generosity: he is also piqued to see her give him up with such perfect composure, though I am convinced he will not be sorry upon the whole to be given up; he has, from the first receipt of the letter, plainly wished her to resign him, but hoped for a few faintings and tears, as a sacrifice to his vanity on the occasion.

My father is setting every engine at work to make things up again, supposing Emily to have determined from pique, not from the real feelings of her heart: he is frighted to death lest I should counterwork him, and so jealous of my advising her to continue a conduct he so much disapproves, that he won’t leave us a moment together; he even observes carefully that each goes into her respective apartment when we retire to bed.

This jealousy has started an idea which I think will amuse us, and which I shall take the first opportunity of communicating to Emily; ’tis to write each other at night our sentiments on whatever passes in the day; if she approves the plan, I will send you the letters, which will save me a great deal of trouble in telling you all our petites histoires.

This scheme will have another advantage; we shall be a thousand times more sincere and open to each other by letter than face to face; I have long seen by her eyes that the little fool has twenty things to say to me, but has not courage; now letters you know, my dear,

Besides, it will be so romantic and pretty, almost as agreable as a love affair: I long to begin the correspondence.

LETTER LXIV.64.

I have but a moment, my Lucy, to tell you, my divine Emily has broke with her lover, who this morning took an eternal leave of her, and set out for Montreal in his way to New York, whence he proposes to embark for England.

My sensations on this occasion are not to be described: I admire that amiable delicacy which has influenced her to give up every advantage of rank and fortune which could tempt the heart of woman, rather than unite herself to a man for whom she felt the least degree of indifference; and this, without regarding the censures of her family, or of the world, by whom, what they will call her imprudence, will never be forgiven: a woman who is capable of acting so nobly, is worthy of being beloved, of being adored, by every man who has a soul to distinguish her perfections.

If I was a vain man, I might perhaps fancy her regard for me had some share in determining her conduct, but I am convinced of the contrary; ’tis the native delicacy of her soul alone, incapable of forming an union in which the heart has no share, which, independent of any other consideration, has been the cause of a resolution so worthy of herself.

That she has the tenderest affection for me, I cannot doubt one moment; her attention is too flattering to be unobserved; but ’tis that kind of affection in which the mind alone is concerned. I never gave her the most distant hint that I loved her: in her situation, it would have been even an outrage to have done so. She knows the narrowness of my circumstances, and how near impossible it is for me to marry; she therefore could not have an idea—no, my dear girl, tis’tis not to love, but to true delicacy, that she has sacrificed avarice and ambition; and she is a thousand times the more estimable from this circumstance.

I am interrupted. You shall hear from me in a few days.

LETTER LXV.65.

I have mentioned my plan to Emily, who is charmed with it; ’tis a pretty evening amusement for two solitary girls in the country.

Behold the first fruits of our correspondence:

“It is not to you, my dear girl, I need vindicate my conduct in regard to Sir George; you have from the first approved it; you have even advised it. If I have been to blame, ’tis in having too long delayed an explanation on a point of such importance to us both. I have been long on the borders of a precipice, without courage to retire from so dangerous a situation: overborn by my family, I have been near marrying a man for whom I have not the least tenderness, and whose conversation is even now tedious to me.

“My dear friend, we were not formed for each other: our minds have not the least resemblance. Have you not observed that, when I have timidly hazarded my ideas on the delicacy necessary to keep love alive in marriage, and the difficulty of preserving the heart of the object beloved in so intimate an union, he has indolently assented, with a coldness not to be described, to sentiments which it is plain from his manner he did not understand; whilst another, not interested in the conversation, has, by his countenance, by the fire of his eyes, by looks more eloquent than all language, shewed his soul was of intelligence with mine!

“A strong sense of the force of engagements entered into with my consent, though not the effect of my free, unbiassed choice, and the fear of making Sir George, by whom I supposed myself beloved, unhappy, have thus long prevented my resolving to break with him for ever; and though I could not bring myself to marry him, I found myself at the same time incapable of assuming sufficient resolution to tell him so, ’till his mother’s letter gave me so happy an occasion.

“There is no saying what transport I feel in being freed from the insupportable yoke of this engagement, which has long sat heavy on my heart, and suspended the natural chearfulness of my temper.

“Yes, my dear, your Emily has been wretched, without daring to confess it even to you: I was ashamed of owning I had entered into such engagements with a man whom I had never loved, though I had for a short time mistaken esteem for a greater degree of affection than my heart ever really knew. How fatal, my dear Bell, is this mistake to half our sex, and how happy am I to have discovered mine in time!

“I have scarce yet asked myself what I intend; but I think it will be most prudent to return to England in the first ship, and retire to a relation of my mother’s in the country, where I can live with decency on my little fortune.

“Whatever is my fate, no situation can be equally unhappy with that of being wife to a man for whom I have not even the slightest friendship or esteem, for whose conversation I have not the least taste, and who, if I know him, would for ever think me under an obligation to him for marrying me.

“I have the pleasure to see I give no pain to his heart, by a step which has relieved mine from misery: his feelings are those of wounded vanity, not of love.

I have no patience with relations, Lucy; this sweet girl has been two years wretched under the bondage her uncle’s avarice (for he foresaw Sir George’s acquisition, though she did not) prepared for her. Parents should chuse our company, but never even pretend to direct our choice; if they take care we converse with men of honor only, tis’tis impossible we can chuse amiss: a conformity of taste and sentiment alone can make marriage happy, and of that none but the parties concerned can judge.

By the way, I think long engagements, even between persons who love, extremely unfavorable to happiness: it is certainly right to be long enough acquainted to know something of each other’s temper; but ’tis bad to let the first fire burn out before we come together; and when we have once resolved, I have no notion of delaying a moment.

If I should ever consent to marry Fitzgerald, and he should not fly for a licence before I had finished the sentence, I would dismiss him if there was not another lover to be had in Canada.

My Emily is now free as air; a sweet little bird escaped from the gilded cage. Are you not glad of it, Lucy? I am amazingly.

LETTER LXVI.66.

Would one think it possible, Lucy, that Sir George should console himself for the loss of all that is lovely in woman, by the sordid prospect of acquiring, by an interested marriage, a little more of that wealth of which he has already much more than he can either enjoy or become? By what wretched motives are half mankind influenced in the most important action of their lives!

The vulgar of every rank expect happiness where it is not to be found, in the ideal advantages of splendor and dissipation; those who dare to think, those minds who partake of the celestial fire, seek it in the real solid pleasures of nature and soft affection.

I have seen my lovely Emily since I wrote to you; I shall not see her again of some days; I do not intend at present to make my visits to Silleri so frequent as I have done lately, lest the world, ever studious to blame, should misconstrue her conduct on this very delicate occasion. I am even afraid to shew my usual attention to her when present, lest she herself should think I presume on the politeness she has ever shewn me, and see her breaking with Sir George in a false light: the greater I think her obliging partiality to me, the more guarded I ought to be in my behaviour to her; her situation has some resemblance to widowhood, and she has equal decorums to observe.

I cannot however help encouraging a pleasing hope that I am not absolutely indifferent to her: her lovely eyes have a softness when they meet mine, to which words cannot do justice: she talks less to me than to others, but it is in a tone of voice which penetrates my soul; and when I speak, her attention is most flattering, though of a nature not to be seen by common observers; without seeming to distinguish me from the crowd who strive to engage her esteem and friendship, she has a manner of addressing me which the heart alone can feel; she contrives to prevent my appearing to give her any preference to the rest of her sex, yet I have seen her blush at my civility to another.

She has at least a friendship for me, which alone would make the happiness of my life; and which I would prefer to the love of the most charming woman imagination could form, sensible as I am to the sweetest of all passions: this friendship, however, time and assiduity may ripen into love; at least I should be most unhappy if I did not think so.

I love her with a tenderness of which few of my sex are capable: you have often told me, and you were right, that my heart has all the sensibility of woman.

A mail is arrived, by which I hope to hear from you; I must hurry to the post office; you shall hear again in a few days.

LETTER LXVII.67.

You need be in no pain, my dear brother, on Mr. Temple’s account; my heart is in no danger from a man of his present character: his person and manner are certainly extremely pleasing; his understanding, and I believe his principles, are worthy of your friendship; an encomium which, let me observe, is from me a very high one: he will be admired every where, but to be beloved, he wants, or at least appears to me to want, the most endearing of all qualities, that genuine tenderness of soul, that almost feminine sensibility, which, with all your firmness of mind and spirit, you possess beyond any man I ever yet met with.

If your friend wishes to please me, which I almost fancy he does, he must endeavor to resemble you; ’tis rather hard upon me, I think, that the only man I perfectly approve, and whose disposition is formed to make me happy, should be my brother: I beg you will find out somebody very like yourself for your sister, for you have really made me saucy.

I pity you heartily, and wish above all things to hear of your Emily’s marriage, for your present situation must be extremely unpleasant.

But, my dear brother, as you were so very wise about Temple, allow me to ask you whether it is quite consistent with prudence to throw yourself in the way of a woman so formed to inspire you with tenderness, and whom it is so impossible you can ever hope to possess: is not this acting a little like a foolish girl, who plays round the flame which she knows will consume her?

My mother is well, but will never be happy till you return to England; I often find her in tears over your letters: I will say no more on a subject which I know will give you pain. I hope, however, to hear you have given up all thoughts of settling in America: it would be a better plan to turn farmer in Northamptonshire;Rutland; we could double the estate by living upon it, and I am sure I should make the prettiest milk-maid in the county.

I am serious, and think we could live very superbly all together in the country; consider it well, my dear Ned, for I cannot bear to see my mother so unhappy as your absence makes her. I hear her on the stairs; I must hurry away my letter, for I don’t chuse she should know I write to you on this subject.

Say every thing for me to Bell Fermor; and in your own manner to your Emily, in whose friendship I promise myself great happiness.

LETTER LXVIII.68.

Never any astonishment equalled mine, my dear Emily, at hearing you had broke an engagement of years, so much to your advantage as to fortune, and with a man of so very unexceptionable a character as Sir George, without any other apparent cause than a slight indelicacy in a letter of his mother’s, for which candor and affection would have found a thousand excuses. I will not allow myself to suppose, what is however publicly said here, that you have sarificedsacrificed prudence, decorum, and I had almost said honor, to an imprudent inclination for a man, to whom there is the strongest reason to believe you are indifferent, and who is even said to have an attachment to another: I mean Colonel Rivers, who, though a man of worth, is in a situation which makes it impossible for him to think of you, were you even as dear to him as the world says he is to you.

I am too unhappy to say more on this subject, but expect from our past friendship a very sincere answer to two questions; whether love for Colonel Rivers was the real motive for the indiscreet step you have taken? and whether, if it was, you have the excuse of knowing he loves you? I should be glad to know what are your views, if you have any. I am,

LETTER LXIX.69.

I am too sensible of the rights of friendship, to refuse answering your questions; which I shall do in as few words as possible. I have not the least reason to suppose myself beloved by Colonel Rivers; nor, if I know my heart, do I love him in that sense of the word your question supposes: I think him the best, the most amiable of mankind; and my extreme affection for him, though I believe that affection only a very lively friendship, first awakened me to a sense of the indelicacy and impropriety of marrying Sir George.

To enter into so sacred an engagement as marriage with one man, with a stronger affection for another, of how calm and innocent a nature soever that affection may be, is a degree of baseness of which my heart is incapable.

When I first agreed to marry Sir George, I had no superior esteem for any other man; I thought highly of him, and wanted courage to resist the pressing solicitations of my uncle, to whom I had a thousand obligations. I even almost persuaded myself I loved him, nor did I find my mistake till I saw Colonel Rivers, in whose conversation I had so very lively a pleasure as soon convinced me of my mistake: I therefore resolved to break with Sir George, and nothing but the fear of giving him pain prevented my doing it sooner: his behaviour on the receipt of his mother’s letter removed that fear, and set me free in my own opinion, and I hope will in yours, from engagements which were equally in the way of my happiness, and his ambition. If he is sincere, he will tell you my refusal of him made him happy, though he chuses to affect a chagrin which he does not feel.

I have no view but that of returning to England in the spring, and fixing with a relation in the country.

If Colonel Rivers has an attachment, I hope it is to one worthy of him; for my own part, I never entertained the remotest thought of him in any light but that of the most sincere and tender of friends. I am, Madam, with great esteem,

LETTER LXX.70.

There are two parties at Quebec in regard to Emily: the prudent mammas abuse her for losing a good match, and suppose it to proceed from her partiality to your brother, to the imprudence of which they give no quarter; whilst the misses admire her generosity and spirit, in sacrificing all for love; so impossible it is to please every body. However, she has, in my opinion, done the wisest thing in the world; that is, she has pleased herself.

As to her inclination for your brother, I am of their opinion, that she loves him without being quite clear in the point herself: she has not yet confessed the fact even to me; but she has speaking eyes, Lucy, and I think I can interpret their language.

Whether he sees it or not I cannot tell; I rather think he does, because he has been less here, and more guarded in his manner when here, than before this matrimonial affair was put an end to; which is natural enough on that supposition, because he knows the impertinence of Quebec, and is both prudent and delicate to a great degree.

He comes, however, and we are pretty good company, only a little more reserved on both sides; which is, in my opinion, a little symptomatic.

La! here’s papa come up to write at my bureau; I dare say, it’s only to pry into what I am about; but excuse me, my dear Sir, for that. Adieu! jusqu’au demain, ma tres chere.

LETTER LXXI.71.

Every hour, my Lucy, convinces me more clearly there is no happiness for me without this lovely woman; her turn of mind is so correspondent to my own, that we seem to have but one soul: the first moment I saw her the idea struck me that we had been friends in some pre-existent state, and were only renewing our acquaintance here; when she speaks, my heart vibrates to the sound, and owns every thought she expresses a native there.

The same dear affections, the same tender sensibility, the most precious gift of Heaven, inform our minds, and make us peculiarly capable of exquisite happiness or misery.

The passions, my Lucy, are common to all; but the affections, the lively sweet affections, the only sources of true pleasure, are the portion only of a chosen few.

Uncertain at present of the nature of her sentiments, I am determined to develop them clearly before I discover mine: if she loves as I do, even a perpetual exile here will be pleasing. The remotest wood in Canada with her would be no longer a desert wild; it would be the habitation of the Graces.

But I forget your letter, my dear girl; I am hurt beyond words at what you tell me of my mother; and would instantly return to England, did not my fondness for this charming woman detain me here: you are both too good in wishing to retire with me to the country; will your tenderness lead you a step farther, my Lucy? It would be too much to hope to see you here; and yet, if I marry Emily, it will be impossible for me to think of returning to England.

There is a man here whom I should prefer of all men I ever saw for you; but he is already attached to your friend Bell Fermor, who is very inattentive to her own happiness, if she refuses him: I am very happy in finding you think of Temple as I wish you should.

You are so very civil, Lucy, in regard to me, I am afraid of becoming vain from your praises.

Take care, my dear, you don’t spoil me by this excess of civility, for my only merit is that of not being a coxcomb.

I have a heaviness of heart, which has never left me since I read your letter: I am shocked at the idea of giving pain to the best parent that ever existed; yet have less hope than ever of seeing England, without giving up the tender friend, the dear companion, the adored mistress; in short the very woman I have all my life been in search of: I am also hurt that I cannot place this object of all my wishes in a station equal to that she has rejected, and I begin to think rejected for me.

I never before repined at seeing the gifts of fortune lavished on the unworthy.

Adieu, my dear! I will write again when I can write more chearfully.

LETTER LXXII.72.

Your Lordship does me great honor in supposing me capable of giving any satisfactory account of a country in which I have spent only a few months.

As a proof, however, of my zeal, and the very strong desire I have to merit the esteem you honor me with, I shall communicate from time to time the little I have observed, and may observe, as well as what I hear from good authority, with that lively pleasure with which I have ever obeyed every command of your Lordship’s.

The French, in the first settling this colony, seem to have had an eye only to the conquest of ours: their whole system of policy seems to have been military, not commercial; or only so far commercial as was necessary to supply the wants, and by so doing to gain the friendship, of the savages, in order to make use of them against us.

The lands are held on military tenure: every peasant is a soldier, every seigneur an officer, and both serve without pay whenever called upon; this service is, except a very small quit-rent by way of acknowledgement, all they pay for their lands: the seigneur holds of the crown, the peasant of the seigneur, who is at once his lord and commander.

The peasants are in general tall and robust, notwithstanding their excessive indolence; they love war, and hate labor; are brave, hardy, alert in the field, but lazy and inactive at home; in which they resemble the savages, whose manners they seem strongly to have imbibed. The government appears to have encouraged a military spirit all over the colony; though ignorant and stupid to a great degree, these peasants have a strong sense of honor; and though they serve, as I have said, without pay, are never so happy as when called to the field.

They are excessively vain, and not only look on the French as the only civilized nation in the world, but on themselves as the flower of the French nation: they had, I am told, a great aversion to the regular troops which came from France in the late war, and a contempt equal to that aversion; they however had an affection and esteem for the late Marquis De Montcalm, which almost rose to idolatry; and I have even at this distance of time seen many of them in tears at the mention of his name: an honest tribute to the memory of a commander equally brave and humane; for whom his enemies wept even on the day when their own hero fell.

I am called upon for this letter, and have only time to assure your Lordship of my respect, and of the pleasure I always receive from your commands. I have the honor to be,

LETTER LXXIII.73.

I have indeed, my dear, a pleasure in his conversation, to which words cannot do justice: love itself is less tender and lively than my friendship for Rivers; from the first moment I saw him, I lost all taste for other conversation; even yours, amiable as you are, borrows its most prevailing charm from the pleasure of hearing you talk of him.

When I call my tenderness for him friendship, I do not mean either to paint myself as an enemy to tenderer sentiments, or him as one whom it is easy to see without feeling them: all I mean is, that, as our situations make it impossible for us to think of each other except as friends, I have endeavored—I hope with success—to see him in no other light: it is not in his power to marry without fortune, and mine is a trifle: had I worlds, they should be his; but, I am neither so selfish as to desire, nor so romantic as to expect, that he should descend from the rank of life he has been bred in, and live lost to the world with me.

As to the impertinence of two or three women, I hear of it with perfect indifference: my dear Rivers esteems me, he approves my conduct, and all else is below my care: the applause of worlds would give me less pleasure than one smile of approbation from him.

I am astonished your father should know me so little, as to suppose me capable of being influenced even by you: when I determined to refuse Sir George, it was from the feelings of my own heart alone; the first moment I saw Colonel Rivers convinced me my heart had till then been a stranger to true tenderness: from that moment my life has been one continued struggle between my reason, which shewed me the folly as well as indecency of marrying one man when I so infinitely preferred another, and a false point of honor and mistaken compassion: from which painful state, a concurrence of favorable accidents has at length happily relieved me, and left me free to act as becomes me.

Of this, my dear, be assured, that, though I have not the least idea of ever marrying Colonel Rivers, yet, whilst my sentiments for him continue what they are, I will never marry any other man.

I am hurt at what Mrs. Melmoth hinted in her letter to you, of Rivers having appeared to attach himself to me from vanity; she endeavors in vain to destroy my esteem for him: you well know, he never did appear to attach himself to me; he is incapable of having done it from such a motive; but if he had, such delight have I in whatever pleases him, that I should with joy have sacrificed my own vanity to gratify his.

LETTER LXXIV.74.

My dear, you deceive yourself; you love Colonel Rivers; you love him even with all the tenderness of romance: read over again the latter part of your letter; I know friendship, and of what it is capable; but I fear the sacrifices it makes are of a different nature.

Examine your heart, my Emily, and tell me the result of that examination. It is of the utmost consequence to you to be clear as to the nature of your affection for Rivers.

LETTER LXXV.75.

Yes, my dear Bell, you know me better than I know myself; your Emily loves.—But tell me, and with that clear sincerity which is the cement of our friendship; has not your own heart discovered to you the secret of mine? do you not also love this most amiable of mankind? Yes, you do, and I am lost: it is not in woman to see him without love; there are a thousand charms in his conversation, in his look, nay in the very sound of his voice, to which it is impossible for a soul like yours to be insensible.

I have observed you a thousand times listening to him with that air of softness and complacency—Believe me, my dear, I am not angry with you for loving him; he is formed to charm the heart of woman: I have not the least right to complain of you; you knew nothing of my passion for him; you even regarded me almost as the wife of another. But tell me, though my heart dies within me at the question, is your tenderness mutual? does he love you? I have observed a coldness in his manner lately, which now alarms me.—My heart is torn in pieces. Must I receive this wound from the two persons on earth most dear to me? Indeed, my dear, this is more than your Emily can bear. Tell me only whether you love: I will not ask more.—Is there on earth a man who can please where he appears?

LETTER LXXVI.76.

You have discovered me, my sweet Emily: I love—not quite so dyingly as you do; but I love; will you forgive me when I add that I am beloved? It is unnecessary to add the name of him I love, as you have so kindly appropriated the whole sex to Colonel Rivers.

However, to shew you it is possible you may be mistaken, ’tis the little Fitz I love, who, in my eye, is ten times more agreable than even your nonpareil of a Colonel; I know you will think me a shocking wretch for this depravity of taste; but so it is.

Upon my word, I am half inclined to be angry with you for not being in love with Fitzgerald; a tall Irishman, with good eyes, has as clear a title to make conquests as other people.

Yes, my dear, there is a man on earth, and even in the little town of Quebec, who can please where he appears. Surely, child, if there was but one man on earth who could please, you would not be so unreasonable as to engross him all to yourself.

For my part, though I like Fitzgerald extremely, I by no means insist that every other woman shall.

Go, you are a foolish girl, and don’t know what you would be at. Rivers is a very handsome agreable fellow; but it is in woman to see him without dying for love, of which behold your little Bell an example. Adieu! be wiser, and believe me

Will you go this morning to Montmorenci on the ice, and dine on the island of Orleans? dare you trust yourself in a covered carriole with the dear man? Don’t answer this, because I am certain you can say nothing on the subject, which will not be very foolish.

LETTER LXXVII.77.

I am glad you do not see Colonel Rivers with my eyes; yet it seems to me very strange; I am almost piqued at your giving another the preference. I will say no more, it being, as you observe, impossible to avoid being absurd on such a subject.

I will go to Montmorenci; and, to shew my courage, will venture in a covered carriole with Colonel Rivers, though I should rather wish your father for my cavalier at present.

LETTER LXXVIII.78.

You are right, my dear: ’tis more prudent to go with my father. I love prudence; and will therefore send for Mademoiselle Clairaut to be Rivers’s belle.

LETTER LXXIX.79.

You are a provoking chit, and I will go with Rivers. Your father may attend Madame Villiers, who you know will naturally take it ill if she is not of our party. We can ask Mademoiselle Clairaut another time.

LETTER LXXX.80.

Those who have heard no more of a Canadian winter than what regards the intenseness of its cold, must suppose it a very joyless season: ’tis, I assure you, quite otherwise; there are indeed some days here of the severity of which those who were never out of England can form no conception; but those days seldom exceed a dozen in a whole winter, nor do they come in succession; but at intermediate periods, as the winds set in from the North-West; which, coming some hundred leagues, from frozen lakes and rivers, over woods and mountains covered with snow, would be insupportable, were it not for the furs with which the country abounds, in such variety and plenty as to be within the reach of all its inhabitants.

