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

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Transcriber's Notes: This text retains many old and inconsistent
spellings as found in the Dodsley 1769 edition. Differences from that
edition are as follows: As is usually done in modern editions of Emily
Montague, the letters have been renumbered to run consecutively from 1
to 228. This avoids irregularities in numbering in the original. Normal
case has been used for the initial words of each letter. Long s has been
replaced with a regular short s. The Errata which appeared at the end of
volume four of the original has been applied to the text. Various other
corrections have been made, and in each case, the original form has been
recorded in the html markup. Usage of quote marks has