Thus defended, the British belles set the winter of Canada at defiance; and the season of which you seem to entertain such terrible ideas, is that of the utmost chearfulness and festivity.

But what particularly pleases me is, there is no place where women are of such importance: not one of the sex, who has the least share of attractions, is without a levee of beaux interceding for the honor of attending her on some party, of which every day produces three or four.

I am just returned from one of the most agreable jaunts imagination can paint, to the island of Orleans, by the falls of Montmorenci; the latter is almost nine miles distant, across the great bason of Quebec; but as we are obliged to reach it in winter by the waving line, our direct road being intercepted by the inequalities of the ice, it is now perhaps a third more. You will possibly suppose a ride of this kind must want one of the greatest essentials to entertainment, that of variety, and imagine it only one dull whirl over an unvaried plain of snow: on the contrary, my dear, we pass hills and mountains of ice in the trifling space of these few miles. The bason of Quebec is formed by the conflux of the rivers St. Charles and Montmorenci with the great river St. Lawrence, the rapidity of whose flood tide, as these rivers are gradually seized by the frost, breaks up the ice, and drives it back in heaps, till it forms ridges of transparent rock to an height that is astonishing, and of a strength which bids defiance to the utmost rage of the most furiously rushing tide.

This circumstance makes this little journey more pleasing than you can possibly conceive: the serene blue sky above, the dazling brightness of the sun, and the colors from the refraction of its rays on the transparent part of these ridges of ice, the winding course these oblige you to make, the sudden disappearing of a train of fifteen or twenty carrioles, as these ridges intervene, which again discover themselves on your rising to the top of the frozen mount, the tremendous appearance both of the ascent and descent, which however are not attended with the least danger; all together give a grandeur and variety to the scene, which almost rise to enchantment.

Your dull foggy climate affords nothing that can give you the least idea of our frost pieces in Canada; nor can you form any notion of our amusements, of the agreableness of a covered carriole, with a sprightly fellow, rendered more sprightly by the keen air and romantic scene about him; to say nothing of the fair lady at his side.

Even an overturning has nothing alarming in it; you are laid gently down on a soft bed of snow, without the least danger of any kind; and an accident of this sort only gives a pretty fellow occasion to vary the style of his civilities, and shew a greater degree of attention.

But it is almost time to come to Montmorenci: to avoid, however, fatiguing you or myself, I shall refer the rest of our tour to another letter, which will probably accompany this: my meaning is, that two moderate letters aaeare vastly better than one long one; in which sentiment I know you agree with

LETTER LXXXI.81.

So, my dear, as I was saying, this same ride to Montmorenci—where was I, Lucy? I forget.—O, I believe pretty near the mouth of the bay, embosomed in which lies the lovely cascade of which I am to give you a winter description, and which I only slightly mentioned when I gave you an account of the rivers by which it is suppliedsupplied.

The road, about a mile before you reach this bay, is a regular glassy level, without any of those intervening hills of ice which I have mentioned; hills, which with the ideas, though false ones, of danger and difficulty, give those of beauty and magnificence too.

As you gradually approach the bay, you are struck with an awe, which increases every moment, as you come nearer, from the grandeur of a scene, which is one of the noblest works of nature: the beauty, the proportion, the solemnity, the wild magnificence of which, surpassing every possible effect of art, impress one strongly with the idea of its Divine Almighty Architect.

The rock on the east side, which is first in view as you approach, is a smooth and almost perpendicular precipice, of the same height as the fall; the top, which a little over-hangs, is beautifully covered with pines, firs, and ever-greens of various kinds, whose verdant lustre is rendered at this season more shining and lovely by the surrounding snow, as well as by that which is sprinkled irregularly on their branches, and glitters half melted in the sun-beams: a thousand smaller shrubs are scattered on the side of the ascent, and, having their roots in almost imperceptible clefts of the rock, seem to those below to grow in air.

The west side is equally lofty, but more sloping, which, from that circumstance, affords soil all the way, upon shelving inequalities of the rock, at little distances, for the growth of trees and shrubs, by which it is almost entirely hid.

The most pleasing view of this miracle of nature is certainly in summer, and in the early part of it, when every tree is in foliage and full verdure, every shrub in flower; and when the river, swelled with a waste of waters from the mountains from which it derives its source, pours down in a tumultuous torrent, that equally charms and astonishes the beholder.

The winter scene has, notwithstanding, its beauties, though of a different kind, more resembling the stillness and inactivity of the season.

The river being on its sides bound up in frost, and its channel rendered narrower than in the summer, affords a less body of water to supply the cascade; and the fall, though very steep, yet not being exactly perpendicular, masses of ice are formed, on different shelving projections of the rock, in a great variety of forms and proportions.

The torrent, which before rushed with such impetuosity down the deep descent in one vast sheet of water, now descends in some parts with a slow and majestic pace; in others seems almost suspended in mid air; and in others, bursting through the obstacles which interrupt its course, pours down with redoubled fury into the foaming bason below, from whence a spray arises, which, freezing in its ascent, becomes on each side a wide and irregular frozen breast-work; and in front, the spray being there much greater, a lofty and magnificent pyramid of solid ice.

I have not told you half the grandeur, half the beauty, half the lovely wildness of this scene: if you would know what it is, you must take no information but that of your own eyes, which I pronounce strangers to the loveliest work of creation till they have seen the river and fall of Montmorenci.

In short, my dear, I am Montmorenci-mad.

I can hardly descend to tell you, we passed the ice from thence to Orleans, and dined out of doors on six feet of snow, in the charming enlivening warmth of the sun, though in the month of February, at a time when you in England scarce feel his beams.

Fitzgerald made violent love to me all the way, and I never felt myself listen with such complacency.

Adieu! I have wrote two immense letters. Write oftener; you are lazy, yet expect me to be an absolute slave in the scribbling way.

Do you know your brother has admirable ideas? He contrived to lose his way on our return, and kept Emily ten minutes behind the rest of the company. I am apt to fancy there was something like a declaration, for she blushed,

when he led her into the dining room at Silleri.

LETTER LXXXII.82.

I was mistaken, my dear; not a word of love between your brother and Emily, as she positively assures me; something very tender has passed, I am convinced, notwithstanding, for she blushes more than ever when he approaches, and there is a certain softness in his voice when he addresses her, which cannot escape a person of my penetration.

Do you know, my dear Lucy, that there is a little impertinent girl here, a Mademoiselle Clairaut, who, on the meer merit of features and complexion, sets up for being as handsome as Emily and me?

If beauty, as I will take the liberty to assert, is given us for the purpose of pleasing, she who pleases most, that is to say, she who excites the most passion, is to all intents and purposes the most beautiful woman; and, in this case, I am inclined to believe your little Bell stands pretty high on the roll of beauty; the men’s eyes may perhaps say she is handsome, but their hearts feel that I am so.

There is, in general, nothing so insipid, so uninteresting, as a beauty; which those men experience to their cost, who chuse from vanity, not inclination. I remember Sir Charles Herbert, a Captain in the same regiment with my father, who determined to marry Miss Raymond before he saw her, merely because he had been told she was a celebrated beauty, though she was never known to have inspired a real passion: he saw her, not with his own eyes, but those of the public, took her charms on trust; and, till he was her husband, never found out she was not his taste; a secret, however, of some little importance to his happiness.

I have, however, known some beauties who had a right to please; that is, who had a mixture of that invisible charm, that nameless grace which by no means depends on beauty, and which strikes the heart in a moment; but my first aversion is your fine women: don’t you think a fine woman a detestable creature, Lucy? I do: they are vastly well to fill public places; but as to the heart—Heavens, my dear! yet there are men, I suppose, to be found, who have a taste for the great sublime in beauty.

Men are vastly foolish, my dear; very few of them have spirit to think for themselves; there are a thousand Sir Charles Herberts: I have seen some of them weak enough to decline marrying the woman on earth most pleasing to themselves, because not thought handsome by the generality of their companions.

Women are above this folly, and therefore chuse much oftener from affection than men. We are a thousand times wiser, Lucy, than these important beings, these mighty lords,

and, instead of playing the part in life which nature dictates to their reason and their hearts, act a borrowed one at the will of others.

I had rather even judge ill, than not judge for myself.

LETTER LXXXIII.83.

After debating with myself some days, I am determined to pursue Emily; but, before I make a declaration, will go to see some ungranted lands at the back of Madame Des Roches’s estate; which, lying on a very fine river, and so near the St. Lawrence, may I think be cultivated at less expence than those above Lake Champlain, though in a much inferior climate: if I make my settlement here, I will purchase the estate Madame Des Roches has to sell, which will open me a road to the river St. Lawrence, and consequently treble the value of my lands.

I love, I adore this charming woman; but I will not suffer my tenderness for her to make her unhappy, or to lower her station in life: if I can, by my present plan, secure her what will in this country be a degree of affluence, I will endeavor to change her friendship for me into a tenderer and more lively affection; if she loves, I know by my own heart, that Canada will be no longer a place of exile; if I have flattered myself, and she has only a friendship for me, I will return immediately to England, and retire with you and my mother to our little estate in the country.

You will perhaps say, why not make Emily of our party? I am almost ashamed to speak plain; but so weak are we, and so guided by the prejudices we fancy we despise, that I cannot bear my Emily, after refusing a coach and six, should live without an equipage suitable at least to her birth, and the manner in which she has always lived when in England.

I know this is folly, that it is a despicable pride; but it is a folly, a pride, I cannot conquer.

There are moments when I am above all this childish prejudice, but it returns upon me in spite of myself.

Will you come to us, my Lucy? Tell my mother, I will build her a rustic palace, and settle a little principality on you both.

I make this a private excursion, because I don’t chuse any body should even guess at my views. I shall set out in the evening, and make a circuit to cross the river above the town.

I shall not even take leave at Silleri, as I propose being back in four days, and I know your friend Bell will be inquisitive about my journey.

LETTER LXXXIV.84.

Your brother is gone nobody knows whither, and without calling upon us before he set off; we are piqued, I assure you, my dear, and with some little reason.

Very strange news, Lucy; they say Colonel Rivers is gone to marry Madame Des Roches, a lady at whose house he was some time in autumn; if this is true, I forswear the whole sex: his manner of stealing off is certainly very odd, and she is rich and agreable; but, if he does not love Emily, he has been excessively cruel in shewing an attention which has deceived her into a passion for him. I cannot believe it possible: not that he has ever told her he loved her; but a man of honor will not tell an untruth even with his eyes, and his have spoke a very unequivocal language.

I never saw any thing like her confusion, when she was told he was gone to visit Madame Des Roches; but, when it was hinted with what design, I was obliged to take her out of the room, or she would have discovered all the fondness of her soul. I really thought she would have fainted as I led her out.

I have sent away all the men, and drank tea in Emily’s apartment; she has scarce spoke to me; I am miserable for her; she has a paleness which alarms me, the tears steal every moment into her lovely eyes. Can Rivers act so unworthy a part? her tenderness cannot have been unobserved by him; it was too visible to every body.

Not a line from your brother yet; only a confirmation of his being with Madame Des Roches, having been seen there by some Canadians who are come up this morning: I am not quite pleased, though I do not believe the report; he might have told us surely where he was going.

I pity Emily beyond words; she says nothing, but there is a dumb eloquence in her countenance which is not to be described.

I have been an hour alone with the dear little girl, who has, from a hint I dropt on purpose, taken courage to speak to me on this very interesting subject; she says, “she shall be most unhappy if this report is true, though without the least right to complain of Colonel Rivers, who never even hinted a word of any affection for her more tender than friendship; that if her vanity, her self-love, or her tenderness, have deceived her, she ought only to blame herself.” She added, “that she wished him to marry Madame Des Roches, if she could make him happy;” but when she said this, an involuntary tear seemed to contradict the generosity of her sentiments.

I beg your pardon, my dear, but my esteem for your brother is greatly lessened; I cannot help fearing there is something in the report, and that this is what Mrs. Melmoth meant when she mentioned his having an attachment.

I shall begin to hate the whole sex, Lucy, if I find your brother unworthy, and shall give Fitzgerald his dismission immediately.

I am afraid Mrs. Melmoth knows men better than we foolish girls do: she said, he attached himself to Emily meerly from vanity, and I begin to believe she was right: how cruel is this conduct! The man who from vanity, or perhaps only to amuse an idle hour, can appear to be attached where he is not, and by that means seduce the heart of a deserving woman, or indeed of any woman, falls in my opinion very little short in baseness of him who practises a greater degree of seduction.

What right has he to make the most amiable of women wretched? a woman who would have deserved him had he been monarch of the universal world! I might add, who has sacrificed ease and affluence to her tenderness for him?

You will excuse my warmth on such an occasion; however, as it may give you pain, I will say no more.

LETTER LXXXV.85.

I have met with something, my dear Lucy, which has given me infinite uneasiness; Madame Des Roches, from my extreme zeal to serve her in an affair wherein she has been hardly used, from my second visit, and a certain involuntary attention, and softness of manner I have to all women, has supposed me in love with her, and with a frankness I cannot but admire, and a delicacy not to be described, has let me know I am far from being indifferent to her.

I was at first extremely embarrassed; but when I had reflected a moment, I considered that the ladies, though another may be the object, always regard with a kind of complacency a man who loves, as one who acknowledges the power of the sex, whereas an indifferent is a kind of rebel to their empire; I considered also that the confession of a prior inclination saves the most delicate vanity from being wounded; and therefore determined to make her the confidante of my tenderness for Emily; leaving her an opening to suppose that, if my heart had been disengaged, it could not have escaped her attractions.

I did this with all possible precaution, and with every softening friendship and politeness could suggest; she was shocked at my confession, but soon recovered herself enough to tell me she was highly flattered by this proof of my confidence and esteem; that she believed me a man to have only the more respect for a woman who by owning her partiality had told me she considered me not only as the most amiable, but the most noble of my sex; that she had heard, no love was so tender as that which was the child of friendship; but that of this she was convinced, that no friendship was so tender as that which was the child of love; that she offered me this tender, this lively friendship, and would for the future find her happiness in the consideration of mine.

Do you know, my dear, that, since this confession, I feel a kind of tenderness for her, to which I cannot give a name? It is not love; for I love, I idolize another: but it is softer and more pleasing, as well as more animated, than friendship.

You cannot conceive what pleasure I find in her conversation; she has an admirable understanding, a feeling heart, and a mixture of softness and spirit in her manner, which is peculiarly pleasing to men. My Emily will love her; I must bring them acquainted: she promises to come to Quebec in May; I shall be happy to shew her every attention when there.

I have seen the lands, and am pleased with them: I believe this will be my residence, if Emily, as I cannot avoid hoping, will make me happy; I shall declare myself as soon as I return, but must continue here a few days longer: I shall not be less pleased with this situation for its being so near Madame Des Roches, in whom Emily will find a friend worthy of her esteem, and an entertaining lively companion.

I have fixed on the loveliest spot on earth, on which to build a house for my mother: do I not expect too much in fancying she will follow me hither?

LETTER LXXXVI.86.

Still with Madame Des Roches; appearances are rather against him, you must own, Lucy: but I will not say all I think to you. Poor Emily! we dispute continually, for she will persist in defending his conduct; she says, he has a right to marry whoever he pleases; that her loving him is no tie upon his honor, especially as he does not even know of this preference; that she ought only to blame the weakness of her own heart, which has betrayed her into a false belief that their tenderness was mutual: this is pretty talking, but he has done every thing to convince her of his feeling the strongest passion for her, except making a formal declaration.

She talks of returning to England the moment the river is open: indeed, if your brother marrie ,marries, it is the only step left her to take. I almost wish now she had married Sir George: she would have had all the douceurs of marriage; and as to love, I begin to think men incapable of feeling it: some of them can indeed talk well on the subject; but self-interest and vanity are the real passions of their souls. I detest the whole sex.

LETTER LXXXVII.87.

I generally distrust my own opinion when it differs from your Lordship’s; but in this instance I am most certainly in the right: allow me to say, nothing can be more ill-judged than your Lordship’s design of retiring into a small circle, from that world of which you have so long been one of the most brilliant ornaments. What you say of the disagreableness of age, is by no means applicable to your Lordship; nothing is in this respect so fallible as the parish register. Why should any man retire from society whilst he is capable of contributing to the pleasures of it? Wit, vivacity, good-nature, and politeness, give an eternal youth, as stupidity and moroseness a premature old age. Without a thousandth part of your Lordship’s shining qualities, I think myself much younger than half the boys about me, meerly because I have more good-nature, and a stronger desire of pleasing.

My daughter is much honored by your Lordship’s enquiries: she is Bell Fermor still; but is addressed by a gentleman who is extremely agreable to me, and I believe not less so to her; I however know too well the free spirit of woman, of which she has her full share, to let Bell know I approve her choice; I am even in doubt whether it would not be good policy to seem to dislike the match, in order to secure her consent: there is something very pleasing to a young girl, in opposing the will of her father.

To speak truth, I am a little out of humor with her at present, for having contributed, and I believe entirely from a spirit of opposition to me, to break a match on which I had extremely set my heart; the lady was the daughterniece of my particular friend, and one of the most lovely and deserving women I ever knew: the gentleman very worthy, with an agreable, indeed a very handsome person, and a fortune which with those who know the world, would have compensated for the want of most other advantages.

The fair lady, after an engagement of two years, took a whim that there was no happiness in marriage without being madly in love, and that her passion was not sufficiently romantic; in which piece of folly my rebel encouraged her, and the affair broke off in a manner which has brought on her the imputation of having given way to an idle prepossession in favor of another.

Your Lordship will excuse my talking on a subject very near my heart, though uninteresting to you; I have too often experienced your Lordship’s indulgence to doubt it on this occasion: your good-natured philosophy will tell you, much fewer people talk or write to amuse or inform their friends, than to give way to the feelings of their own hearts, or indulge the governing passion of the moment.

In my next, I will endeavor in the best manner I can, to obey your Lordship’s commands in regard to the political and religious state of Canada: I will make a point of getting the best information possible; what I have yet seen, has been only the surface.

LETTER LXXXVIII.88.

Your brother is come back; and has been here: he came after dinner yesterday. My Emily is more than woman; I am proud of her behaviour: he entered with his usual impatient air; she received him with a dignity which astonished me, and disconcerted him: there was a cool dispassionate indifference in her whole manner, which I saw cut his vanity to the quick, and for which he was by no means prepared.

On such an occasion I should have flirted violently with some other man, and have shewed plainly I was piqued: she judged much better; I have only to wish it may last. He is the veriest coquet in nature, for, after all, I amconvincedam convinced he loves Emily.

He stayed a very little time, and has not been here this morning; he may pout if he pleases, but I flatter myself we shall hold out the longest.

He came to dine; we kept up our state all dinner time; he begged a moment’s conversation, which we refused, but with a timid air that makes me begin to fear we shall beat a parley: he is this moment gone, and Emily retired to her apartment on pretence of indisposition: I am afraid she is a foolish girl.

It will not do, Lucy: I found her in tears at the window, following Rivers’s carriole with her eyes: she turned to me with such a look—in short, my dear,

has prevailed over all her resolution: her love is only the more violent for having been a moment restrained; she is not equal to the task she has undertaken; her resentment was concealed tenderness, and has retaken its first form.

I am sorry to find there is not one wise woman in the world but myself.

I have been with her again: she seemed a little calmer; I commended her spirit; she disavowed it; was peevish with me, angry with herself; said she had acted in a manner unworthy her character; accused herself of caprice, artifice, and cruelty; said she ought to have seen him, if not alone, yet with me only: that it was natural he should be surprized at a reception so inconsistent with true friendship, and therefore that he should wish an explanation; that her Rivers (and why not Madame Des Roches’s Rivers?) was incapable of acting otherwise than as became the best and most tender of mankind, and that therefore she ought not to have suffered a whisper injurious to his honor: that I had meant well, but had, by depriving her of Rivers’s friendship, which she had lost by her haughty behaviour, destroyed all the happiness of her life.

To be sure, your poor Bell is always to blame: but if ever I intermeddle between lovers again, Lucy—

I am sure she was ten times more angry with him than I was, but this it is to be too warm in the interest of our friends.

I can only say, that if Fitzgerald had visited a handsome rich French widow, and staid with her ten days téte à téte in the country, without my permission—

O Heavens! here is mon cher pere: I must hide my letter.

LETTER LXXXV.89.

I cannot account, my dear, for what has happened to me. I left Madame Des Roches’s full of the warm impatience of love, and flew to my Emily at Silleri: I was received with a disdainful coldness which I did not think had been in her nature, and which has shocked me beyond all expression.

I went again to-day, and met with the same reception; I even saw my presence was painful to her, therefore shortened my visit, and, if I have resolution to persevere, will not go again till invited by Captain Fermor in form.

I could bear any thing but to lose her affection; my whole heart was set upon her: I had every reason to believe myself dear to her. Can caprice find a place in that bosom which is the abode of every virtue?

I must have been misrepresented to her, or surely this could not have happened: I will wait to-morrow, and if I hear nothing will write to her, and ask an explanation by letter; she refused me a verbal one to-day, though I begged to speak with her only for a moment.

I have been asked on a little riding party, and, as I cannot go to Silleri, have accepted it: it will amuse my present anxiety.

I am to drive MadamoiselleMademoiselle Clairaut, a very pretty French lady: this is however of no consequence, for my eyes see nothing lovely but Emily.

LETTER XC.90.

Poor Emily is to meet with perpetual mortification: we have been carrioling with Fitzgerald and my father; and, coming back, met your brother driving Mademoiselle Clairaut: Emily trembled, turned pale, and scarce returned Rivers’s bow; I never saw a poor little girl so in love; she is amazingly altered within the last fortnight.

A letter from Mrs. Melmoth: I send you a copy of it with this.

LETTER XCI.91.

If you are not absolutely resolved on destruction, my dear Emily, it is yet in your power to retrieve the false step you have made.

Sir George, whose good-nature is in this instance almost without example, has been prevailed on by Mr. Melmoth to consent I should write to you before he leaves Montreal, and again offer you his hand, though rejected in a manner so very mortifying both to vanity and love.

He gives you a fortnight to consider his offer, at the end of which if you refuse him he sets out for England over the lakes.

Be assured, the man for whom it is too plain you have acted this imprudent part, is so far from returning your affection, that he is at this moment addressing another; I mean Madame Des Roches, a near relation of whose assured me that there was an attachment between them: indeed it is impossible he could have thought of a woman whose fortune is as small as his own. Men, Miss Montague, are not the romantic beings you seem to suppose them; you will not find many Sir George Claytons.

I beg as early an answer as is consistent with the attention so important a proposal requires, as a compliment to a passion so generous and disinterested as that of Sir George. I am, my dear Emily,

LETTER XCII.92.

I am sorry, my dear Madam, you should know so little of my heart, as to suppose it possible I could have broke my engagements with Sir George from any motive but the full conviction of my wanting that tender affection for him, and that lively taste for his conversation, which alone could have ensured either his felicity or my own; happy is it for both that I discovered this before it was too late: it was a very unpleasing circumstance, even under an intention only of marrying him, to find my friendship stronger for another; what then would it have been under the most sacred of all engagements, that of marriage? What wretchedness would have been the portion of both, had timidity, decorum, or false honor, carried me, with this partiality in my heart, to fulfill those views, entered into from compliance to my family, and continued from a false idea of propriety, and weak fear of the censures of the world?

The same reason therefore still subsisting, nay being every moment stronger, from a fuller conviction of the merit of him my heart prefers, in spite of me, to Sir George, our union is more impossible than ever.

I am however obliged to you, and Major Melmoth, for your zeal to serve me, though you must permit me to call it a mistaken one; and to Sir George, for a concession which I own I should not have made in his situation, and which I can only suppose the effect of Major Melmoth’s persuasions, which he might suppose were known to me, and an imagination that my sentiments for him were changed: assure him of my esteem, though love is not in my power.

As Colonel Rivers never gave me the remotest reason to suppose him more than my friend, I have not the least right to disapprove his marrying: on the contrary, as his friend, I ought to wish a connexion which I am told is greatly to his advantage.

To prevent all future importunity, painful to me, and, all circumstances considered, degrading to Sir George, whose honor is very dear to me, though I am obliged to refuse him that hand which he surely cannot wish to receive without my heart, I am compelled to say, that, without an idea of ever being united to Colonel Rivers, I will never marry any other man.

Were I never again to behold him, were he even the husband of another, my tenderness, a tenderness as innocent as it is lively, would never cease: nor would I give up the refined delight of loving him, independently of any hope of being beloved, for any advantage in the power of fortune to bestow.

These being my sentiments, sentiments which no time can alter, they cannot be too soon known to Sir George: I would not one hour keep him in suspence in a point, which this step seems to say is of consequence to his happiness.

Tell him, I entreat him to forget me, and to come into views which will make his mother, and I have no doubt himself, happier than a marriage with a woman whose chief merit is that very sincerity of heart which obliges her to refuse him.

LETTER XCIII.93.

Your brother dines here to-day, by my father’s invitation; I am afraid it will be but an awkward party.

Emily is at this moment an exceeding fine model for a statue of tender melancholy.

Her anger is gone; not a trace remaining; ’tis sorrow, but the most beautiful sorrow I ever beheld: she is all grief for having offended the dear man.

I am out of patience with this look; it is so flattering to him, I could beat her for it: I cannot bear his vanity should be so gratified.

I wanted her to treat him with a saucy, unconcerned, flippant air; but her whole appearance is gentle, tender, I had almost said, supplicating: I am ashamed of the folly of my own sex: O, that I could to-day inspire her with a little of my spirit! she is a poor tame household dove, and there is no making any thing of her.

What fools women are, Lucy! He took her hand, expressed concern for her health, softened the tone of his voice, looked a few civil things with those expressive lying eyes of his, and without one word of explanation all was forgot in a moment.

Heavens! the fellow is here, has followed me to my dressing-room; was ever any thing so confident? These modest men have ten times the assurance of your impudent fellows. I believe absolutely he is going to make love to me: ’tis a critical hour, Lucy; and to rob one’s friend of a lover is really a temptation.

The dear man is gone, and has made all up: he insisted on my explaining the reasons of the cold reception he had met with; which you know was impossible, without betraying the secret of poor Emily’s little foolish heart.

I however contrived to let him know we were a little piqued at his going without seeing us, and that we were something inclined to be jealous of his friendship for Madame Des Roches.

He made a pretty decent defence; and, though I don’t absolutely acquit him of coquetry, yet upon the whole I think I forgive him.

He loves Emily, which is great merit with me: I am only sorry they are two such poor devils, it is next to impossible they should ever come together.

I think I am not angry now; as to Emily, her eyes dance with pleasure; she has not the same countenance as in the morning; this love is the finest cosmetick in the world.

After all, he is a charming fellow, and has eyes, Lucy—Heaven be praised, he never pointed their fire at me!

Adieu! I will try to sleep.

LETTER XCIV.94.

The coldness of which I complained, my dear Lucy, in regard to Emily, was the most flattering circumstance which could have happened: I will not say it was the effect of jealousy, but it certainly was of a delicacy of affection which extremely resembles it.

Never did she appear so lovely as yesterday; never did she display such variety of loveliness: there was a something in her look, when I first addressed her on entering the room, touching beyond all words, a certain inexpressible melting languor, a dying softness, which it was not in man to see unmoved: what then must a lover have felt?

I had the pleasure, after having been in the room a few moments, to see this charming languor change to a joy which animated her whole form, and of which I was so happy as to believe myself the cause: my eyes had told her all that passed in my heart; hers had shewed me plainly they understood their language. We were standing at a window at some little distance from the rest of the company, when I took an opportunity of hinting my concern at having, though without knowing it, offended her: she blushed, she looked down, she again raised her lovely eyes, they met mine, she sighed; I took her hand, she withdrew it, but not in anger; a smile, like that of the poet’s Hebe, told me I was forgiven.

There is no describing what then passed in my soul: with what difficulty did I restrain my transports! never before did I really know love: what I had hitherto felt even for her, was cold to that enchanting, that impassioned moment.

She is a thousand times dearer to me than life: my Lucy, I cannot live without her.

I contrived, before I left Silleri, to speak to Bell Fermor on the subject of Emily’s reception of me; she did not fully explain herself, but she convinced me hatred had no part in her resentment.

I am going again this afternoon: every hour not passed with her is lost.

I will seek a favorable occasion of telling her the whole happiness of my life depends on her tenderness.

Before I write again, my fate will possibly be determined: with every reason to hope, the timidity inseparable from love makes me dread a full explanation of my sentiments: if her native softness should have deceived me—but I will not study to be unhappy.

LETTER XCV.95.

I have been telling Fitzgerald I am jealous of his prodigious attention to Emily, whose cecisbeo he has been the last ten days: the simpleton took me seriously, and began to vindicate himself, by explaining the nature of his regard for her, pleading her late indisposition as an excuse for shewing her some extraordinary civilities.

I let him harangue ten minutes, then stops me him short, puts on my poetical face, and repeats,

He smiled, kissed my hand, praised my amazing penetration, and was going to take this opportunity of saying a thousand civil things, when my divine Rivers appeared on the side of the hill; I flew to meet him, and left my love to finish the conversation alone.

I am the happiest of all possible women; Fitzgerald is in the sullens about your brother; surely there is no pleasure in nature equal to that of plaguing a fellow who really loves one, especially if he has as much merit as Fitzgerald, for otherwise he would not be worth tormenting. He had better not pout with me: I believe I know who will be tired first.

I have passed a most delicious day: Fitzgerald took it into his wise head to endeavor to make me jealous of a little pert French-woman, the wife of a Croix de St. Louis, who I know he despises; I then thought myself at full liberty to play off all my airs, which I did with ineffable success, and have sent him home in a humor to hang himself. Your brother stays the evening, so does a very handsome fellow I have been flirting with all the day: Fitz was engaged here too, but I told him it was impossible for him not to attend Madame La Brosse to Quebec; he looked at me with a spite in his countenance which charmed me to the soul, and handed the fair lady to his carriole.

I’ll teach him to coquet, Lucy; let him take his Madame La Brosse: indeed, as her husband is at Montreal, I don’t see how he can avoid pursuing his conquest: I am delighted, because I know she is his aversion.

Emily calls me to cards. Adieu! my dear little Lucy.

LETTER XCVI.96.

I have but a moment, my dear Ned, to tell you, that without so much as asking your leave, and in spite of all your wise admonitions, your lovely sister has this morning consented to make me the happiest of mankind: to-morrow gives me all that is excellent and charming in woman.

You are to look on my writing this letter as the strongest proof I ever did, or ever can give you of my friendship. I must love you with no common affection to remember at this moment that there is such a man in being: perhaps you owe this recollection only to your being brother to the loveliest woman nature ever formed; whose charms in a month have done more towards my conversion than seven years of your preaching would have done. I am going back to Clarges Street. Adieu!

LETTER XCVII.97.

I am afraid you knew very little of the sex, my dear brother, when you cautioned me so strongly against loving Mr. Temple: I should perhaps, with all his merit, have never thought of him but for that caution.

There is something very interesting to female curiosity in the idea of these very formidable men, whom no woman can see without danger; we gaze on the terrible creature at a distance, see nothing in him so very alarming; he approaches, our little hearts palpitate with fear, he is gentle, attentive, respectful; we are surprized at this respect, we are sure the world wrongs the dear civil creature; he flatters, we are pleased with his flattery; our little hearts still palpitate—but not with fear.

In short, my dear brother, if you wish to serve a friend with us, describe him as the most dangerous of his sex; the very idea that he is so, makes us think resistance vain, and we throw down our defensive arms in absolute despair.

I am not sure this is the reason of my discovering Mr. Temple to be the most amiable of men; but of this I am certain, that I love him with the most lively affection, and that I am convinced, notwithstanding all you have said, that he deserves all my tenderness.

Indeed, my dear prudent brother, you men fancy yourselves extremely wise and penetrating, but you don’t know each other half so well as we know you: I shall make Temple in a few weeks as tame a domestic animal as you can possibly be, even with your Emily.

I hope you won’t be very angry with me for accepting an agreable fellow, and a coach and six: if you are, I can only say, that finding the dear man steal every day upon my heart, and recollecting how very dangerous a creature he was,

Please to observe, mamma was on Mr. Temple’s side, and that I only take him from obedience to her commands. He has behaved like an angel to her; but I leave himself to explain how: she has promised to live with us. We are going a party to Richmond, and only wait for Mr. Temple.

With all my pertness, I tremble at the idea that to-morrow will determine the happiness or misery of my life.

LETTER XCVIII.98.

Were I convinced of your conversion, my dear Jack, I should be the happiest man breathing in the thought of your marrying my sister; but I tremble lest this resolution should be the effect of passion merely, and not of that settled esteem and tender confidence without which mutual repentance will be the necessary consequence of your connexion.

Lucy is one of the most beautiful women I ever knew, but she has merits of a much superior kind; her understanding and her heart are equally lovely: she has also a sensibility which exceedingly alarms me for her, as I know it is next to impossible that even her charms can fix a heart so long accustomed to change.

Do I not guess too truly, my dear Temple, when I suppose the charming mistress is the only object you have in view; and that the tender amiable friend, the pleasing companion, the faithful confidante, is forgot?

I will not however anticipate evils: if any merit has power to fix you, Lucy’s cannot fail of doing it.

I expect with impatience a further account of an event in which my happiness is so extremely interested.

If she is yours, may you know her value, and you cannot fail of being happy: I only fear from your long habit of improper attachments; naturally, I know not a heart filled with nobler sentiments than yours, nor is there on earth a man for whom I have equal esteem. Adieu!

LETTER XCIX.99.

I have received your second letter, my dear Temple, with the account of your marriage.

Nothing could make me so happy as an event which unites a sister I idolize to the friend on earth most dear to me, did I not tremble for your future happiness, from my perfect knowledge of both.

I know the sensibility of Lucy’s temper, and that she loves you: I know also the difficulty of weaning the heart from such a habit of inconstancy as you have unhappily acquired.

Virtues like Lucy’s will for ever command your esteem and friendship; but in marriage it is equally necessary to keep love alive: her beauty, her gaiety, her delicacy, will do much; but it is also necessary, my dearest Temple, that you keep a guard on your heart, accustomed to liberty, to give way to every light impression.

I need not tell you, who have experienced the truth of what I say, that happiness is not to be found in a life of intrigue; there is no real pleasure in the possession of beauty without the heart; with it, the fears, the anxieties, a man not absolutely destitute of humanity must feel for the honor of her who ventures more than life for him, must extremely counterbalance his transports.

Of all the situations this world affords, a marriage of choice gives the fairest prospect of happiness; without love, life would be a tasteless void; an unconnected human being is the most wretched of all creatures: by love I would be understood to mean that tender lively friendship, that mixed sensation, which the libertine never felt; and with which I flatter myself my amiable sister cannot fail of inspiring a heart naturally virtuous, however at present warped by a foolish compliance with the world.

I hope, my dear Temple, to see you recover your taste for those pleasures peculiarly fitted to our natures; to see you enjoy the pure delights of peaceful domestic life, the calm social evening hour, the circle of friends, the prattling offspring, and the tender impassioned smile of real love.

Your generosity is no more than I expected from your character; and to convince you of my perfect esteem, I so far accept it, as to draw out the money I have in the funds, which I intended for my sister: it will make my settlement here turn to greater advantage, and I allow you the pleasure of convincing Lucy of the perfect disinterestedness of your affection: it would be a trifle to you, and will make me happy.

But I am more delicate in regard to my mother, and will never consent to resume the estate I have settled on her: I esteem you above all mankind, but will not let her be dependent even on you: I consent she visit you as often as she pleases, but insist on her continuing her house in town, and living in every respect as she has been accustomed.

As to Lucy’s own little fortune, as it is not worth your receiving, suppose she lays it out in jewels? I love to see beauty adorned; and two thousand pounds, added to what you have given her, will set her on a footing in this respect with a nabobess.

Your marriage, my dear Temple, removes the strongest objection to mine; the money I have in the funds, which whilst Lucy was unmarried I never would have taken, enables me to fix to great advantage here. I have now only to try whether Emily’s friendship for me is sufficiently strong to give up all hopes of a return to England.

I shall make an immediate trial: you shall know the event in a few days. If she refuses me, I bid adieu to all my schemes, and embark in the first ship.

Give my kindest tenderest wishes to my mother and sister. My dear Temple, only know the value of the treasure you possess, and you must be happy. Adieu!

LETTER C.100.

Nothing can be more just than your Lordship’s observation; and I am the more pleased with it, as it coincides with what I had the honor of saying to you in my last, in regard to the impropriety, the cruelty, I had almost said the injustice, of your intention of deserting that world of which you are at once the ornament and the example.

Good people, as your Lordship observes, are generally too retired and abstracted to let their example be of much service to the world: whereas the bad, on the contrary, are conspicuous to all; they stand forth, they appear on the fore ground of the picture, and force themselves into observation.

’Tis to that circumstance, I am persuaded, we may attribute that dangerous and too common mistake, that vice is natural to the human heart, and virtuous characters the creatures of fancy; a mistake of the most fatal tendency, as it tends to harden our hearts, and destroy that mutual confidence so necessary to keep the bands of society from loosening, and without which man is the most ferocious of all beasts of prey.

Would all those whose virtues like your Lordship’s are adorned by politeness and knowledge of the world, mix more in society, we should soon see vice hide her head: would all the good appear in full view, they would, I am convinced, be found infinitely the majority.

Virtue is too lovely to be hid in cells, the world is her scene of action: she is soft, gentle, indulgent; let her appear then in her own form, and she must charm: let politeness be for ever her attendant, that politeness which can give graces even to vice itself, which makes superiority easy, removes the sense of inferiority, and adds to every one’s enjoyment both of himself and others.

I am interrupted, and must postpone till to-morrow what I have further to say to your Lordship. I have the honor to be, my Lord,

LETTER CI.101.

Your brother, my dear Lucy, has made me happy in communicating to me the account he has received of your marriage. I know Temple; he is, besides being very handsome, a fine, sprightly, agreable fellow, and is particularly formed to keep a woman’s mind in that kind of play, that gentle agitation, which will for ever secure her affection.

He has in my opinion just as much coquetry as is necessary to prevent marriage from degenerating into that sleepy kind of existence, which to minds of the awakened turn of yours and mine would be insupportable.

He has also a fine fortune, which I hold to be a pretty enough ingredient in marriage.

In short, he is just such a man, upon the whole, as I should have chose for myself.

Make my congratulations to the dear man, and tell him, if he is not the happiest man in the world, he will forfeit all his pretensions to taste; and if he does not make you the happiest woman, he forfeits all title to my favor, as well as to the favor of the whole sex.

I meant to say something civil; but, to tell you the truth, I am not en train; I am excessively out of humor: Fitzgerald has not been here of several days, but spends his whole time in gallanting Madame La Brosse, a woman to whom he knows I have an aversion, and who has nothing but a tolerable complexion and a modest assurance to recommend her.

I certainly gave him some provocation, but this is too much: however, ’tis very well; I don’t think I shall break my heart, though my vanity is a little piqued. I may perhaps live to take my revenge.

I am hurt, because I began really to like the creature; a secret however to which he is happily a stranger. I shall see him to-morrow at the governor’s, and suppose he will be in his penitentials: I have some doubt whether I shall let him dance with me; yet it would look so particular to refuse him, that I believe I shall do him the honor.

No, Lucy, if I forgive him this, I have lost all the free spirit of woman; he had the insolence to dance with Madame La Brosse to-night at the governor’s. I never will forgive him. There are men perhaps quite his equal!equals!—but ’tis no matter—I do him too much honor to be piqued—yet on the footing we were—I could not have believed—

I was so certain he would have danced with me, that I refused Colonel H——, one of the most agreable men in the place, and therefore could not dance at all. Nothing hurt me so much as the impertinent looks of the women; I could cry for vexation.

Would your brother have behaved thus to Emily? but why do I name other men with your brother! do you know he and Emily had the good-nature to refuse to dance, that my sitting still might be the less taken notice of? We all played at cards, and Rivers contrived to be of my party, by which he would have won Emily’s heart if he had not had it before.

LETTER CII.102.

I have been twice at Silleri with the intention of declaring my passion, and explaining my situation, to Emily; but have been prevented by company, which made it impossible for me to find the opportunity I wished.

Had I found that opportunity, I am not sure I should have made use of it; a degree of timidity is inseparable from true tenderness; and I am afraid of declaring myself a lover, lest, if not beloved, I should lose the happiness I at present possess in visiting her as her friend: I cannot give up the dear delight I find in seeing her, in hearing her voice, in tracing and admiring every sentiment of that lovely unaffected generous mind as it rises.

In short, my Lucy, I cannot live without her esteem and friendship; and though her eyes, her attention to me, her whole manner, encourage me in the hope of being beloved, yet the possibility of my being mistaken makes me dread an explanation by which I hazard losing the lively pleasure I find in her friendship.

This timidity however must be conquered; ’tis pardonable to feel it, but not to give way to it. I have ordered my carriole, and am determined to make my attack this very morning like a man of courage and a soldier.

A letter from Bell Fermor, to whom I wrote this morning on the subject:

“You are a foolish creature, and know nothing of women. Dine at Silleri, and we will air after dinner; ’tis a glorious day, and if you are timid in a covered carriole, I give you up.

LETTER CIII.103.

She is an angel, my dear Lucy, and no words can do her justice: I am the happiest of mankind; I painted my passion with all the moving eloquence of undissembled love; she heard me with the most flattering attention; she said little, but her looks, her air, her tone of voice, her blushes, her very silence—how could I ever doubt her tenderness? have not those lovely eyes a thousand times betrayed the dear secret of her heart?

My Lucy, we were formed for each other; our souls are of intelligence; every thought, every idea—from the first moment I beheld her—I have a thousand things to say, but the tumult of my joy—she has given me leave to write to her; what has she not said in that permission?

I cannot go to bed; I will go and walk an hour on the battery; ’tis the loveliest night I ever beheld, even in Canada: the day is scarce brighter.

I have had the sweetest walk imaginable: the moon shines with a splendor I never saw before; a thousand streaming meteors add to her brightness; I have stood gazing on the lovely planet, and delighting myself with the idea that ’tis the same moon that lights my Emily.

Good night, my Lucy! I love you beyond all expression; I always loved you tenderly, but there is a softness about my heart to-night—this lovely woman—

I know not what I would say, but till this night I could never be said to live.

LETTER CIV.104.

I had this morning a short billet from her dear hand, entreating me to make up a quarrel between Bell Fermor and her lover: your friend has been indiscreet; her spirit of coquetry is eternally carrying her wrong; but in my opinion Fitzgerald has been at least equally to blame.

His behaviour at the governor’s on Thursday night was inexcusable, as it exposed her to the sneers of a whole circle of her own sex, many of them jealous of her perfections.

A lover should overlook little caprices, where the heart is good and amiable like Bell’s: I should think myself particularly obliged to bring this affair to an amicable conclusion, even if Emily had not desired it, as I was originally the innocent cause of their quarrel. In my opinion he ought to beg her pardon; and, as a friend tenderly interested for both, I have a right to tell him I think so: he loves her, and I know must suffer greatly, though a foolish pride prevents his acknowledging it.

My greatest fear is, that an idle resentment may engage him in an intrigue with the lady in question, who is a woman of gallantry, and whom he may find very troublesome hereafter. It is much easier to commence an affair of this kind than to break it off; and a man, though his heart was disengaged, should be always on his guard against any thing like an attachment where his affections are not really interested: meer passion or meer vanity will support an affair en passant; but, where the least degree of constancy and attention are expected, the heart must feel, or the lover is subjecting himself to a slavery as irksome as a marriage without inclination.

Temple will tell you I speak like an oracle; for I have often seen him led by vanity into this very disagreable situation: I hope I am not too late to save Fitzgerald from it.

All goes well: his proud heart is come down, he has begged her pardon, and is forgiven; you have no idea how civil both are to me, for having persuaded them to do what each of them has longed to do from the first moment: I love to advise, when I am sure the heart of the person advised is on my side. Both were to blame, but I always love to save the ladies from any thing mortifying to the dignity of their characters; a little pride in love becomes them, but not us; and ’tis always our part to submit on these occasions.

I never saw two happier people than they are at present, as I have a little preserved decorum on both sides, and taken the whole trouble of the reconciliation on myself: Bell knows nothing of my having applied to Fitzgerald, nor he that I did it at Emily’s request: my conversation with him on this subject seemed accidental. I was obliged to leave them, having business in town; but my lovely Emily thanked me by a smile which would overpay a thousand such little services.

I am to spend to-morrow at Silleri: how long shall I think this evening!

Adieu! my tenderest wishes attend you all!

LETTER CV.105.

Fitzgerald has been here, and has begged my pardon; he declares he had no thought of displeasing me at the governor’s, but from my behaviour was afraid of importuning me if he addressed me as usual.

I thought who would come to first; for my part, if he had stayed away for ever, I would not have suffered papa to invite him to Silleri: it was easy to see his neglect was all pique; it would have been extraordinary indeed if such a woman as Madame La Brosse could have rivalled me: I am something younger; and, if either my glass or the men are to be believed, as handsome: entre nous, there is some little difference; if she was not so very fair, she would be absolutely ugly; and these very fair women, you know, Lucy, are always insipid; she is the taste of no man breathing, though eternally making advances to every man; without spirit, fire, understanding, vivacity, or any quality capable of making amends for the mediocrity of her charms.

Her insolence in attempting to attach Fitzgerald is intolerable, especially when the whole province knows him to be my lover: there is no expressing to what a degree I hate her.

The next time we meet I hope to return her impertinence on Thursday night at the governor’s; I will never forgive Fitzgerald if he takes the least notice of her.

Emily has read my letter; and says she did not think I had so much of the woman in me; insists on my being civil to Madame La Brosse, but if I am, Lucy—

These Frenchwomen are not to be supported; they fancy vanity and assurance are to make up for the want of every other virtue; forgetting that delicacy, softness, sensibility, tenderness, are attractions to which they are strangers: some of them here are however tolerably handsome, and have a degree of liveliness which makes them not quite insupportable.

You will call all this spite, as Emily does, so I will say no more: only that, in order to shew her how very easy it is to be civil to a rival, I wish for the pleasure of seeing another French lady, that I could mention, at Quebec.

Good night, my dear! tell Temple, I am every thing but in love with him.

I will however own, I encouraged Fitzgerald by a kind look. I was so pleased at his return, that I could not keep up the farce of disdain I had projected: in love affairs, I am afraid, we are all fools alike.

LETTER CVI.106.

Come to my dressing-room, my dear; I have a thousand things to say to you: I want to talk of my Rivers, to tell you all the weakness of my soul.

No, my dear, I cannot love him more, a passion like mine will not admit addition; from the first moment I saw him my whole soul was his: I knew not that I was dear to him; but true genuine love is self-existent, and does not depend on being beloved: I should have loved him even had he been attached to another.

This declaration has made me the happiest of my sex; but it has not increased, it could not increase, my tenderness: with what softness, what diffidence, what respect, what delicacy, was this declaration made! my dear friend, he is a god, and my ardent affection for him is fully justified.

I love him—no words can speak how much I love him.

My passion for him is the first and shall be the last of my life: my bosom never heaved a sigh but for my Rivers.

Will you pardon the folly of a heart which till now was ashamed to own its feelings, and of which you are even now the only confidante?

I find all the world so insipid, nothing amuses me one moment; in short, I have no pleasure but in Rivers’s conversation, nor do I count the hours of his absence in my existence.

I know all this will be called folly, but it is a folly which makes all the happiness of my life.

You love, my dear Bell; and therefore will pardon the weakness of your

LETTER CVII.107.

Yes, my dear, I love, at least I think so; but, thanks to my stars, not in the manner you do.

I prefer Fitzgerald to all the rest of his sex; but I count the hours of his absence in my existence; and contrive sometimes to pass them pleasantly enough, if any other agreable man is in the way: in short, I relish flattery and attention from others, though I infinitely prefer them from him.

I certainly love him, for I was jealous of Madame La Brosse; but, in general, I am not alarmed when I see him flirt a little with others. Perhaps my vanity was as much wounded as my love, with regard to Madame La Brosse.

I find love is quite a different plant in different soils; it is an exotic, and grows faintly, with us coquets; but in its native climate with you people of sensibility and sentiment.

Adieu! I will attend you in a quarter of an hour.

LETTER CVIII.108.

Not alarmed, my dear, at his attention to others? believe me, you know nothing of love.

I think every woman who beholds my Rivers a rival; I imagine I see in every female countenance a passion tender and lively as my own; I turn pale, my heart dies within me, if I observe his eyes a moment fixed on any other woman; I tremble at the possibility of his changing; I cannot support the idea that the time may come when I may be less dear to my Rivers than at present. Do you believe it possible, my dearest Bell, for any heart, not prepossessed, to be insensible one moment to my Rivers?

He is formed to charm the soul of woman; his delicacy, his sensibility, the mind that speaks through those eloquent eyes; the thousand graces of his air, the sound of his voice—my dear, I never heard him speak without feeling a softness of which it is impossible to convey an idea.

But I am wrong to encourage a tenderness which is already too great; I will think less of him; I will not talk of him; do not speak of him to me, my dear Bell: talk to me of Fitzgerald; there is no danger of your passion becoming too violent.

I wish you loved more tenderly, my dearest; you would then be more indulgent to my weakness: I am ashamed of owning it even to you.

Ashamed, did I say? no, I rather glory in loving the most amiable, the most angelic of mankind.

Speak of him to me for ever; I abhor all conversation of which he is not the subject. I am interrupted. Adieu!

My dearest, I tremble; he is at the door; how shall I meet him without betraying all the weakness of my heart? come to me this moment, I will not go down without you. Your father is come to fetch me; follow me, I entreat: I cannot see him alone; my heart is too much softened at this moment. He must not know to what excess he is beloved.

LETTER CIX.109.

I am at present, my dear Lucy, extremely embarrassed; Madame Des Roches is at Quebec: it is impossible for me not to be more than polite to her; yet my Emily has all my heart, and demands all my attention; there is but one way of seeing them both as often as I wish; ’tis to bring them as often as possible together: I wish extremely that Emily would visit her, but ’tis a point of the utmost delicacy to manage.

Will it not on reflection be cruel to Madame Des Roches? I know her generosity of mind, but I also know the weakness of the human heart: can she see with pleasure a beloved rival?

My Lucy, I never so much wanted your advice: I will consult Bell Fermor, who knows every thought of my Emily’s heart.

I have visited Madame Des Roches at her relation’s; she received me with a pleasure which was too visible not to be observed by all present: she blushed, her voice faltered when she addressed me; her eyes had a softness which seemed to reproach my insensibility: I was shocked at the idea of having inspired her with a tenderness not in my power to return; I was afraid of increasing that tenderness; I scarce dared to meet her looks.

I felt a criminal in the presence of this amiable woman; for both our sakes, I must see her seldom: yet what an appearance will my neglect have, after the attention she has shewed me, and the friendship she has expressed for me to all the world?

I know not what to determine. I am going to Silleri. Adieu till my return.

I have entreated Emily to admit Madame Des Roches among the number of her friends, and have asked her to visit her to-morrow morning: she changed color at my request, but promised to go.

I almost repent of what I have done: I am to attend Emily and Bell Fermor to Madame Des Roches in the morning: I am afraid I shall introduce them with a very bad grace. Adieu!

LETTER CX.110.

Could you have believed he would have expected such a proof of my desire to oblige him? but what can he ask that his Emily will refuse? I will see this friend of his, this Madame Des Roches; I will even love her, if it is in woman to be so disinterested. She loves him; he sees her; they say she is amiable; I could have wished her visit to Quebec had been delayed.

But he comes; he looks up; his eyes seem to thank me for this excess of complaisance: what is there I would not do to give him pleasure?

Do you think her so very pleasing, my dear Bell? she has fine eyes, but have they not more fire than softness? There was a vivacity in her manner which hurt me extremely: could she have behaved with such unconcern, had she loved as I do?

Do you think it possible, Lucy,Bell, for a Frenchwoman to love? is not vanity the ruling passion of their hearts?

May not Rivers be deceived in supposing her so much attached to him? was there not some degree of affectation in her particular attention to me? I cannot help thinking her artful.

Perhaps I am prejudiced: she may be amiable, but I will own she does not please me.

Rivers begged me to have a friendship for her; I am afraid this is more than is in my power: friendship, like love, is the child of sympathy, not of constraint.

LETTER CXI.111.

The inclosed, my dear, is as much to you as to me, perhaps more; I pardon the lady for thinking you the handsomest. Is not this the strongest proof I could give of my friendship? perhaps I should have been piqued, however, had the preference been given by a man; but I can with great tranquillity allow you to be the women’s beauty.

Dictate an answer to your little Bell, who waits your commands at her bureau.

“You and your lovely friend obliged me beyond words, my dear Bell, by your visit of yesterday: Madame Des RrochesRoches is charmed with you both: you will not be displeased when I tell you she gives Emily the preference; she says she is beautiful as an angel; that she should think the man insensible, who could see her without love; that she is touchant, to use her own word, beyond any thing she ever beheld.

“She however does justice to your charms, though Emily’s seem to affect her most. She even allows you to be perhaps more the taste of men in general.

“She intends paying her respects to you and Emily this afternoon; and has sent to desire me to conduct her. As it is so far, I would wish to find you at home.

LETTER CXII.112.

Always Madame Des Roches! but let her come: indeed, my dear, she is artful; she gains upon him by this appearance of generosity; I cannot return it, I do not love her; yet I will receive her with politeness.

He is to drive her too; but ’tis no matter; if the tenderest affection can secure his heart, I have nothing to fear: loving him as I do, it is impossible not to be apprehensive: indeed, my dear, he knows not how I love him.

LETTER CXIII.113.

Surely I am the weakest of my weak sex; I am ashamed to tell you all my feelings: I cannot conquer my dislike to Madame Des Roches: she said a thousand obliging things to me, she praised my Rivers; I made her no answer, I even felt tears ready to start; what must she think of me? there is a meanness in my jealousy of her, which I cannot forgive myself.

I cannot account for her attention to me, it is not natural; she behaved to me not only with politeness, but with the appearance of affection; she seemed to feel and pity my confusion. She is either the most artful, or the most noble of women.

LETTER CXII.114.

We are going to dine at a farm house in the country, where we are to meet other company, and have a ball: the snow begins a little to soften, from the warmth of the sun, which is greater than in England in May. Our winter parties are almost at an end.

My father drives Madame Des Roches, who is of our party, and your brother Emily; I hope the little fool will be easy now, Lucy; she is very humble, to be jealous of one, who, though really very pleasing, is neither so young nor so handsome as herself; and who professes to wish only for Rivers’s friendship.

But I have no right to say a word on this subject, after having been so extremely hurt at Fitzgerald’s attention to such a woman as Madame La Brosse; an attention too which was so plainly meant to pique me.

We are all, I am afraid, a little absurd in these affairs, and therefore ought to have some degree of indulgence for others.

Emily and I, however, differ in our ideas of love: it is the business of her life, the amusement of mine; ’tis the food of her hours, the seasoning of mine.

Or, in other words, she loves like a foolish woman, I like a sensible man: for men, you know, compared to women, love in about the proportion of one to twenty.

’Tis a mighty wrong thing, after all, Lucy, that parents will educate creatures so differently, who are to live with and for each other.

Every possible means is used, even from infancy, to soften the minds of women, and to harden those of men; the contrary endeavor might be of use, for the men creatures are unfeeling enough by nature, and we are born too tremblingly alive to love, and indeed to every soft affection.

Your brother is almost the only one of his sex I know, who has the tenderness of woman with the spirit and firmness of man: a circumstance which strikes every woman who converses with him, and which contributes to make him the favorite he is amongst us. Foolish women who cannot distinguish characters may possibly give the preference to a coxcomb; but I will venture to say, no woman of sense was ever much acquainted with Colonel Rivers without feeling for him an affection of some kind or other.

A propos to women, the estimable part of us are divided into two classes only, the tender and the lively.

The former, at the head of which I place Emily, are infinitely more capable of happiness; but, to counterbalance this advantage, they are also capable of misery in the same degree. We of the other class, who feel less keenly, are perhaps upon the whole as happy, at least I would fain think so.

For example, if Emily and I marry our present lovers, she will certainly be more exquisitely happy than I shall; but if they should change their minds, or any accident prevent our coming together, I am inclined to fancy my situation would be much the most agreable.

I should pout a month, and then look about for another lover; whilst the tender Emily would

and pine herself into a consumption.

Adieu! They wait for me.

We have had a very agreable day, Lucy, a pretty enough kind of a ball, and every body in good humor: I danced with Fitzgerald, whom I never knew so agreable.

Happy love is gay, I find; Emily is all sprightliness, your brother’s eyes have never left her one moment, and her blushes seemed to shew her sense of the distinction; I never knew her look so handsome as this day.

Do you know I felt for Madame Des Roches? Emily was excessively complaisant to her: she returned her civility, but I could perceive a kind of constraint in her manner, very different from the ease of her behaviour when we saw her before: she felt the attention of Rivers to Emily very strongly: in short, the ladies seemed to have changed characters for the day.

We supped with your brother on our return, and from his windows, which look on the river St. Charles, had the pleasure of observing one of the most beautiful objects imaginable, which I never remember to have seen before this evening.

You are to observe the winter method of fishing here, is to break openings like small fish ponds on the ice, to which the fish coming for air, are taken in prodigious quantities on the surface.

To shelter themselves from the excessive cold of the night, the fishermen build small houses of ice on the river, which are arranged in a semicircular form, and extend near a quarter of a mile, and which, from the blazing fires within, have a brilliant transparency and vivid lustre, not easy either to imagine or to describe: the starry semicircle looks like an immense crescent of diamonds, on which the sun darts his meridian rays.

Absolutely, Lucy, you see nothing in Europe: you are cultivated, you have the tame beauties of art; but to see nature in her lovely wild luxuriance, you must visit your brother when he is prince of the Kamaraskas.

The variety, as well of grand objects, as of amusements, in this country, confirms me in an opinion I have always had, that Providence had made the conveniences and inconveniences of life nearly equal every where.

We have pleasures here even in winter peculiar to the climate, which counterbalance the evils we suffer from its rigor.

Good night, my dear Lucy!

LETTER CXIII.115.

I have this moment, my dear, a letter from Montreal, describing some lands on Lake Champlain, which my friend thinks much better worth my taking than those near the Kamaraskas: he presses me to come up immediately to see them, as the ice on the rivers will in a few days be dangerous to travel on.

I am strongly inclined to go, and for this reason; I am convinced my wish of bringing about a friendship between Emily and Madame Des Roches, the strongest reason I had for fixing at the Kamaraskas, was an imprudent one: gratitude and (if the expression is not impertinent) compassion give me a softness in my behaviour to the latter, which a superficial observer would take for love, and which her own tenderness may cause even her to misconstrue; a circumstance which must retard her resolution of changing the affection with which she has honored me, into friendship.

I am also delicate in my love, and cannot bear to have it one moment supposed, my heart can know a wish but for my Emily.

Shall I say more? The blush on Emily’s cheek on her first seeing Madame Des Roches convinced me of my indiscretion, and that vanity alone carried me to desire to bring together two women, whose affection for me is from their extreme merit so very flattering.

I shall certainly now fix in Canada; I can no longer doubt of Emily’s tenderness, though she refuses me her hand, from motives which make her a thousand times more dear to me, but which I flatter myself love will over-rule.

I am setting off in an hour for Montreal, and shall call at Silleri to take Emily’s commands.

I asked her advice as to fixing the place of my settlement; she said much against my staying in America at all; but, if I was determined, recommended Lake Champlain rather than the Kamaraskas, on account of climate. Bell smiled; and a blush, which I perfectly understood, over-spread the lovely cheek of my sweet Emily. Nothing could be more flattering than this circumstance; had she seen Madame Des Roches with a calm indifference, had she not been alarmed at the idea of fixing near her, I should have doubted of the degree of her affection; a little apprehension is inseparable from real love.

My courage has been to-day extremely put to the proof: had I staid three days longer, it would have been impossible to have continued my journey.

The ice cracks under us at every step the horses set, a rather unpleasant circumstance on a river twenty fathom deep: I should not have attempted the journey had I been aware of this particular. I hope no man meets inevitable danger with more spirit, but no man is less fond of seeking it where it is honorably to be avoided.

I am going to sup with the seigneur of the village, who is, I am told, married to one of the handsomest women in the province.

Adieu! my dear! I shall write to you from Montreal.

LETTER CXIV.116.

I am arrived, my dear, after a very disagreable and dangerous journey; I was obliged to leave the river soon after I left Des Chambeaux, and to pursue my way on the land over melting snow, into which the horses feet sunk half a yard every step.

An officer just come from New York has given me a letter from you, which came thither by a private ship: I am happy to hear of your health, and that Temple’s affection for you seems rather to increase than lessen since your marriage.

You ask me, my dear Lucy, how to preserve this affection, on the continuance of which, you justly say, your whole happiness depends.

The question is perhaps the most delicate and important which respects human life; the caprice, the inconstancy, the injustice of men, makes the task of women in marriage infinitely difficult.

Prudence and virtue will certainly secure esteem; but, unfortunately, esteem alone will not make a happy marriage; passion must also be kept alive, which the continual presence of the object beloved is too apt to make subside into that apathy, so insupportable to sensible minds.

The higher your rank, and the less your manner of life separates you from each other, the more danger there will be of this indifference.

The poor, whose necessary avocations divide them all day, and whose sensibility is blunted by the coarseness of their education, are in no danger of being weary of each other; and, unless naturally vicious, you will see them generally happy in marriage; whereas even the virtuous, in more affluent situations, are not secure from this unhappy cessation of tenderness.

When I received your letter, I was reading Madame De Maintenon’s advice to the Dutchess of Burgundy, on this subject. I will transcribe so much of it as relates to the woman, leaving her advice to the princess to those whom it may concern.

“Do not hope for perfect happiness; there is no such thing in this sublunary state.

“Your sex is the more exposed to suffer, because it is always in dependence: be neither angry nor ashamed of this dependence on a husband, nor of any of those which are in the order of Providence.

“Let your husband be your best friend and your only confidant.

“Do not hope that your union will procure you perfect peace: the best marriages are those where with softness and patience they bear by turns with each other; there are none without some contradiction and disagreement.

“Do not expect the same degree of friendship that you feel: men are in general less tender than women; and you will be unhappy if you are too delicate in friendship.

“Beg of God to guard your heart from jealousy: do not hope to bring back a husband by complaints, ill humor, and reproaches. The only means which promise success, are patience and softness: impatience sours and alienates hearts; softness leads them back to their duty.

“In sacrificing your own will, pretend to no right over that of a husband: men are more attached to theirs than women, because educated with less constraint.

“They are naturally tyrannical; they will have pleasures and liberty, yet insist that women renounce both: do not examine whether their rights are well founded; let it suffice to you, that they are established; they are masters, we have only to suffer and obey with a good grace.”

Thus far Madame De Maintenon, who must be allowed to have known the heart of man, since, after having been above twenty years a widow, she enflamed, even to the degree of bringing him to marry her, that of a great monarch, younger than herself, surrounded by beauties, habituated to flattery, in the plenitude of power, and covered with glory; and retained him in her chains to the last moment of his life.

Do not, however, my dear, be alarmed at the picture she has drawn of marriage; nor fancy with her, that women are only born to suffer and to obey.

That we are generally tyrannical, I am obliged to own; but such of us as know how to be happy, willingly give up the harsh title of master, for the more tender and endearing one of friend; men of sense abhor those customs which treat your sex as if created meerly for the happiness of the other; a supposition injurious to the Deity, though flattering to our tyranny and self-love; and wish only to bind you in the soft chains of affection.

Equality is the soul of friendship: marriage, to give delight, must join two minds, not devote a slave to the will of an imperious lord; whatever conveys the idea of subjection necessarily destroys that of love, of which I am so convinced, that I have always wished the word obey expunged from the marriage ceremony.

If you will permit me to add my sentiments to those of a lady so learned in the art of pleasing; I would wish you to study the taste of your husband, and endeavor to acquire a relish for those pleasures which appear most to affect him; let him find amusement at home, but never be peevish at his going abroad; he will return to you with the higher gust for your conversation: have separate apartments, since your fortune makes it not inconvenient; be always elegant, but not too expensive, in your dress; retain your present exquisite delicacy of every kind; receive his friends with good-breeding and complacency; contrive such little parties of pleasure as you know are agreable to him, and with the most agreable people you can select: be lively even to playfulness in your general turn of conversation with him; but, at the same time, spare no pains so to improve your understanding, which is an excellent one, as to be no less capable of being the companion of his graver hours: be ignorant of nothing which it becomes your sex to know, but avoid all affectation of knowledge: let your oeconomy be exact, but without appearing otherwise than by the effect.

Do not imitate those of your sex who by ill temper make a husband pay dear for their fidelity; let virtue in you be drest in smiles; and be assured that chearfulness is the native garb of innocence.

In one word, my dear, do not lose the mistress in the wife, but let your behaviour to him as a husband be such as you would have thought most proper to attract him as a lover: have always the idea of pleasing before you, and you cannot fail to please.

Having lectured you, my dear Lucy, I must say a word to Temple: a great variety of rules have been given for the conduct of women in marriage; scarce any for that of men; as if it was not essential to domestic happiness, that the man should preserve the heart of her with whom he is to spend his life; or as if bestowing happiness were not worth a man’s attention, so he possessed it: if, however, it is possible to feel true happiness without giving it.

You, my dear Temple, have too just an idea of pleasure to think in this manner: you would be beloved; it has been the pursuit of your life, though never really attained perhaps before. You at present possess a heart full of sensibility, a heart capable of loving with ardor, and from the same cause as capable of being estranged by neglect: give your whole attention to preserving this invaluable treasure; observe every rule I have given to her, if you would be happy; and believe me, the heart of woman is not less delicate than tender; their sensibility is more keen, they feel more strongly than we do, their tenderness is more easily wounded, and their hearts are more difficult to recover if once lost.

At the same time, they are both by nature and education more constant, and scarce ever change the object of their affections but from ill treatment: for which reason there is some excuse for a custom which appears cruel, that of throwing contempt on the husband for the ill conduct of the wife.

Above all things, retain the politeness and attention of a lover; and avoid that careless manner which wounds the vanity of human nature, a passion given us, as were all passions, for the wisest ends, and which never quits us but with life.

There is a certain attentive tenderness, difficult to be described, which the manly of our sex feel, and which is peculiarly pleasing to woman: ’tis also a very delightful sensation to ourselves, as well as productive of the happiest consequences: regarding them as creatures placed by Providence under our protection, and depending on us for their happiness, is the strongest possible tie of affection to a well-turned mind.

If I did not know Lucy perfectly, I should perhaps hesitate in the next advice I am going to give you; which is, to make her the confidante, and the only confidante, of your gallantries, if you are so unhappy as to be inadvertently betrayed into any: her heart will possibly be at first a little wounded by the confession, but this proof of perfect esteem will increase her friendship for you; she will regard your error with compassion and indulgence, and lead you gently back by her endearing tenderness to honor and herself.

Of all tasks I detest that of giving advice; you are therefore under infinite obligation to me for this letter.

Be assured of my tenderest affection; and believe me,

LETTER CXV.117.

Nothing can be more true, my Lord, than that poverty is ever the inseparable companion of indolence.

I see proofs of it every moment before me; with a soil fruitful beyond all belief, the Canadians are poor on lands which are their own property, and for which they pay only a trifling quit-rent to their seigneurs.

This indolence appears in every thing: you scarce see the meanest peasant walking; even riding on horseback appears to them a fatigue insupportable; you see them lolling at ease, like their lazy lords, in carrioles and calashes, according to the season; a boy to guide the horse on a seat in the front of the carriage, too lazy even to take the trouble of driving themselves, their hands in winter folded in an immense muff, though perhaps their families are in want of bread to eat at home.

The winter is passed in a mixture of festivity and inaction; dancing and feasting in their gayer hours; in their graver smoking, and drinking brandy, by the side of a warm stove: and when obliged to cultivate the ground in spring to procure the means of subsistence, you see them just turn the turf once lightly over, and, without manuring the ground, or even breaking the clods of earth, throw in the seed in the same careless manner, and leave the event to chance, without troubling themselves further till it is fit to reap.

I must, however, observe, as some alleviation, that there is something in the climate which strongly inclines both the body and mind, but rather the latter, to indolence: the heat of the summer, though pleasing, enervates the very soul, and gives a certain lassitude unfavorable to industry; and the winter, at its extreme, binds up and chills all the active faculties of the soul.

Add to this, that the general spirit of amusement, so universal here in winter, and so necessary to prevent the ill effects of the season, gives a habit of dissipation and pleasure, which makes labor doubly irksome at its return.

Their religion, to which they are extremely bigoted, is another great bar, as well to industry as population: thertheir numerous festivals inure them to idleness; their religious houses rob the state of many subjects who might be highly useful at present, and at the same time retard the increase of the colony.

Sloth and superstition equally counterwork providence, and render the bounty of heaven of no effect.

I am surprized the French, who generally make their religion subservient to the purposes of policy, do not discourage convents, and lessen the number of festivals, in the colonies, where both are so peculiarly pernicious.

It is to this circumstance one may in great measure attribute the superior increase of the British American settlements compared to those of France: a religion which encourages idleness, and makes a virtue of celibacy, is particularly unfavorable to colonization.

However religious prejudice may have been suffered to counterwork policy under a French government, it is scarce to be doubted that this cause of the poverty of Canada will by degrees be removed; that these people, slaves at present to ignorance and superstition, will in time be enlightened by a more liberal education, and gently led by reason to a religion which is not only preferable, as being that of the country to which they are now annexed, but which is so much more calculated to make them happy and prosperous as a people.

Till that time, till their prejudices subside, it is equally just, humane, and wise, to leave them the free right of worshiping the Deity in the manner which they have been early taught to believe the best, and to which they are consequently attached.

It would be unjust to deprive them of any of the rights of citizens on account of religion, in America, where every other sect of dissenters are equally capable of employ with those of the established church; nay where, from whatever cause, the church of England is on a footing in many colonies little better than a toleration.

It is undoubtedly, in a political light, an object of consequence every where, that the national religion, whatever it is, should be as universal as possible, agreement in religious worship being the strongest tie to unity and obedience; had all prudent means been used to lessen the number of dissenters in our colonies, I cannot avoid believing, from what I observe and hear, that we should have found in them a spirit of rational loyalty, and true freedom, instead of that factious one from which so much is to be apprehended.

It seems consonant to reason, that the religion of every country should have a relation to, and coherence with, the civil constitution: the Romish religion is best adapted to a despotic government, the presbyterian to a republican, and that of the church of England to a limited monarchy like ours.

As therefore the civil government of America is on the same plan with that of the mother country, it were to be wished the religious establishment was also the same, especially in those colonies where the people are generally of the national church; though with the fullest liberty of conscience to dissenters of all denominations.

I would be clearly understood, my Lord; from all I have observed here, I am convinced, nothing would so much contribute to diffuse a spirit of order, and rational obedience, in the colonies, as the appointment, under proper restrictions, of bishops: I am equally convinced that nothing would so much strengthen the hands of government, or give such pleasure to the well-affected in the colonies, who are by much the most numerous, as such an appointment, however clamored against by a few abettors of sedition.

I am called upon for this letter, and must remit to another time what I wished to say more to your Lordship in regard to this country.

LETTER CXVI.118.

I am indeed, Madam, this inconsistent creature. I have at once refused to marry Colonel Rivers, and owned to him all the tenderness of my soul.

Do not however think me mad, or suppose my refusal the effect of an unmeaning childish affectation of disinterestedness: I can form to myself no idea of happiness equal to that of spending my life with Rivers, the best, the most tender, the most amiable of mankind; nor can I support the idea of his marrying any other woman: I would therefore marry him to-morrow were it possible without ruining him, without dooming him to a perpetual exile, and obstructing those views of honest ambition at home, which become his birth, his connexions, his talents, his time of life; and with which, as his friend, it is my duty to inspire him.

His affection for me at present blinds him, he sees no object but me in the whole universe; but shall I take advantage of that inebriation of tenderness, to seduce him into a measure inconsistent with his real happiness and interest? He must return to England, must pursue fortune in that world for which he was formed: shall his Emily retard him in the glorious race? shall she not rather encourage him in every laudable attempt? shall she suffer him to hide that shining merit in the uncultivated wilds of Canada, the seat of barbarism and ignorance, which entitles him to hope a happy fate in the dear land of arts and arms?

I entreat you to do all you can to discourage his design. Remind him that his sister’s marriage has in some degree removed the cause of his coming hither; that he can have now no motive for fixing here, but his tenderness for me; that I shall be justly blamed by all who love him for keeping him here. Tell him, I will not marry him in Canada; that his stay makes the best mother in the world wretched; that he owes his return to himself, nay to his Emily, whose whole heart is set on seeing him in a situation worthy of him: though without ambition as to myself, I am proud, I am ambitious for him; if he loves me, he will gratify that pride, that ambition; and leave Canada to those whose duty confines them here, or whose interest it is to remain unseen. Let him not once think of me in his determination: I am content to be beloved, and will leave all else to time. You cannot so much oblige or serve me, as by persuading Colonel Rivers to return to England.

LETTER CXVII.119.

Your brother, my dear, is gone to Montreal to look out for a settlement, and Emily to spend a fortnight at Quebec, with a lady she knew in England, who is lately arrived from thence by New York.

I am lost without my friend, though my lover endeavors in some degree to supply her place; he lays close siege; I know not how long I shall be able to hold out: this fine weather is exceedingly in his favor; the winter freezes up all the avenues to the heart; but this sprightly April sun thaws them again amazingly. I was the cruellest creature breathing whilst the chilly season lasted, but can answer for nothing now the sprightly May is approaching.

I can see papa is vastly in Fitzgerald’s interest; but he knows our sex well enough to keep this to himself.

I shall, however, for decency’s sake, ask his opinion on the affair as soon as I have taken my resolution; which is the very time at which all the world ask advice of their friends.

A letter from Emily, which I must answer: she is extremely absurd, which your tender lovers always are.

Sir George Clayton had left Montreal some days before your brother arrived there; I was pleased to hear it, because, with all your bother’sbrother’s good sense, and concern for Emily’s honor, and Sir George’s natural coldness of temper, a quarrel between them would have been rather difficult to have been avoided.

LETTER CXVIII.120.

Do you think, my dear, that Madame Des Roches has heard from Rivers? I wish you would ask her this afternoon at the governor’s: I am anxious to know, but ashamed to enquire.

Not, my dear, that I have the weakness to be jealous; but I shall think his letter to me a higher compliment, if I know he writes to nobody else. I extremely approve his friendship for Madame Des Roches; she is very amiable, and certainly deserves it: but you know, Bell, it would be cruel to encourage an affection, which she must conquer, or be unhappy: if she did not love him, there would be nothing wrong in his writing to her; but, as she does, it would be doing her the greatest injury possible: ’tis as much on her account as my own I am thus anxious.

Did you ever read so tender, yet so lively a letter as Rivers’s to me? he is alike in all: there is in his letters, as in his conversation,

Even strangers listen to him with an involuntary attention, and hear him with a pleasure for which they scarce know how to account.

He charms even without intending it, and in spite of himself; but when he wishes to please, when he addresses the woman he loves, when his eyes speak the soft language of his heart, when your Emily reads in them the dear confession of his tenderness, when that melodious voice utters the sentiments of the noblest mind that ever animated a human form—My dearest, the eloquence of angels cannot paint my Rivers as he is.

I am almost inclined not to go to the governor’s to-night; I am determined not to dance till Rivers returns, and I know there are too many who will be ready to make observations on my refusal: I think I will stay at home, and write to him against Monday’s post: I have a thousand things to say, and you know we are continually interrupted at Quebec; I shall have this evening to myself, as all the world will be at the governor’s.

LETTER CXIX.121.

I dare say, my dear, Madame Des Roches has not heard from Rivers; but suppose she had. If he loves you, of what consequence is it to whom he writes? I would not for the world any friend of yours should ask her such a question.

I shall call upon you at six o’clock, and shall expect to find you determined to go to the governor’s this evening, and to dance: Fitzgerald begs the honor of being your partner.

Believe me, Emily, these kind of unmeaning sacrifices are childish; your heart is new to love, and you have all the romance of a girl: Rivers would, on your account, be hurt to hear you had refused to dance in his absence, though he might be flattered to know you had for a moment entertained such an idea.

I pardon you for having the romantic fancies of seventeen, provided you correct them with the good sense of four and twenty.

Adieu! I have engaged myself to Colonel H——, on the presumption that you are too polite to refuse to dance with Fitzgerald, and too prudent to refuse to dance at all.

LETTER CXX.122.

How unjust have I been in my hatred of Madame Des Roches! she spent yesterday with us, and after dinner desired to converse with me an hour in my apartment, where she opened to me all her heart on the subject of her love for Rivers.

She is the noblest and most amiable of women, and I have been in regard to her the most capricious and unjust: my hatred of her was unworthy my character; I blush to own the meanness of my sentiments, whilst I admire the generosity of hers.

Why, my dear, should I have hated her? she was unhappy, and deserved rather my compassion: I had deprived her of all hope of being beloved, it was too much to wish to deprive her also of his conversation. I knew myself the only object of Rivers’s love; why then should I have envied her his friendship? she had the strongest reason to hate me, but I should have loved and pitied her.

Can there be a misfortune equal to that of loving Rivers without hope of a return? Yet she has not only born this misfortune without complaint, but has been the confidante of his passion for another; he owned to her all his tenderness for me, and drew a picture of me, “which,which, she told me, ought, had she listened to reason, to have destroyed even the shadow of hope: but that love, ever ready to flatter and deceive, had betrayed her into the weakness of supposing it possible I might refuse him, and that gratitude might, in that case, touch his heart with tenderness for one who loved him with the most pure and disinterested affection; that her journey to Quebec had removed the veil love had placed between her and truth; that she was now convinced the faint hope she had encouraged was madness, and that our souls were formed for each other.

She owned she still loved him with the most lively affection; yet assured me, since she was not allowed to make the most amiable of mankind happy herself, she wished him to be so with the woman on earth she thought most worthy of him.

She added, that she had on first seeing me, though she thought me worthy his heart, felt an impulse of dislike which she was ashamed to own, even now that reason and reflexion had conquered so unworthy a sentiment; that Rivers’s complaisance had a little dissipated her chagrin, and enabled her to behave to me in the manner she did: that she had, however, almost hated me at the ball in the country: that the tenderness in Rivers’s eyes that day whenever they met mine, and his comparative inattention to her, had wounded her to the soul.

That this preference had, however, been salutary, though painful; since it had determined her to conquer a passion, which could only make her life wretched if it continued; that, as the first step to this conquest, she had resolved to see him no more: that she would return to her house the moment she could cross the river with safety; and conjured me, for her sake, to persuade him to give up all thoughts of a settlement near her; that she could not answer for her own heart if she continued to see him; that she believed in love there was no safety but in flight.

That his absence had given her time to think coolly; and that she now saw so strongly the amiableness of my character, and was so convinced of my perfect tenderness for him, that she should hate herself were she capable of wishing to interrupt our happiness.

That she hoped I would pardon her retaining a tender remembrance of a man who, had he never seen me, might have returned her affection; that she thought so highly of my heart, as to believe I could not hate a woman who esteemed me, and who solicited my friendship, though a happy rival.”rival.

I was touched, even to tears, at her behaviour: we embraced; and, if I know my own weak foolish heart, I love her.

She talks of leaving Quebec before Rivers’s return; she said, her coming was an imprudence which only love could excuse; and that she had no motive for her journey but the desire of seeing him, which was so lively as to hurry her into an indiscretion of which she was afraid the world took but too much notice. What openness, what sincerity, what generosity, was there in all she said!

How superior, my dear, is her character to mine! I blush for myself on the comparison; I am shocked to see how much she soars above me: how is it possible Rivers should not have preferred her to me? Yet this is the woman I fancied incapable of any passion but vanity.

I am sure, my dear Bell, I am not naturally envious of the merit of others; but my excess of love for Rivers makes me apprehensive of every woman who can possibly rival me in his tenderness.

I was hurt at Madame Des Roches’s uncommon merit; I saw with pain the amiable qualities of her mind; I could scarce even allow her person to be pleasing: but this injustice is not that of my natural temper, but of love.

She is certainly right, my dear, to see him no more; I applaud, I admire her resolution: do you think, however, she would pursue it if she loved as I do? she has perhaps loved before, and her heart has lost something of its native trembling sensibility.

I wish my heart felt her merit as strongly as my reason: I esteem, I admire, I even love her at present; but I am convinced Rivers’s return while she continues here would weaken these sentiments of affection: the least appearance of preference, even for a moment, would make me relapse into my former weakness. I adore, I idolize her character; but I cannot sincerely wish to cultivate her friendship.

Let me see you this afternoon at Quebec; I am told the roads will not be passable for carrioles above three days longer: let me therefore see you as often as I can before we are absolutely shut from each other.

LETTER CXXI.123.

England, however populous, is undoubtedly, my Lord, too small to afford very large supplies of people to her colonies: and her people are also too useful, and of too much value, to be suffered to emigrate, if they can be prevented, whilst there is sufficient employment for them at home.

It is not only our interest to have colonies; they are not only necessary to our commerce, and our greatest and surest sources of wealth, but our very being as a powerful commercial nation depends on them: it is therefore an object of all others most worthy our attention, that they should be as flourishing and populous as possible.

It is however equally our interest to support them at as little expence of our own inhabitants as possible: I therefore look on the acquisition of such a number of subjects as we found in Canada, to be a much superior advantage to that of gaining ten times the immense tract of land ceded to us, if uncultivated and destitute of inhabitants.

But it is not only contrary to our interest to spare many of our own people as settlers in America; it must also be considered, that, if we could spare them, the English are the worst settlers on new lands in the universe.

Their attachment to their native country, especially amongst the lower ranks of people, is so very strong, that few of the honest and industrious can be prevailed on to leave it; those therefore who go, are generally the dissolute and the idle, who are of no use any where.

The English are also, though industrious, active, and enterprizing, ill fitted to bear the hardships, and submit to the wants, which inevitably attend an infant settlement even on the most fruitful lands.

The Germans, on the contrary, with the same useful qualities, have a patience, a perseverance, an abstinence, which peculiarly fit them for the cultivation of new countries; too great encouragement therefore cannot be given to them to settle in our colonies: they make better settlers than our own people; and at the same time their numbers are an acquisition of real strength where they fix, without weakening the mother country.

It is long since the populousness of Europe has been the cause of her sending out colonies: a better policy prevails; mankind are enlightened; we are now convinced, both by reason and experience, that no industrious people can be too populous.

The northern swarms were compelled to leave their respective countries, not because those countries were unable to support them, but because they were too idle to cultivate the ground: they were a ferocious, ignorant, barbarous people, averse to labor, attached to war, and, like our American savages, believing every employment not relative to this favorite object, beneath the dignity of man.

Their emigrations therefore were less owing to their populousness, than to their want of industry, and barbarous contempt of agriculture and every useful art.

It is with pain I am compelled to say, the late spirit of encouraging the monopoly of farms, which, from a narrow short-sighted policy, prevails amongst our landed men at home, and the alarming growth of celibacy amongst the peasantry which is its necessary consequence, to say nothing of the same ruinous increase of celibacy in higher ranks, threaten us with such a decrease of population, as will probably equal that caused by the ravages of those scourges of heaven, the sword, the famine, and the pestilence.

If this selfish policy continues to extend itself, we shall in a few years be so far from being able to send emigrants to America, that we shall be reduced to solicit their return, and that of their posterity, to prevent England’s becoming in its turn an uncultivated desart.

But to return to Canada; this large acquisition of people is an invaluable treasure, if managed, as I doubt not it will be, to the best advantage; if they are won by the gentle arts of persuasion, and the gradual progress of knowledge, to adopt so much of our manners as tends to make them happier in themselves, and more useful members of the society to which they belong: if with our language, which they should by every means be induced to learn, they acquire the mild genius of our religion and laws, and that spirit of industry, enterprize, and commerce, to which we owe all our greatness.

Amongst the various causes which concur to render France more populous than England, notwithstanding the disadvantage of a less gentle government, and a religion so very unfavorable to the increase of mankind, the cultivation of vineyards may be reckoned a principal one; as it employs a much greater number of hands than even agriculture itself, which has however infinite advantages in this respect above pasturage, the certain cause of a want of people wherever it prevails above its due proportion.

Our climate denies us the advantages arising from the culture of vines, as well as many others which nature has accorded to France; a consideration which should awaken us from the lethargy into which the avarice of individuals has plunged us, and set us in earnest on improving every advantage we enjoy, in order to secure us by our native strength from so formidable a rival.

The want of bread to eat, from the late false and cruel policy of laying small farms into great ones, and the general discouragement of tillage which is its consequence, is in my opinion much less to be apprehended than the want of people to eat it.

In every country where the inhabitants are at once numerous and industrious, there will always be a proportionable cultivation.

This evil is so very destructive and alarming, that, if the great have not virtue enough to remedy it, it is to be hoped it will in time, like most great evils, cure itself.

Your Lordship enquires into the nature of this climate in respect to health. The air being uncommonly pure and serene, it is favorable to life beyond any I ever knew: the people live generally to a very advanced age; and are remarkably free from diseases of every kind, except consumptions, to which the younger part of the inhabitants are a good deal subject.

It is however a circumstance one cannot help observing, that they begin to look old much sooner than the people in Europe; on which my daughter observes, that it is not very pleasant for women to come to reside in a country where people have a short youth, and a long old age.

The diseases of cold countries are in general owing to want of perspiration; for which reason exercise, and even dissipation, are here the best medicines.

The Indians therefore shewed their good sense in advising the French, on their first arrival, to use dancing, mirth, chearfulness, and content, as the best remedies against the inconveniences of the climate.

I have already swelled this letter to such a length, that I must postpone to another time my account of the peculiar natural productions of Canada; only observing, that one would imagine heaven intended a social intercourse between the most distant nations, by giving them productions of the earth so very different each from the other, and each more than sufficient for itself, that the exchange might be the means of spreading the bond of society and brotherhood over the whole globe.

In my opinion, the man who conveys, and causes to grow, in any country, a grain, a fruit, or even a flower, it never possessed before, deserves more praise than a thousand heroes: he is a benefactor, he is in some degree a creator.

LETTER CXXII.124.

Is it possible, my dear Emily, you can, after all I have said, persist in endeavoring to disswade me from a design on which my whole happiness depends, and which I flattered myself was equally essential to yours? I forgave, I even admired, your first scruple; I thought it generosity: but I have answered it; and if you had loved as I do, you would never again have named so unpleasing a subject.

Does your own heart tell you mine will call a settlement here, with you, an exile? Examine yourself well, and tell me whether your aversion to staying in Canada is not stronger than your tenderness for your Rivers.

I am hurt beyond all words at the earnestness with which you press Mrs. Melmoth to disswade me from staying in this country: you press with warmth my return to England, though it would put an eternal bar between us: you give reasons which, though the understanding may approve, the heart abhors: can ambition come in competition with tenderness? you fancy yourself generous, when you are only indifferent. Insensible girl! you know nothing of love.

Write to me instantly, and tell me every emotion of your soul, for I tremble at the idea that your affection is less lively than mine.

Adieu! I am wretched till I hear from you. Is it possible, my Emily, you can have ceased to love him, who, as you yourself own, sees no other object than you in the universe?

You know not the heart of your Rivers, if you suppose it capable of any ambition but that dear one of being beloved by you.

What have you said, my dear Emily? You will not marry me in Canada. You have passed a hard sentence on me: you know my fortune will not allow me to marry you in England.

THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE.

Vol. III

LETTER CXXIII.125.

How different, my Rivers, is your last letter from all your Emily has ever yet received from you! What have I done to deserve such suspicions? How unjust are your sex in all their connexions with ours!

Do I not know love? and does this reproach come from the man on whom my heart doats, the man, whom to make happy, I would with transport cease to live? can you one moment doubt your Emily’s tenderness? have not her eyes, her air, her look, her indiscretion, a thousand times told you, in spite of herself, the dear secret of her heart, long before she was conscious of the tenderness of yours?

Did I think only of myself, I could live with you in a desart; all places, all situations, are equally charming to me, with you: without you, the whole world affords nothing which could give a moment’s pleasure to your Emily.

Let me but see those eyes in which the tenderest love is painted, let me but hear that enchanting voice, I am insensible to all else, I know nothing of what passes around me; all that has no relation to you passes away like a morning dream, the impression of which is effaced in a moment: my tenderness for you fills my whole soul, and leaves no room for any other idea. Rank, fortune, my native country, my friends, all are nothing in the balance with my Rivers.

For your own sake, I once more entreat you to return to England: I will follow you; I will swear never to marry another; I will see you, I will allow you to continue the tender inclination which unites us. Fortune may there be more favorable to our wishes than we now hope; may join us without destroying the peace of the best of parents.

But if you persist, if you will sacrifice every consideration to your tenderness—My Rivers, I have no will but yours.

LETTER CXXIV.126.

Lucy, being deprived of the pleasure of writing to you, as she intended, by Lady Anne Melville’s dining with her, desires me to make her apologies.

Allow me to say something for myself, and to share my joy with one who will, I am sure, so very sincerely sympathize with me in it.

I could not have believed, my dear Bell, it had been so very easy a thing to be constant: I declare, but don’t mention this, lest I should be laughed at, I have never felt the least inclination for any other woman, since I married your lovely friend.

I now see a circle of beauties with the same indifference as a bed of snowdrops: no charms affect me but hers; the whole creation to me contains no other woman.

I find her every day, every hour, more lovely; there is in my Lucy a mixture of modesty, delicacy, vivacity, innocence, and blushing sensibility, which add a thousand unspeakable graces to the most beautiful person the hand of nature ever formed.

There is no describing her enchanting smile, the smile of unaffected, artless tenderness. How shall I paint to you the sweet involuntary glow of pleasure, the kindling fire of her eyes, when I approach; or those thousand little dear attentions of which love alone knows the value?

I never, my dear girl, knew happiness till now; my tenderness is absolutely a species of idolatry; you cannot think what a slave this lovely girl has made me.

As a proof of this, the little tyrant insists on my omitting a thousand civil things I had to say to you, and attending her and Lady Anne immediately to the opera; she bids me however tell you, she loves you passing the love of woman, at least of handsome women, who are not generally celebrated for their candor and good will to each other.

LETTER CXXV.127.

Indeed?

Absolutely, my dear Temple, the sex ought never to forgive Lucy for daring to monopolize so very charming a fellow. I had some thoughts of a little badinage with you myself, if I should return soon to England; but I now give up the very idea.

One thing I will, however, venture to say, that love Lucy as much as you please, you will never love her half so well as she deserves; which, let me tell you, is a great deal for one woman, especially, as you well observe, one handsome woman, to say of another.

I am, however, not quite clear your idea is just: cattism, if I may be allowed the expression, seeming more likely to be the vice of those who are conscious of wanting themselves the dear power of pleasing.

Handsome women ought to be, what I profess myself, who am however only pretty, too vain to be envious; and yet we see, I am afraid, too often, some little sparks of this mean passion between rival beauties.

Impartially speaking, I believe the best natured women, and the most free from envy, are those who, without being very handsome, have that je ne sçai quoi, those nameless graces, which please even without beauty; and who therefore, finding more attention paid to them by men than their looking-glass tells them they have a right to expect, are for that reason in constant good humor with themselves, and of course with every body else: whereas beauties, claiming universal empire, are at war with all who dispute their rights; that is, with half the sex.

I am very good natured myself; but it is, perhaps, because, though a pretty woman, I am more agreable than handsome, and have an infinity of the je ne sçai quoi.

A propos, my dear Temple, I am so pleased with what Montesquieu says on this subject, that I find it is not in my nature to resist translating and inserting it; you cannot then say I have sent you a letter in which there is nothing worth reading.

I beg you will read this to the misses, for which you cannot fail of their thanks, and for this reason; there are perhaps a dozen women in the world who do not think themselves handsome, but I will venture to say, not one who does not think herself agreable, and that she has this nameless charm, this so much talked of I know not what, which is so much better than beauty. But to my Montesquieu:

“There is sometimes, both in persons and things, an invisible charm, a natural grace, which we cannot define, and which we are therefore obliged to call the je ne sçai quoi.

“It seems to me that this is an effect principally founded on surprize.

“We are touched that a person pleases us more than she seemed at first to have a right to do; and we are agreably surprized that she should have known how to conquer those defects which our eyes shewed us, but which our hearts no longer believe: ’tis for this reason that women, who are not handsome, have often graces or agreablenesses and that beautiful ones very seldom have.

“For a beautiful person does generally the very contrary of what we expected; she appears to us by degrees less amiable, and, after having surprized us pleasingly, she surprizes us in a contrary manner; but the agreable impression is old, the disagreable one new: ’tis also seldom that beauties inspire violent passions, which are almost always reserved for those who have graces, that is to say, agreablenesses, which we did not expect, and which we had no reason to expect.

“Magnificent habits have seldom grace, which the dresses of shepherdesses often have.

“We admire the majesty of the draperies of Paul Veronese; but we are touched with the simplicity of Raphael, and the exactness of Corregio.

“Paul Veronese promises much, and pays all he promises; Raphael and Corregio promise little, and pay much, which pleases us more.

“These graces, these agreablenesses, are found oftener in the mind than in the countenance: the charms of a beautiful countenance are seldom hidden, they appear at first view; but the mind does not shew itself except by degrees, when it pleases, and as much as it pleases; it can conceal itself in order to appear, and give that species of surprize to which those graces, of which I speak, owe their existence.

“This grace, this agreableness, is less in the countenance than in the manner; the manner changes every instant, and can therefore every moment give us the pleasure of surprize: in one word, a woman can be handsome but in one way, but she may be agreable in a hundred thousand.”

I like this doctrine of Montesquieu’s extremely, because it gives every woman her chance, and because it ranks me above a thousand handsomer women, in the dear power of inspiring passion.

Cruel creature! why did you give me the idea of flowers? I now envy you your foggy climate: the earth with you is at this moment covered with a thousand lovely children of the spring; with us, it is an universal plain of snow.

Our beaux are terribly at a loss for similies: you have lilies of the valley for comparisons; we nothing but what with the idea of whiteness gives that of coldness too.

This is all the quarrel I have with Canada: the summer is delicious, the winter pleasant with all its severities; but alas! the smiling spring is not here; we pass from winter to summer in an instant, and lose the sprightly season of the Loves.

A letter from the God of my idolatry—I must answer it instantly.

LETTER CXXVI.128.

Yes, I give permission; you may come this afternoon: there is something amusing enough in your dear nonsense; and, as my father will be at Quebec, I shall want amusement.

It will also furnish a little chat for the misses at Quebec; a tête à tête with a tall Irishman is a subject which cannot escape their sagacity.

LETTER CXXVII.129.

After my immense letter to your love, my dear, you must not expect me to say much to your fair ladyship.

I am glad to find you manage Temple so admirably; the wisest, the wildest, the gravest, and the gayest, are equally our slaves, when we have proper ideas of petticoat politics.

I intend to compose a code of laws for the government of husbands, and get it translated into all the modern languages; which I apprehend will be of infinite benefit to the world.

Do you know I am a greater fool than I imagined? You may remember I was always extremely fond of sweet waters. I left them off lately, upon an idea, though a mistaken one, that Fitzgerald did not like them: I yesterday heard him say the contrary; and, without thinking of it, went mechanically to my dressing-room, and put lavender water on my handkerchief.

This is, I am afraid, rather a strong symptom of my being absurd; however, I find it pleasant to be so, and therefore give way to it.

It is divinely warm to-day, though the snow is still on the ground; it is melting fast however, which makes it impossible for me to get to Quebec. I shall be confined for at least a week, and Emily not with me: I die for amusement. Fitzgerald ventures still at the hazard of his own neck and his horseshorse's legs; for the latter of which animals I have so much compassion, that I have ordered both to stay at home a few days, which days I shall devote to study and contemplation, and little pert chit-chats with papa, who is ten times more fretful at being kept within doors than I am: I intend to win a little fortune of him at piquet before the world breaks in upon our solitude. Adieu! I am idle, but always

LETTER CXXVIII.130.

’Tis indeed, my Lord, an advantage for which we cannot be too thankful to the Supreme Being, to be born in a country, whose religion and laws are such, as would have been the objects of our wishes, had we been born in any other.

Our religion, I would be understood to mean Christianity in general, carries internal conviction by the excellency of its moral precepts, and its tendency to make mankind happy; and the peculiar mode of it established in England breathes beyond all others the mild spirit of the Gospel, and that charity which embraces all mankind as brothers.

It is equally free from enthusiasm and superstition; its outward form is decent and respectful, without affected ostentation; and what shews its excellence above all others is, that every other church allows it to be the best, except itself: and it is an established rule, that he has an undoubted right to the first rank of merit, to whom every man allows the second.

As to our government, it would be impertinent to praise it; all mankind allow it to be the master-piece of human wisdom.

It has the advantage of every other form, with as little of their inconveniences as the imperfection attendant on all human inventions will admit: it has the monarchic quickness of execution and stability, the aristocratic diffusive strength and wisdom of counsel, the democratic freedom and equal distribution of property.

When I mention equal distribution of property, I would not be understood to mean such an equality as never existed, nor can exist but in idea; but that general, that comparative equality, which leaves to every man the absolute and safe possession of the fruits of his labors; which softens offensive distinctions, and curbs pride, by leaving every order of men in some degree dependent on the other; and admits of those gentle and almost imperceptible gradations, which the poet so well calls,

The prince is here a centre of union; an advantage, the want of which makes a democracy, which is so beautiful in theory, the very worst of all possible governments, except absolute monarchy, in practice.

I am called upon, my Lord, to go to the citadel, to see the going away of the ice; an object so new to me, that I cannot resist the curiosity I have to see it, though my going thither is attended with infinite difficulty.

Bell insists on accompanying me: I am afraid for her, but she will not be refused.

At our return, I will have the honor of writing again to your Lordship, by the gentleman who carries this to New York.

LETTER CXXIX.131.

We are returned, my Lord, from having seen an object as beautiful and magnificent in itself, as pleasing from the idea it gives of renewing once more our intercourse with Europe.

Before I saw the breaking up of the vast body of ice, which forms what is here called the bridge, from Quebec to Point Levi, I imagined there could be nothing in it worth attention; that the ice would pass away, or dissolve gradually, day after day, as the influence of the sun, and warmth of the air and earth increased; and that we should see the river open, without having observed by what degrees it became so.

But I found the great river, as the savages with much propriety call it, maintain its dignity in this instance as in all others, and assert its superiority over those petty streams which we honor with the names of rivers in England. Sublimity is the characteristic of this western world; the loftiness of the mountains, the grandeur of the lakes and rivers, the majesty of the rocks shaded withwith a picturesque variety of beautiful trees and shrubs, and crowned with the noblest of the offspring of the forest, which form the banks of the latter, are as much beyond the power of fancy as that of description: a landscape-painter might here expand his imagination, and find ideas which he will seek in vain in our comparatively little world.

The object of which I am speaking has all the American magnificence.

The ice before the town, or, to speak in the Canadian stile, the bridge, being of a thickness not less than five feet, a league in length, and more than a mile broad, resists for a long time the rapid tide that attempts to force it from the banks.

We are prepared by many previous circumstances to expect something extraordidinaryextraordinary in this event, if I may so call it: every increase of heat in the weather for near a month before the ice leaves the banks; every warm day gives you terror infor those you see venturing to pass it in carrioles; yet one frosty night makes it again so strong, that even the ladies, and the timid amongst them, still venture themselves over in parties of pleasure; though greatly alarmed at their return, if a few hours of uncommon warmth intervenes.

But, during the last fortnight, the alarm grows indeed a very serious one: the eye can distinguish, even at a considerable distance, that the ice is softened and detached from the banks; and you dread every step being death to those who have still the temerity to pass it, which they will continue always to do till one or more pay their rashness with their lives.

From the time the ice is no longer a bridge on which you see crowds driving with such vivacity on business or pleasure, every one is looking eagerly for its breaking away, to remove the bar to the continually wished and expected event, of the arrival of ships from that world from whence we have seemed so long in a manner excluded.

The hour is come; I have been with a crowd of both sexes, and all ranks, hailing the propitious moment: our situation, on the top of Cape Diamond, gave us a prospect some leagues above and below the town; above Cape Diamond the river was open, it was so below Point Levi, the rapidity of the current having forced a passage for the water under the transparent bridge, which for more than a league continued firm.

We stood waiting with all the eagerness of expectation; the tide came rushing with an amazing impetuosity; the bridge seemed to shake, yet resisted the force of the waters; the tide recoiled, it made a pause, it stood still, it returned with redoubled fury, the immense mass of ice gave way.

A vast plain appeared in motion; it advanced with solemn and majestic pace: the points of land on the banks of the river for a few moments stopped its progress; but the immense weight of so prodigious a body, carried along by a rapid current, bore down all opposition with a force irresistible.

There is no describing how beautiful the opening river appears, every moment gaining on the sight, till, in a time less than can possibly be imagined, the ice passing Point Levi, is hid in one moment by the projecting land, and all is once more a clear plain before you; giving at once the pleasing, but unconnected, ideas of that direct intercourse with Europe from which we have been so many months excluded, and of the earth’s again opening her fertile bosom, to feast our eyes and imagination with her various verdant and flowery productions.

I am afraid I have conveyed a very inadequate idea of the scene which has just passed before me; it however struck me so strongly, that it was impossible for me not to attempt it.

If my painting has the least resemblance to the original, your Lordship will agree with me, that the very vicissitudes of season here partake of the sublimity which so strongly characterizes the country.

The changes of season in England, being slow and gradual, are but faintly felt; but being here sudden, instant, violent, afford to the mind, with the lively pleasure arising from meer change, the very high additional one of its being accompanied with grandeur. I have the honor to be,

LETTER CXXX.132.

Certainly, my dear, you are so far right; a nun may be in many respects a less unhappy being than some women who continue in the world; her situation is, I allow, paradise to that of a married woman, of sensibility and honor, who dislikes her husband.

The cruelty therefore of some parents here, who sacrifice their children to avarice, in forcing or seducing them into convents, would appear more striking, if we did not see too many in England guilty of the same inhumanity, though in a different manner, by marrying them against their inclination.

Your letter reminds me of what a French married lady here said to me on this very subject: I was exclaiming violently against convents; and particularly urging, what I thought unanswerable, the extreme hardship of one circumstance; that, however unhappy the state was found on trial, there was no retreat; that it was for life.

Madame De —— turned quick, “And is not marriage for life?”

“True, Madam; and, what is worse, without a year of probation. I confess the force of your argument.”

I have never dared since to mention convents before Madame De ——.

Between you and I, Lucy, it is a little unreasonable that people will come together entirely upon sordid principles, and then wonder they are not happy: in delicate minds, love is seldom the consequence of marriage.

It is not absolutely certain that a marriage of which love is the foundation will be happy; but it is infallible, I believe, that no other can be so to souls capable of tenderness.

Half the world, you will please to observe, have no souls; at least none but of the vegetable and animal kinds: to this species of beings, love and sentiment are entirely unnecessary; they were made to travel through life in a state of mind neither quite awake nor asleep; and it is perfectly equal to them in what company they take the journey.

You and I, my dear, are something awakened; therefore it is necessary we should love where we marry, and for this reason: our souls, being of the active kind, can never be totally at rest; therefore, if we were not to love our husbands, we should be in dreadful danger of loving somebody else.

For my part, whatever tall maiden aunts and cousins may say of the indecency of a young woman’s distinguishing one man from another, and of love coming after marriage; I think marrying, in that expectation, on sober prudent principles, a man one dislikes, the most deliberate and shameful degree of vice of which the human mind is capable.

I cannot help observing here, that the great aim of modern education seems to be, to eradicate the best impulses of the human heart, love, friendship, compassion, benevolence; to destroy the social, and encrease the selfish principle. Parents wisely attempt to root out those affections which should only be directed to proper objects, and which heaven gave us as the means of happiness; not considering that the success of such an attempt is doubtful; and that, if they succeed, they take from life all its sweetness, and reduce it to a dull unactive round of tasteless days, scarcely raised above vegetation.

If my ideas of things are right, the human mind is naturally virtuous; the business of education is therefore less to give us good impressions, which we have from nature, than to guard us against bad ones, which are generally acquired.

And so ends my sermon.

A letter from your brother; I believe the dear creature is out of his wits: Emily has consented to marry him, and one would imagine by his joy that nobody was ever married before.

He is going to Lake Champlain, to fix on his seat of empire, or rather Emily’s; for I see she will be the reigning queen, and he only her majesty’s consort.

I am going to Quebec; two or three dry days have made the roads passable for summer carriages: Fitzgerald is come to fetch me. Adieu!

I am come back, have seen Emily, who is the happiest woman existing; she has heard from your brother, and in such terms—his letter breathes the very soul of tenderness. I wish they were richer. I don’t half relish their settling in Canada; but, rather than not live together, I believe they would consent to be set ashore on a desart island. Good night.

LETTER CXXXI.133.

The pleasure the mind finds in travelling, has undoubtedly, my Lord, its source in that love of novelty, that delight in acquiring new ideas, which is interwoven in its very frame, which shews itself on every occasion from infancy to age, which is the first passion of the human mind, and the last.

There is nothing the mind of man abhors so much as a state of rest: the great secret of happiness is to keep the soul in continual action, without those violent exertions, which wear out its powers, and dull its capacity of enjoyment; it should have exercise, not labor.

Vice may justly be called the fever of the soul, inaction its lethargy; passion, under the guidance of virtue, its health.

I have the pleasure to see my daughter’s coquetry giving place to a tender affection for a very worthy man, who seems formed to make her happy: his fortune is easy; he is a gentleman, and a man of worth and honor, and, what perhaps inclines me to be more partial to him, of my own profession.

I mention the last circumstance in order to introduce a request, that your Lordship would have the goodness to employ that interest for him in the purchase of a majority, which you have so generously offered to me; I am determined, as there is no prospect of real duty, to quit the army, and retire to that quiet which is so pleasing at my time of life: I am privately in treaty with a gentleman for my company, and propose returning to England in the first ship, to give in my resignation: in this point, as well as that of serving Mr. Fitzgerald, I shall without scruple call upon your Lordship’s friendship.

I have settled every thing with Fitzgerald, but without saying a word to Bell; and he is to seduce her into matrimony as soon as he can, without my appearing at all interested in the affair: he is to ask my consent in form, though we have already settled every preliminary.

All this, as well as my intention of quitting the army, is yet a secret to my daughter.

But to the questions your Lordship does me the honor to ask me in regard to the Americans, I mean those of our old colonies: they appear to me, from all I have heard and seen of them, a rough, ignorant, positive, very selfish, yet hospitable people.

Strongly attached to their own opinions, but still more so to their interests, in regard to which they have inconceivable sagacity and address; but in all other respects I think naturally inferior to the Europeans; as education does so much, it is however difficult to ascertain this.

I am rather of opinion they would not have refused submission to the stamp act, or disputed the power of the legislature at home, had not their minds been first embittered by what touched their interests so nearly, the restraints laid on their trade with the French and Spanish settlements, a trade by which England was an immense gainer; and by which only a few enormously rich West India planters were hurt.

Every advantage you give the North Americans in trade centers at last in the mother country; they are the bees, who roam abroad for that honey which enriches the paternal hive.

Taxing them immediately after their trade is restrained, seems like drying up the source, and expecting the stream to flow.

Yet too much care cannot be taken to support the majesty of government, and assert the dominion of the parent country.

A good mother will consult the interest and happiness of her children, but will never suffer her authority to be disputed.

An equal mixture of mildness and spirit cannot fail of bringing these mistaken people, misled by a few of violent temper and ambitious views, into a just sense of their duty.

LETTER CXXXII.134.

I have got my Emily again, to my great joy; I am nobody without her. As the roads are already very good, we walk and ride perpetually, and amuse ourselves as well as we can, en attendant your brother, who is gone a settlement hunting.

The quickness of vegetation in this country is astonishing; though the hills are still covered with snow, and though it even continues in spots in the vallies, the latter with the trees and shrubs in the woods are already in beautiful verdure; and the earth every where putting forth flowers in a wild and lovely variety and profusion.

’Tis amazingly pleasing to see the strawberries and wild pansies peeping their little foolish heads from beneath the snow.

Emily and I are prodigiously fond after having been separated; it is a divine relief to us both, to have again the delight of talking of our lovers to each other: we have been a month divided; and neither of us have had the consolation of a friend to be foolish to.

Fitzgerald dines with us: he comes.

LETTER CXXXIII.135.

I have been conversing, if the expression is not improper when I have not had an opportunity of speaking a syllable, more than two hours with a French officer, who has declaimed the whole time with the most astonishing volubility, without uttering one word which could either entertain or instruct his hearers; and even without starting any thing that deserved the name of a thought.

People who have no ideas out of the common road are, I believe, generally the greatest talkers, because all their thoughts are low enough for common conversation; whereas those of more elevated understandings have ideas which they cannot easily communicate except to persons of equal capacity with themselves.

This might be brought as an argument of the inferiority of womenswomen’s understanding to ours, as they are generally greater talkers, if we did not consider the limited and trifling educations we give them; men, amongst other advantages, have that of acquiring a greater variety as well as sublimity of ideas.

Women who have conversed much with men are undoubtedly in general the most pleasing companions; but this only shews of what they are capable when properly educated, since they improve so greatly by that accidental and limited opportunity of acquiring knowledge.

Indeed the two sexes are equal gainers, by conversing with each other: there is a mutual desire of pleasing, in a mixed conversation, restrained by politeness, which sets every amiable quality in a stronger light.

Bred in ignorance from one age to another, women can learn little of their own sex.

I have often thought this the reason why officers daughters are in general more agreable than other women in an equal rank of life.

I am almost tempted to bring Bell as an instance; but I know the blindness and partiality of nature, and therefore check what paternal tenderness would dictate.

I am shocked at what your Lordship tells me of Miss H——. I know her imprudent, I believe her virtuous: a great flow of spirits has been ever hurrying her into indiscretions; but allow me to say, my Lord, it is particularly hard to fix the character by our conduct, at a time of life when we are not competent judges of our own actions; and when the hurry and vivacity of youth carries us to commit a thousand follies and indiscretions, for which we blush when the empire of reason begins.

Inexperience and openness of temper betray us in early life into improper connexions; and the very constancy, and nobleness of nature, which characterize the best hearts, continue the delusion.

I know Miss H—— perfectly; and am convinced, if her father will treat her as a friend, and with the indulgent tenderness of affection endeavor to wean her from a choice so very unworthy of her, he will infallibly succeed; but if he treats her with harshness, she is lost for ever.

He is too stern in his behaviour, too rigid in his morals: it is the interest of virtue to be represented as she is, lovely, smiling, and ever walking hand in hand with pleasure: we were formed to be happy, and to contribute to the happiness of our fellow creatures; there are no real virtues but the social ones.

’Tis the enemy of human kind who has thrown around us the gloom of superstition, and taught that austerity and voluntary misery isare virtue.

If moralists would indeed improve human nature, they should endeavor to expand, not to contract the heart; they should build their system on the passions and affections, the only foundations of the nobler virtues.

From the partial representations of narrow-minded bigots, who paint the Deity from their own gloomy conceptions, the young are too often frighted from the paths of virtue; despairing of ideal perfections, they give up all virtue as unattainable, and start aside from the road which they falsely suppose strewed with thorns.

I have studied the heart with some attention; and am convinced every parent, who will take the pains to gain his childrenschildren’s friendship, will for ever be the guide and arbiter of their conduct: I speak from a happy experience.

Notwithstanding all my daughter says in gaiety of heart, she would sooner even relinquish the man she loves, than offend a father in whom she has always found the tenderest and most faithful of friends. I am interrupted, and have only time to say, I have the honor to be,

LETTER CXXXIV.136.

Madame Des Roches has just left us; she returns to-day to the Kamaraskas: she came to take leave of us, and shewed a concern at parting from Emily, which really affected me. She is a most amiable woman; Emily and she were in tears at parting; yet I think my sweet friend is not sorry for her return: she loves her, but yet cannot absolutely forget she has been her rival, and is as well satisfied that she leaves Quebec before your brother’s arrival.

The weather is lovely; the earth is in all its verdure, the trees in foliage, and no snow but on the sides of the mountains; we are looking eagerly out for ships from dear England: I expect by them volumes of letters from my Lucy. We expect your brother in a week: in short, we are all hope and expectation; our hearts beat at every rap of the door, supposing it brings intelligence of a ship, or of the dear man.

Fitzgerald takes such amazing pains to please me, that I begin to think it is pity so much attention should be thrown away; and am half inclined, from meer compassion, to follow the example you have so heroically set me.

Absolutely, Lucy, it requires amazing resolution to marry.

LETTER CXXXV.137.

I am returned, my Rivers, to my sweet friend, and have again the dear delight of talking of you without restraint; she bears with, she indulges me in, all my weakness; if that name ought to be given to a tenderness of which the object is the most exalted and worthy of his sex.

It was impossible I should not have loved you; the soul that spoke in those eloquent eyes told me, the first moment we met, our hearts were formed for each other; I saw in that amiable countenance a sensibility similar to my own, but which I had till then sought in vain; I saw there those benevolent smiles, which are the marks, and the emanations of virtue; those thousand graces which ever accompany a mind conscious of its own dignity, and satisfied with itself; in short, that mental beauty which is the express image of the Deity.

What defence had I against you, my Rivers, since your merit was such that my reason approved the weakness of my heart?

We have lost Madame Des Roches; we were both in tears at parting; we embraced, I pressed her to my bosom: I love her, my dear Rivers; I have an affection for her which I scarce know how to describe. I saw her every day, I found infinite pleasure in being with her; she talked of you, she praised you, and my heart was soothed; I however found it impossible to mention your name to her; a reserve for which I cannot account; I found pleasure in looking at her from the idea that she was dear to you, that she felt for you the tenderest friendship: do you know I think she has some resemblance of you? there is something in her smile, which gives me an idea of you.

Shall I, however, own all my folly? I never found this pleasure in seeing her when you were present: on the contrary, your attention to her gave me pain: I was jealous of every look; I even saw her amiable qualities with a degree of envy, which checked the pleasure I should otherwise have found in her conversation.

There is always, I fear, some injustice mixed with love, at least with love so ardent and tender as mine.

You, my Rivers, will however pardon that injustice which is a proof of my excess of tenderness.

Madame Des Roches has promised to write to me: indeed I will love her; I will conquer this little remain of jealousy, and do justice to the most gentle and amiable of women.

Why should I dislike her for seeing you with my eyes, for having a soul whose feelings resemble my own?

I have observed her voice is softened, and trembles like mine, when she names you.

My Rivers, you were formed to charm the heart of woman; there is more pleasure in loving you, even without the hope of a return, than in the adoration of all your sex: I pity every woman who is so insensible as to see you without tenderness. This is the only fault I ever found in Bell Fermor: she has the most lively friendship for you, but she has seen you without love. Of what materials must her heart be composed?

No other man can inspire the same sentiments with my Rivers; no other man can deserve them: the delight of loving you appears to me so superior to all other pleasures, that, of all human beings, if I was not Emily Montague, I would be Madame Des Roches.

I blush for what I have written; yet why blush for having a soul to distinguish perfection, or why conceal the real feelings of my heart?

I will never hide a thought from you; you shall be at once the confidant and the dear object of my tenderness.

In what words—my Rivers, you rule every emotion of my heart; dispose as you please of your Emily: yet, if you allow her to form a wish in opposition to yours, indulge her in the transport of returning you to your friends; let her receive you from the hands of a mother, whose happiness you ought to prefer even to hers.

Why will you talk of the mediocrity of your fortune? have you not enough for every real want? much less, with you, would make your Emily blest: what have the trappings of life to do with happiness? ’tis only sacrificing pride to love and filial tenderness; the worst of human passions to the best.

I have a thousand things to say, but am forced to steal this moment to write to you: we have some French ladies here, who are eternally coming to my apartment.

They are at the door. Adieu!

LETTER CXXXVI.138.

It were indeed, my Lord, to be wished that we had here schools, at the expence of the public, to teach English to the rising generation: nothing is a stronger tie of brotherhood and affection, a greater cement of union, than speaking one common language.

The want of attention to this circumstance has, I am told, had the worst effects possible in the province of New York, where the people, especially at a distance from the capital, continuing to speak Dutch, retain their affection for their ancient masters, and still look on their English fellow subjects as strangers and intruders.

The Canadians are the more easily to be won to this, or whatever else their own, or the general good requires, as their noblesse have the strongest attachment to a court, and that favor is the great object of their ambition: were English made by degrees the court language, it would soon be universally spoke.

Of the three great springs of the human heart, interest, pleasure, vanity, the last appears to me much the strongest in the Canadians; and I am convinced the most forcible tie their noblesse have to France, is their unwillingness to part with their croix de St. Louis: might not therefore some order of the same kind be instituted for Canada, and given to all who have the croix, on their sending back the ensigns they now wear, which are inconsistent with their allegiance as British subjects?

Might not such an order be contrived, to be given at the discretion of the governor, as well to the Canadian gentlemen who merited most of the government, as to the English officers of a certain rank, and such other English as purchased estates, and settled in the country? and, to give it additional lustre, the governor, for the time being, be always head of the order?

’Tis possible something of the same kind all over America might be also of service; the passions of mankind are nearly the same every where: at least I never yet saw the soil or climate, where vanity did not grow; and till all mankind become philosophers, it is by their passions they must be governed.

The common people, by whom I mean the peasantry, have been great gainers here by the change of masters; their property is more secure, their independence greater, their profits much more than doubled: it is not them therefore whom it is necessary to gain.

The noblesse, on the contrary, have been in a great degree undone: they have lost their employs, their rank, their consideration, and many of them their fortunes.

It is therefore equally consonant to good policy and to humanity that they should be considered, and in the way most acceptable to them; the rich conciliated by little honorary distinctions, those who are otherwise by sharing in all lucrative employs; and all of them by bearing a part in the legislature of their country.

The great objects here seem to be to heal those wounds, which past unhappy disputes have left still in some degree open; to unite the French and English, the civil and military, in one firm body; to raise a revenue, to encourage agriculture, and especially the growth of hemp and flax; and find a staple, for the improvement of a commerce, which at present labors under a thousand disadvantages.

But I shall say little on this or any political subject relating to Canada, for a reason which, whilst I am in this colony, it would look like flattery to give: let it suffice to say, that, humanly speaking, it is impossible that the inhabitants of this province should be otherwise than happy.

LETTER CXXXVII.139.

I confess the fact, my dear; I am, thanks to papa, amazingly learned, and all that, for a young lady of twenty-two: yet you will allow I am not the worse; no creature breathing would ever find it out: envy itself must confess, I talk of lace and blond like another christian woman.

I have been thinking, Lucy, as indeed my ideas are generally a little pindaric, how entertaining and improving would be the history of the human heart, if people spoke all the truth, and painted themselves as they really are: that is to say, if all the world were as sincere and honest as I am; for, upon my word, I have such a contempt for hypocrisy, that, upon the whole, I have always appeared to have fewer good qualities than I really have.

I am afraid we should find in the best characters, if we withdrew the veil, a mixture of errors and inconsistencies, which would greatly lessen our veneration.

Papa has been reading me a wise lecture, this morning, on playing the fool: I reminded him, that I was now arrived at years of indiscretion; that every body must have their day; and that those who did not play the fool young, ran a hazard of doing it when it would not half so well become them.

A propos to playing the fool, I am strongly inclined to believe I shall marry.

Fitzgerald is so astonishingly pressing—Besides, some how or other, I don’t feel happy without him: the creature has something of a magnetic virtue; I find myself generally, without knowing it, on the same side the room with him, and often in the next chair; and lay a thousand little schemes to be of the same party at cards.

I write pretty sentiments in my pocket-book, and carve his name on trees when nobody sees me: did you think it possible I could be such an ideot?

I am as absurd as even the gentle love-sick Emily.

I am thinking, my dear, how happy it is, since most human beings differ so extremely one from another, that heaven has given us the same variety in our tastes.

Your brother is a divine fellow, and yet there is a sauciness about Fitzgerald which pleases me better; as he has told me a thousand times, he thinks me infinitely more agreable than Emily.

Adieu! I am going to Quebec.

LETTER CXXXVIII.140.

Io triumphe! A ship from England! You can have no idea of the universal transport at the sight; the whole town was on the beach, eagerly gazing at the charming stranger, who danced gaily on the waves, as if conscious of the pleasure she inspired.

If our joy is so great, who preserve a correspondence with Europe, through our other colonies, during the winter, what must that of the French have been, who were absolutely shut up six months from the rest of the world?

I can scarce conceive a higher delight than they must have felt at being thus restored to a communication with mankind.

The letters are not delivered; our servant stays for them at the post-office; we expect him every moment: if I have not volumes from you, I shall be very angry.

He comes. Adieu! I have not patience to wait their being brought up stairs.

They are here; six letters from you; I shall give three of them to Emily to read, whilst I read the rest: you are very good, Lucy, and I will never call you lazy again.

LETTER CXXXIX.141.

Whilst I was sealing my letter, I received yours of the 1st of February.

I am excessively alarmed, my dear, at the account it gives me of Miss Montague’s having broke with her lover, and of my brother’s extreme affection for her.

I did not dare to let my mother see that letter, as I am convinced the very idea of a marriage which must for ever separate her from a son she loves to idolatry, would be fatal to her; she is altered since his leaving England more than you can imagine; she is grown pale and thin, her vivacity has entirely left her. Even my marriage scarce seemed to give her pleasure; yet such is her delicacy, her ardor for his happiness, she will not suffer me to say this to him, lest it should constrain him, and prevent his making himself happy in his own way. I often find her in tears in her apartment; she affects a smile when she sees me, but it is a smile which cannot deceive one who knows her whole soul as I do. In short, I am convinced she will not live long unless my brother returns. She never names him without being softened to a degree not to be expressed.

Amiable and lovely as you represent this charming woman, and great as the sacrifice is she has made to my brother, it seems almost cruelty to wish to break his attachment to her; yet, situated as they are, what can be the consequence of their indulging their tenderness at present, but ruin to both?

At all events, however, my dear, I intreat, I conjure you, to press my brother’s immediate return to England; I am convinced, my mother’s life depends on seeing him.

I have often been tempted to write to Miss Montague, to use her influence with him even against herself.

If she loves him, she will have his true happiness at heart; she will consider what a mind like his must hereafter suffer, should his fondness for her be fatal to the best of mothers; she will urge, she will oblige him to return, and make this step the condition of preserving her tenderness.

Read this letter to her; and tell her, it is to her affection for my brother, to her generosity, I trust for the life of a parent who is dearer to me than my existence.

Tell her my heart is hers, that I will receive her as my guardian angel, that we will never part, that we will be friends, that we will be sisters, that I will omit nothing possible to make her happy with my brother in England, and that I have very rational hopes it may be in time accomplished; but that, if she marries him in Canada, and suffers him to pursue his present design, she plants a dagger in the bosom of her who gave him life.

I scarce know what I would say, my dear Bell; but I am wretched; I have no hope but in you. Yet if Emily is all you represent her—

I am obliged to break off: my mother is here; she must not see this letter.

LETTER CXL.142.

Your letter of the 8th of April, my dear, was first read by Emily, being one of the three I gave her for that purpose, as I before mentioned.

She went through it, and melting into tears, left the room without speaking a word: she has been writing this morning, and I fancy to you, for she enquired when the mail set out for England, and seemed pleased to hear it went to-day.

I am excessively shocked at your account of Mrs. Rivers: assure her, in my name, of your brother’s immediate return; I know both him and Emily too well to believe they will sacrifice her to their own happiness: there is nothing, on the contrary, they will not suffer rather than even afflict her.

Do not, however, encourage an idea of ever breaking an attachment like theirs; an attachment founded less in passion than in the tenderest friendship, in a similarity of character, and a sympathy the most perfect the world ever saw.

Let it be your business, my Lucy, to endeavor to make them happy, and to remove the bars which prevent their union in England; and depend on seeing them there the very moment their coming is possible.

From what I know of your brother, I suppose he will insist on marrying Emily before he leaves Quebec; but, after your letter, which I shall send him, you may look on his return as infallible.

I send all yours and Temple’s letters for your brother to-day: you may expect to hear from him by the same mail with this.

LETTER CXLI.143.

My own happiness, my dear Rivers, in a marriage of love, makes me extremely unwilling to prevent your giving way to a tenderness, which promises you the same felicity, with so amiable a woman as both you and Bell Fermor represent Miss Montague to be.

But, my dear Ned, I cannot, without betraying your friendship, and hazarding all the quiet of your future days, dispense with myself from telling you, though I have her express commands to the contrary, that the peace, perhaps the life, of your excellent mother, depends on your giving up all thoughts of a settlement in America, and returning immediately to England.

I know the present state of your affairs will not allow you to marry this charming woman here, without descending from the situation you have ever held, and which you have a right from your birth to hold, in the world.

Would you allow me to gratify my friendship for you, and shew, at the same time, your perfect esteem for me, by commanding, what our long affection gives you a right to, such a part of my fortune as I could easily spare without the least inconvenience to myself, we might all be happy, and you might make your Emily so: but you have already convinced me, by your refusal of a former request of this kind, that your esteem for me is much less warm than mine for you; and that you do not think I merit the delight of making you happy.

I will therefore say no more on this subject till we meet, than that I have no doubt this letter will bring you immediately to us.

If the tenderness you express for Miss Montague is yet conquerable, it will surely be better for both it should be conquered, as fortune has been so much less kind to each of you than nature; but if your hearts are immoveably fixed on each other, if your love is of the kind which despises every other consideration, return to the bosom of friendship, and depend on our finding some way to make you happy.

If you persist in refusing to share my fortune, you can have no objection to my using all my interest, for a friend and brother so deservedly dear to me, and in whose happiness I shall ever find my own.

Allow me now to speak of myself; I mean of my dearer self, your amiable sister, for whom my tenderness, instead of decreasing, grows every moment stronger.

Yes, my friend, my sweet Lucy is every hour more an angel: her desire of being beloved, renders her a thousand times more lovely; a countenance animated by true tenderness will always charm beyond all the dead uninformed features the hand of nature ever framed; love embellishes the whole form, gives spirit and softness to the eyes, the most vivid bloom to the complexion, dignity to the air, grace to every motion, and throws round beauty almost the rays of divinity.

In one word, my Lucy was always more lovely than any other woman; she is now more lovely than even her former self.

You, my Rivers, will forgive the over-flowings of my fondness, because you know the merit of its object.

Adieu! We die to embrace you!

LETTER CXLII.144.

Your letter, Madam, to Miss Fermor, which, by an accident, was first read by me, has removed the veil which love had placed before mine eyes, and shewed me, in one moment, the folly of all those dear hopes I had indulged.

You do me but justice in believing me incapable of suffering your brother to sacrifice the peace, much less the life, of an amiable mother, to my happiness: I have no doubt of his returning to England the moment he receives your letters; but, knowing his tenderness, I will not expose him to a struggle on this occasion: I will myself, unknown to him, as he is fortunately absent, embark in a ship which has wintered here, and will leave Quebec in ten days.

Your invitation is very obliging; but a moment’s reflection will convince you of the extreme impropriety of my accepting it.

Assure Mrs. Rivers, that her son will not lose a moment, that he will probably be with her as soon as this letter; assure her also, that the woman who has kept him from her, can never forgive herself for what she suffers.

I am too much afflicted to say more than that

LETTER CXLIII.145.

It is with a pleasure no words can express I tell my sweet Emily, I have fixed on a situation which promises every advantage we can wish as to profit, and which has every beauty that nature can give.

The land is rich, and the wood will more than pay the expence of clearing it; there is a settlement within a few leagues, on which there is an extreme agreable family: a number of Acadians have applied to me to be received as settlers: in short, my dear angel, all seems to smile on our design.

I have spent some days at the house of a German officer, lately in our service, who is engaged in the same design, but a little advanced in it. I have seen him increasing every hour his little domain, by clearing the lands; he has built a pretty house in a beautiful rustic style: I have seen his pleasing labors with inconceivable delight. I already fancy my own settlement advancing in beauty: I paint to myself my Emily adorning those lovely shades; I see her, like the mother of mankind, admiring a new creation which smiles around her: we appear, to my idea, like the first pair in paradise.

I hope to be with you the 1st of June: will you allow me to set down the 2d as the day which is to assure to me a life of happiness?

My Acadians, your new subjects, are waiting in the next room to speak with me.

All good angels guard my Emily.

LETTER CXLIV.146.

Emily has wrote to you, and appears more composed; she does not however tell me what she has resolved; she has only mentioned a design of spending a week at Quebec. I suppose she will take no resolution till your brother comes down: he cannot be here in less than ten days.

She has heard from him, and he has fixed on a settlement: depend however on his return to England, even if it is not to stay. I wish he could prevail on Mrs. Rivers to acompanyaccompany him back. The advantages of his design are too great to lose; the voyage is nothing; the climate healthy beyond all conception.

I fancy he will marry as soon as he comes down from Montreal, set off in the first ship for England, leave Emily with me, and return to us next year: at least, this is the plan my heart has formed.

I wish Mrs. Rivers had born his absence better; her impatience to see him has broken in on all our schemes; Emily and I had in fancy formed a little Eden on Lake Champlain: Fitzgerald had promised me to apply for lands near them; we should have been so happy in our little new world of friendship.

There is nothing certain in this vile state of existence: I could philosophize extremely well this morning.

All our little plans of amusement too for this summer are now at an end; your brother was the soul of all our parties. This is a trifle, but my mind to-day seeks for every subject of chagrin.

Let but my Emily be happy, and I will not complain, even if I lose her: I have a thousand fears, a thousand uneasy reflections: if you knew her merit, you would not wish to break the attachment.

My sweet Emily is going this morning to Quebec; I have promised to accompany her, and she now waits for me.

I cannot write: I have a heaviness about my heart, which has never left me since I read your letter. ’Tis the only disagreable one I ever received from my dear Lucy: I am not sure I love you so well as before I saw this letter. There is something unfeeling in the style of it, which I did not expect from you.

LETTER CXLV.147.

I am unhappy beyond all words; my sweet Emily is gone to England; the ship sailed this morning: I am just returned from the beach, after conducting her on board.

I used every art, every persuasion, in the power of friendship, to prevent her going till your brother came down; but all I said was in vain. She told me, “sheshe knew too well her own weakness to hazard seeing him; that she also knew his tenderness, and was resolved to spare him the struggle between his affection and his duty; that she was determined never to marry him but with the consent of his mother; that their meeting at Quebec, situated as they were, could only be the source of unhappiness to both; that her heart doated on him, but that she would never be the cause of his acting in a manner unworthy his character: that she would see his family the moment she got to London, and then retire to the house of a relation in Berkshire, where she would wait for his arrival.

That she had given you her promise, which nothing should make her break, to embark in the first ship for England.”England.

She expressed no fears for herself as to the voyage, but trembled at the idea of her Rivers’s danger.

She sat down several times yesterday to write to him, but her tears prevented her: she at last assumed courage enough to tell him her design; but it was in such terms as convinced me she could not have pursued it, had he been here.

She went to the ship with an appearance of calmness that astonished me; but the moment she entered, all her resolution forsook her: she retired with me to her room, where she gave way to all the agony of her soul.

The word was given to sail; I was summoned away; she rose hastily, she pressed me to her bosom, “Tell him, said she, his Emily”—she could say no more.

Never in my life did I feel any sorrow equal to this separation. Love her, my Lucy; you can never have half the tenderness for her she merits.

She stood on the deck till the ship turned Point Levi, her eyes fixed passionately on our boat.

I have this moment a letter from your brother to Emily, which she directed me to open, and send to her; I inclose it to you, as the safest way of conveyance: there is one in it from Temple to him, on the same subject with yours to me.

Adieu! I will write again when my mind is more composed.

LETTER CXLVI.148.

It was my wish, my hope, my noblest ambition, my dear Emily, to see you in a situation worthy of you; my sanguine temper flattered me with the idea of seeing this wish accomplished in Canada, though fortune denied it me in England.

The letter which I inclose has put an end to those fond delusive hopes: I must return immediately to England; did not my own heart dictate this step, I know too well the goodness of yours, to expect the continuance of your esteem, were I capable of purchasing happiness, even the happiness of calling you mine, at the expence of my mother’s life, or even of her quiet.

I must now submit to see my Emily in an humbler situation; to see her want those pleasures, those advantages, those honors, which fortune gives, and which she has so nobly sacrificed to true delicacy of mind, and, if I do not flatter myself, to her generous and disinterested affection for me.

Be assured, my dearest angel, the inconveniencies attendant on a narrow fortune, the only one I have to offer, shall be softened by all which the most lively esteem, the most perfect friendship, the tenderest love, can inspire; by that attention, that unwearied solicitude to please, of which the heart alone knows the value.

Fortune has no power over minds like ours; we possess a treasure to which all she has to give is nothing, the dear exquisite delight of loving, and of being beloved.

Awake to all the finer feelings of tender esteem and elegant desire, we have every real good in each other.

I shall hurry down, the moment I have settled my affairs here; and hope soon to have the transport of presenting the most charming of friends, of mistresses, allow me to add, of wives, to a mother whom I love and revere beyond words, and to whom she will soon be dearer than myself.

My going to England will detain me at Montreal a few days longer than I intended; a delay I can very ill support.

Adieu! my Emily! no language can express my tenderness or my impatience.

LETTER CXLVII.149.

I cannot enough, my dear Temple, thank you for your last, though it destroys my air-built scheme of happiness.

Could I have supposed my mother would thus severely have felt my absence, I had never left England; to make her easier, was my only motive for that step.

I with pleasure sacrifice my design of settling here to her peace of mind; no consideration, however, shall ever make me give up that of marrying the best and most charming of women.

I could have wished to have had a fortune worthy of her; this was my wish, not that of my Emily; she will with equal pleasure share with me poverty or riches: I hope her consent to marry me before I leave Canada. I know the advantages of affluence, my dear Temple, audand am too reasonable to despise them; I would only avoid rating them above their worth.

Riches undoubtedly purchase a variety of pleasures which are not otherwise to be obtained; they give power, they give honors, they give consequence; but if, to enjoy these subordinate goods, we must give up those which are more essential, more real, more suited to our natures, I can never hesitate one moment to determine between them.

I know nothing fortune has to bestow, which can equal the transport of being dear to the most amiable, most lovely of womankind.

The stream of life, my dear Temple, stagnates without the gentle gale of love; till I knew my Emily, till the dear moment which assured me of her tenderness, I could scarce be said to live.

LETTER CXLVIII.150.

I can write, I can talk, of nothing but Emily; I never knew how much I loved her till she was gone: I run eagerly to every place where we have been together; every spot reminds me of her; I remember a thousand conversations, endeared by confidence and affection: a tender tear starts in spite of me: our walks, our airings, our pleasing little parties, all rush at once on my memory: I see the same lovely scenes around me, but they have lost half their power of pleasing.

I visit every grove, every thicket, that she loved; I have a redoubled fondness for every object in which she took pleasure.

Fitzgerald indulges me in this enthusiasm of friendship; he leads me to every place which can recall my Emily’s idea; he speaks of her with a warmth which shews the sensibility and goodness of his own heart; he endeavors to soothe me by the most endearing attention.

What infinite pleasure, my dear Lucy, there is in being truly beloved! Fond as I have ever been of general admiration, that of all mankind is nothing to the least mark of Fitzgerald’s tenderness.

Adieu! it will be some days before I can send this letter.

The governor gives a ball in honor of the day; I am dressing to go, but without my sweet companion: every hour I feel more sensibly her absence.

We had last night, during the ball, the most dreadful storm I ever heard; it seemed to shake the whole habitable globe.

Heaven preserve my Emily from its fury: I have a thousand fears on her account.

Your brother is arrived; he has been here about an hour: he flew to Silleri, without going at all to Quebec; he enquired for Emily; he would not believe she was gone.

There is no expressing how much he was shocked when convinced she had taken this voyage without him; he would have followed her in an open boat, in hopes of overtaking her at Coudre, if my father had not detained him almost by force, and at last convinced him of the impossibility of overtaking her, as the winds, having been constantly fair, must before this have carried them out of the river.

He has sent his servant to Quebec, with orders to take passage for him in the first ship that sails; his impatience is not to be described.

He came down in the hope of marrying her here, and conducting her himself to England; he forms to himself a thousand dangers to her, which he fondly fancies his presence could have averted: in short, he has all the unreasonableness of a man in love.

I propose sending this, and a large packet more, by your brother, unless some unexpected opportunity offers before.

LETTER CXLIX.151.

Your brother has taken his passage in a very fine ship, which will sail the 10th; you may expect him every hour after you receive this; which I send, with what I wrote yesterday, by a small vessel which sails a week sooner then was intended.

Rivers persuades Fitzgerald to apply for the lands which he had fixed upon on Lake Champlain, as he has no thoughts of ever returning hither.

I will prevent this, however, if I have any influence: I cannot think with patience of continuing in America, when my two amiable friends have left it; I had no motive for wishing a settlement here, but to form a little society of friends, of which they made the principal part.

Besides, the spirit of emulation would have kept up my courage, and given fire and brilliancy to my fancy.

Emily and I should have been trying who had the most lively genius at creation; who could have produced the fairest flowers; who have formed the woods and rocks into the most beautiful arbors, vistoes, grottoes; have taught the streams to flow in the most pleasing meanders; have brought into view the greatest number and variety of those lovely little falls of water with which this fairy land abounds; and shewed nature in the fairest form.

In short, we should have been continually endeavoring, following the luxuriancy of female imagination, to render more charming the sweet abodes of love and friendship; whilst our heroes, changing their swords into plough-shares, and engaged in more substantial, more profitable labors, were clearing land, raising cattle and corn, and doing every thing becoming good farmers; or, to express it more poetically,

By which I would be understood to mean the Havannah, where, vanity apart, I am told both of them did their duty, and a little more, if a man can in such a case be said to do more.

In one word, they would have been studying the useful, to support us; we the agreable, to please and amuse them; which I take to be assigning to the two sexes the employments for which nature intended them, notwithstanding the vile example of the savages to the contrary.

There are now no farmeresses in Canada worth my contending with; therefore the whole pleasure of the thing would be at an end, even on the supposition that friendship had not been the soul of our design.

Say every thing for me to Temple and Mrs. Rivers; and to my dearest Emily, if arrived.

LETTER CL.152.

It is very true, my Lord, that the jesuitJesuit missionaries still continue in the Indian villages in Canada; and I am afraid it is no less true, that they use every art to instill into those people an aversion to the English; at least I have been told this by the Indians themselves, who seem equally surprized and piqued that we do not send missionaries amongst them.

Their ideas of christianity are extremely circumscribed, and they give no preference to one mode of our faith above another; they regard a missionary of any nation as a kind father, who comes to instruct them in the best way of worshiping the Deity, whom they suppose more propitious to the Europeans than to themselves; and as an ambassador from the prince whose subject he is: they therefore think it a mark of honor, and a proof of esteem, to receive missionaries; and to our remissness, and the French wise attention on this head, is owing the extreme attachment the greater part of the savage nations have ever had to the latter.

The French missionaries, by studying their language, their manners, their tempers, their dispositions; by conforming to their way of life, and using every art to gain their esteem, have acquired an influence over them which is scarce to be conceived; nor would it be difficult for ours to do the same, were they judiciously chose, and properly encouraged.

I believe I have said, that there is a striking resemblance between the manners of the Canadians and the savages; I should have explained it, by adding, that this resemblance has been brought about, not by the French having won the savages to receive European manners, but by the very contrary; the peasants having acquired the savage indolence in peace, their activity and ferocity in war; their fondness for field sports, their hatred of labor; their love of a wandering life, and of liberty; in the latter of which they have been in some degree indulged, the laws here being much milder, and more favorable to the people, than in France.

Many of the officers also, and those of rank in the colony troops, have been adopted into the savage tribes; and there is stronger evidence than, for the honor of humanity, I would wish there was, that some of them have led the death dance at the execution of English captives, have even partook the horrid repast, and imitated them in all their cruelties; cruelties, which to the eternal disgrace, not only of our holy religion, but even of our nature, these poor people, whose ignorance is their excuse, have been instigated to, both by the French and English colonies, who, with a fury truly diabolical, have offered rewards to those who brought in the scalps of their enemies. Rousseau has taken great pains to prove that the most uncultivated nations are the most virtuous: I have all due respect for this philosopher, of whose writings I am an enthusiastic admirer; but I have a still greater respect for truth, which I believe is not in this instance on his side.

There is little reason to boast of the virtues of a people, who are such brutal slaves to their appetites as to be unable to avoid drinking brandy to an excess scarce to be conceived, whenever it falls in their way, though eternally lamenting the murders and other atrocious crimes of which they are so perpetually guilty when under its influence.

It is unjust to say we have corrupted them, that we have taught them a vice to which we are ourselves not addicted; both French and English are in general sober: we have indeed given them the means of intoxication, which they had not before their intercourse with us; but he must be indeed fond of praising them, who makes a virtue of their having been sober, when water was the only liquor with which they were acquainted.

From all that I have observed, and heard of these people, it appears to me an undoubted fact, that the most civilized Indian nations are the most virtuous; a fact which makes directly against Rousseau’s ideal system.

Indeed all systems make against, instead of leading to, the discovery of truth.

Pere Lafitau has, for this reason, in his very learned comparison of the manners of the savages with those of the first ages, given a very imperfect account of Indian manners; he is even so candid as to own, he tells you nothing but what makes for the system he is endeavoring to establish.

My wish, on the contrary, is not to make truth subservient to any favorite sentiment or idea, any child of my fancy; but to discover it, whether agreable or not to my own opinion.

My accounts may therefore be false or imperfect from mistake or misinformation, but will never be designedly warped from truth.

That the savages have virtues, candor must own; but only a love of paradox can make any man assert they have more than polished nations.

Your Lordship asks me what is the general moral character of the Canadians; they are simple and hospitable, yet extremely attentive to interest, where it does not interfere with that laziness which is their governing passion.

They are rather devout than virtuous; have religion without morality, and a sense of honor without very strict honesty.

Indeed I believe wherever superstition reigns, the moral sense is greatly weakened; the strongest inducement to the practice of morality is removed, when people are brought to believe that a few outward ceremonies will compensate for the want of virtue.

I myself heard a man, who had raised a large fortune by very indirect means, confess his life had been contrary to every precept of the Gospel; but that he hoped the pardon of Heaven for all his sins, as he intended to devote one of his daughters to a conventual life as an expiation.

This way of being virtuous by proxy, is certainly very easy and convenient to such sinners as have children to sacrifice.

By Colonel Rivers, who leaves us in a few days, I intend myself the honor of addressing your Lordship again.

LETTER CXLIX.153.

Your Lordship will receive this from the hands of one of the most worthy and amiable men I ever knew, Colonel Rivers, whom I am particularly happy in having the honor to introduce to your Lordship, as I know your delicacy in the choice of friends, and that there are so few who have your perfect esteem and confidence, that the acquaintance of one who merits both, at his time of life, will be regarded, even by your Lordship, as an acquisition.

’Tis to him I shall say the advantage I procure him, by making him known to a nobleman, who, with the wisdom and experience of age, has all the warmth of heart, the generosity, the noble confidence, the enthusiasm, the fire, and vivacity of youth.

Your Lordship’s idea, in regard to Protestant convents here, on the footing of that we visited together at Hamburgh, is extremely well worth the consideration of those whom it may concern; especially if the Romish ones are abolished, as will most probably be the case.

The noblesse have numerous families, and, if there are no convents, will be at a loss where to educate their daughters, as well as where to dispose of those who do not marry in a reasonable time: the convenience they find in both respects from these houses, is one strong motive to them to continue in their ancient religion.

As I would however prevent the more useful, by which I mean the lower, part of the sex from entering into this state, I would wish only the daughters of the seigneurs to have the privilege of becoming nuns: they should be obliged, on taking the vow, to prove their noblesse for at least three generations; which would secure them respect, and, at the same time, prevent their becoming too numerous.

They should take the vow of obedience, but not of celibacy; and reserve the power, as at Hamburgh, of going out to marry, though on no other consideration.

Your Lordship may remember, every nun at Hamburgh has a right of marrying, except the abbess; and that, on your Lordship’s telling the lady who then presided, and who was young and very handsome, you thought this a hardship, she answered with great spirit, “O, my Lord, you know it is in my power to resign.”

I refer your Lordship to Colonel Rivers for that farther information in regard to this colony, which he is much more able to give you than I am, having visited every part of Canada in the design of settling in it.

Your Lordship’s mention of nuns has brought to my memory a little anecdote on this subject, which I will tell you.

I was, a few mornings ago, visiting a French lady, whose very handsome daughter, of almost sixteen, told me, she was going into a convent. I enquired which she had made choice of: she said, “The General Hospital.”

“I am glad, Mademoiselle, you have not chose the Ursulines; the rules are so very severe, you would have found them hard to conform to.”

“As to the rules, Sir, I have no objection to their severity; but the habit of the General Hospital—”

I smiled.

“Is so very light—”

“And so becoming, Mademoiselle.”

She smiled in her turn, and I left her fully convinced of the sincerity of her vocation, and the great propriety and humanity of suffering young creatures to chuse a kind of life so repugnant to human nature, at an age when they are such excellent judges of what will make them happy.

LETTER CL.154.

I send this by your brother, who sails to-morrow.

Time, I hope, will reconcile me to his and Emily’s absence; but at present I cannot think of losing them without a dejection of mind which takes from me the very idea of pleasure.

I conjure you, my dear Lucy, to do every thing possible to facilitate their union; and remember, that to your request, and to Mrs. Rivers’s tranquillity, they have sacrificed every prospect they had of happiness.

I would say more; but my spirits are so affected, I am incapable of writing.

Love my sweet Emily, and let her not repent the generosity of her conduct.

LETTER CLI.155.

My poor Rivers! I think I felt more from his going than even from Emily’s: whilst he was here, I seemed not quite to have lost her: I now feel doubly the loss of both.

He begged me to shew attention to Madame Des Roches, who he assured me merited my tenderest friendship; he wrote to her, and has left the letter open in my care: it is to thank her, in the most affectionate terms, for her politeness and friendship, as well to himself as to his Emily; and to offer her his best services in England in regard to her estate, part of which some people here have very ungenerously applied for a grant of, on pretence of its not being all settled according to the original conditions.

He owned to me, he felt some regret at leaving this amiable woman in Canada, and at the idea of never seeing her more.

I love him for this sensibility; and for his delicate attention to one whose disinterested affection for him most certainly deserves it.

Fitzgerald is below, he does all possible to console me for the loss of my friends; but indeed, Lucy, I feel their absence most severely.

I have an opportunity of sending your brother’s letter to Madame Des Roches, which I must not lose, as they are not very frequent: ’tis by a French gentleman who is now with my father.

We have been talking of your brother; I have been saying, there is nothing I so much admire in him as that tenderness of soul, and almost female sensibility, which is so uncommon in a sex, whose whole education tends to harden their hearts.

Fitzgerald admires his spirit, his understanding, his generosity, his courage, the warmth of his friendship.

My father his knowledge of the world; not that indiscriminate suspicion of mankind which is falsely so called; but that clearness of mental sight, and discerning faculty, which can distinguish virtue as well as vice, wherever it resides.

“I also love in him,” said my father, “that noble sincerity, that integrity of character, which is the foundation of all the virtues.”

“And yet, my dear papa, you would have had Emily prefer to him, that white curd of asses milk, Sir George Clayton, whose highest claim to virtue is the constitutional absence of vice, and who never knew what it was to feel for the sorrows of another.”

“You mistake, Bell: such a preference was impossible; but she was engaged to Sir George; and he had also a fine fortune. Now, in these degenerate days, my dear, people must eat; we have lost all taste for the airy food of romances, when ladies rode behind their enamored knights, dined luxuriously on a banquet of haws, and quenched their thirst at the first stream.”

“But, my dear papa—”

“But my dear Bell—”

I saw the sweet old man look angry, so chose to drop the subject; but I do aver, now he is out of sight, that haws and a pillion, with such a noble fellow as your brother, are preferable to ortolans and a coach and six, with such a piece of still life and insipidity as Sir George.

Good night! my dear Lucy.

LETTER CLII.156.

I have this moment received a packet of letters from my dear Lucy; I shall only say, in answer to what makes the greatest part of them, that in a fortnight I hope you will have the pleasure of seeing your brother, who did not hesitate one moment in giving up to Mrs. Rivers’s peace of mind, all his pleasing prospects here, and the happiness of being united to the woman he loved.

You will not, I hope, my dear, forget his having made such a sacrifice: but I think too highly of you to say more on this subject. You will receive Emily as a friend, as a sister, who merits all your esteem and tenderness, and who has lost all the advantages of fortune, and incurred the censure of the world, by her disinterested attachment to your brother.

I am extremely sorry, but not surprized, at what you tell me of poor Lady H——. I knew her intimately; she was sacrificed at eighteen, by the avarice and ambition of her parents, to age, disease, ill-nature, and a coronet; and her death is the natural consequence of her regret: she had a soul formed for friendship; she found it not at home; her elegance of mind, and native probity, prevented her seeking it abroad; she died a melancholy victim to the tyranny of her friends, the tenderness of her heart, and her delicate sense of honor.

If her father has any of the feelings of humanity left, what must he not suffer on this occasion?

It is a painful consideration, my dear, that the happiness or misery of our lives are generally determined before we are proper judges of either.

Restrained by custom, and the ridiculous prejudices of the world, we go with the crowd, and it is late in life before we dare to think.

How happy are you and I, Lucy, in having parents, who, far from forcing our inclinations, have not even endeavored to betray us into chusing from sordid motives! They have not labored to fill our young hearts with vanity or avarice; they have left us those virtues, those amiable qualities, we received from nature. They have painted to us the charms of friendship, and not taught us to value riches above their real price.

My father, indeed, checks a certain excess of romance which there is in my temper; but, at the same time, he never encouraged my receiving the addresses of any man who had only the gifts of fortune to recommend him; he even advised me, when very young, against marrying an officer in his regiment, of a large fortune, but an unworthy character.

If I have any knowledge of the human heart, it will be my own fault if I am not happy with Fitzgerald.

I am only afraid, that when we are married, and begin to settle into a calm, my volatile disposition will carry me back to coquetry: my passion for admiration is naturally strong, and has been increased by indulgence; for without vanity I have been extremely the taste of the men.

I have a kind of an idea it won’t be long before I try the strength of my resolution, for I heard papa and Fitzgerald in high consultation this morning.

Do you know, that, having nobody to love but Fitzgerald, I am ten times more enamored of the dear creature than ever? My love is now like the rays of the sun collected.

He is so much here, I wonder I don’t grow tired of him; but somehow he has the art of varying himself beyond any man I ever knew: it was that agreable variety of character that first struck me; I considered that with him I should have all the sex in one; he says the same of me; and indeed, it must be owned we have both an infinity of agreable caprice, which in love affairs is worth all the merit in the world.

Have you never observed, Lucy, that the same person is seldom greatly the object of both love and friendship?

Those virtues which command esteem do not often inspire passion.

Friendship seeks the more real, more solid virtues; integrity, constancy, and a steady uniformity of character: love, on the contrary, admires it knows not what; creates itself the idol it worships; finds charms even in defects; is pleased with follies, with inconsistency, with caprice: to say all in one line,

The moment Emily arrives, I entreat that one of you will write to me: no words can speak my impatience: I am equally anxious to hear of my dear Rivers. Heaven send them prosperous gales!

LETTER CLIII.157.

You are extremely mistaken, my dear, in your idea of the society here; I had rather live at Quebec, take it for all in all, than in any town in England, except London; the manner of living here is uncommonly agreable; the scenes about us are lovely, and the mode of amusements make us taste those scenes in full perfection.

Whilst your brother and Emily were here, I had not a wish to leave Canada; but their going has left a void in my heart, which will not easily be filled up: I have loved Emily almost from childhood, and there is a peculiar tenderness in those friendships, which

There was also something romantic and agreable in finding her here, and unexpectedly, after we had been separated by Colonel Montague’s having left the regiment in which my father served.

In short, every thing concurred to make us dear to each other, and therefore to give a greater poignancy to the pain of parting a second time.

As to your brother, I love him so much, that a man who had less candor and generosity than Fitzgerald, would be almost angry at my very lively friendship.

I have this moment a letter from Madame Des Roches; she laments the loss of our two amiable friends; begs me to assure them both of her eternal remembrance: says, “she congratulates Emily on possessing the heart of the man on earth most worthy of being beloved; that she cannot form an idea of any human felicity equal to that of the woman, the business of whose life it is to make Colonel Rivers happy. That, heaven having denied her that happiness, she will never marry, nor enter into an engagement which would make it criminal in her to remember him with tenderness: that it is, however, she believes, best for her he has left the country, for that it is impossible she should ever have seen him with indifference.”

It is perhaps as prudent not to mention these circumstances either to your brother or Emily; I thought of sending her letter to them, but there is a certain fire in her style, mixed with tenderness, when she speaks of Rivers, which would only have given them both regret, by making them see the excess of her affection for him; her expressions are much stronger than those in which I have given you the sense of them.

I intend to be very intimate with her, because she loves my dear Rivers; she loves Emily too, at least she fancies she does, but I am a little doubtful as to the friendships between rivals: at this distance, however, I dare say, they will always continue on the best terms possible, and I would have Emily write to her.

Do you know she has desired me to contrive to get her a picture of your brother, without his knowing it? I am not determined whether I shall indulge her in this fancy or not; if I do, I must employ you as my agent. It is madness in her to desire it; but, as there is a pleasure in being mad, I am not sure my morality will let me refuse her, since pleasures are not very thick sown in this world.

LETTER CLIV.158.

By this time, my dear Lucy, I hope you are happy with your brother and my sweet Emily: I am all impatience to know this from yourselves; but it will be five or six weeks, perhaps much more, before I can have that satisfaction.

As to me—to be plain, my dear, I can hold no longer; I have been married this fortnight. My father wanted to keep it a secret, for some very foolish reasons; but it is not in my nature; I hate secrets, they are only fit for politicians, and people whose thoughts and actions will not bear the light.

For my part, I am convinced the general loquacity of human kind, and our inability to keep secrets without a natural kind of uneasiness, were meant by Providence to guard against our laying deep schemes of treachery against each other.

I remember a very sensible man, who perfectly knew the world, used to say, there was no such thing in nature as a secret; a maxim as true, at least I believe so, as it is salutary, and which I would advise all good mammas, aunts, and governesses, to impress strongly on the minds of young ladies.

So, as I was saying, voilà Madame Fitzgerald!

This is, however, yet a secret here; but, according to my present doctrine, and following the nature of things, it cannot long continue so.

You never saw so polite a husband, but I suppose they are all so the first fortnight, especially when married in so interesting and romantic a manner; I am very fond of the fancy of being thus married as it were; but I have a notion I shall blunder it out very soon: we were married on a party to Three Rivers, nobody with us but papa and Madame Villiers, who have not yet published the mystery. I hear some misses at Quebec are scandalous about Fitzgerald’s being so much here; I will leave them in doubt a little, I think, merely to gratify their love of scandal; every body should be amused in their way.

Pray let Emily be married; every body marries but poor little Emily.

LETTER CLV.159.

I have the pleasure to tell your Lordship I have married my daughter to a gentleman with whom I have reason to hope she will be happy.

He is the second son of an Irish baronet of good fortune, and has himself about five hundred pounds a year, independent of his commission; he is a man of an excellent sense, and of honor, and has a very lively tenderness for my daughter.

It will, I am afraid, be some time before I can leave this country, as I chuse to take my daughter and Mr. Fitzgerald with me, in order to the latter’s soliciting a majority, in which pursuit I shall without scruple tax your Lordship’s friendship to the utmost.

I am extremely happy at this event, as Bell’s volatile temper made me sometimes afraid of her chusing inconsiderately: their marriage is not yet declared, for some family reasons, not worth particularizing to your Lordship.

As soon as leave of absence comes from New York, for me and Mr. Fitzgerald, we shall settle things for taking leave of Canada, which I however assure your Lordship I shall do with some reluctance.

The climate is all the year agreable and healthy, in summer divine; a man at my time of life cannot leave this chearing, enlivening sun without reluctance; the heat is very like that of Italy or the South of France, without that oppressive closeness which generally attends our hot weather in England.

The manner of life here is chearful; we make the most of our fine summers, by the pleasantest country parties you can imagine. Here are some very estimable persons, and the spirit of urbanity begins to diffuse itself from the centre: in short, I shall leave Canada at the very time when one would wish to come to it.

It is astonishing, in a small community like this, how much depends on the personal character of him who governs.

I am obliged to break off abruptly, the person who takes this to England being going immediately on board.

LETTER CLVI.160.

I agree with you, my dear Temple, that nothing can be more pleasing than an awakened English woman; of which you and my caro sposo have, I flatter myself, the happy experience; and wish with you that the character was more common: but I must own, and I am sorry to own it, that my fair countrywomen and fellow citizens (I speak of the nation in general, and not of the capital) have an unbecoming kind of reserve, which prevents their being the agreable companions, and amiable wives, which nature meant them.

From a fear, and I think a prudish one, of being thought too attentive to please your sex, they have acquired a certain distant manner to men, which borders on ill-breeding: they take great pains to veil, under an affected appearance of disdain, that winning sensibility of heart, that delicate tenderness, which renders them doubly lovely.

They are even afraid to own their friendships, if not according to the square and rule; are doubtful whether a modest woman may own she loves even her husband; and seem to think affections were given them for no purpose but to hide.

Upon the whole, with at least as good a native right to charm as any women on the face of the globe, the English have found the happy secret of pleasing less.

Is my Emily arrived? I can say nothing else.

I am the happiest woman in the creation: papa has just told me, we are to go home in six or seven weeks.

Not but this is a divine country, and our farm a terrestrial paradise; but we have lived in it almost a year, and one grows tired of every thing in time, you know, Temple.

I shall see my Emily, and flirt with Rivers; to say nothing of you and my little Lucy.

Adieu! I am grown very lazy since I married; for the future, I shall make Fitzgerald write all my letters, except billet-doux, in which I think I excel him.

LETTER CLVII.161.

I am this moment arrived, my dear Bell, after a very agreable passage, and am setting out immediately for London, from whence I shall write to you the moment I have seen Mrs. Rivers; I will own to you I tremble at the idea of this interview, yet am resolved to see her, and open all my soul to her in regard to her son; after which, I shall leave her the mistress of my destiny; for, ardently as I love him, I will never marry him but with her approbation.

I have a thousand anxious fears for my Rivers’s safety: may heaven protect him from the dangers his Emily has escaped!

I have but a moment to write, a ship being under way which is bound to Quebec; a gentleman, who is just going off in a boat to the ship, takes the care of this.

May every happiness attend my dear girl. Say every thing affectionate for me to Captain Fermor and Mr. Fitzgerald.

LETTER CLVIII.162.

I got to town last night, my dear, and am at a friend’s, from whence I have this morning sent to Mrs. Rivers; I every moment expect her answer; my anxiety of mind is not to be expressed; my heart sinks; I almost dread the return of my messenger.

If the affections, my dear friend, give us the highest happiness of which we are capable, they are also the source of our keenest misery; what I feel at this instant, is not to be described: I have been near resolving to go into the country without seeing or sending to Mrs. Rivers. If she should receive me with coldness—why should I have exposed myself to the chance of such a reception? It would have been better to have waited for Rivers’s arrival; I have been too precipitate; my warmth of temper has misled me: what had I to do to seek his family? I would give the world to retract my message, though it was only to let her know I was arrived; that her son was well, and that she might every hour expect him in England.

There is a rap at the door: I tremble I know not why; the servant comes up, he announces Mr. and Mrs. Temple: my heart beats, they are at the door.

They are gone, and return for me in an hour; they insist on my dining with them, and tell me Mrs. Rivers is impatient to see me. Nothing was ever so polite, so delicate, so affectionate, as the behaviour of both; they saw my confusion, and did every thing to remove it: they enquired after Rivers, but without the least hint of the dear interest I take in him: they spoke of the happiness of knowing me: they asked my friendship, in a manner the most flattering that can be imagined. How strongly does Mrs. Temple, my dear, resemble her amiable brother! her eyes have the same sensibility, the same pleasing expression; I think I scarce ever saw so charming a woman; I love her already; I feel a tenderness for her, which is inconceivable; I caught myself two or three times looking at her, with an attention for which I blushed.

How dear to me is every friend of my Rivers!

I believe, there was something very foolish in my behaviour; but they had the good-breeding and humanity not to seem to observe it.

I had almost forgot to tell you, they said every thing obliging and affectionate of you and Captain Fermor.

My mind is in a state not to be described; I feel joy, I feel anxiety, I feel doubt, I feel a timidity I cannot conquer, at the thought of seeing Mrs. Rivers.

I have to dress; therefore must finish this when I return.

I am come back, my dearest Bell; I have gone through the scene I so much dreaded, and am astonished I should ever think of it but with pleasure. How much did I injure this most amiable of women! Her reception of me was that of a tender parent, who had found a long-lost child; she kissed me, she pressed me to her bosom; her tears flowed in abundance; she called me her daughter, her other Lucy: she asked me a thousand questions of her son; she would know all that concerned him, however minute: how he looked, whether he talked much of her, what were his amusements; whether he was as handsome as when he left England.

I answered her with some hesitation, but with a pleasure that animated my whole soul; I believe, I never appeared to such advantage as this day.

You will not ascribe it to an unmeaning vanity, when I tell you, I never took such pains to please; I even gave a particular attention to my dress, that I might, as much as possible, justify my Rivers’s tenderness: I never was vain for myself; but I am so for him: I am indifferent to admiration as Emily Montague; but as the object of his love, I would be admired by all the world; I wish to be the first of my sex in all that is amiable and lovely, that I might make a sacrifice worthy of my Rivers, in shewing to all his friends, that he only can inspire me with tenderness, that I live for him alone.

Mrs. Rivers pressed me extremely to pass a month with her: my heart yielded too easily to her request; but I had courage to resist my own wishes, as well as her solicitations; and shall set out in three days for Berkshire: I have, howev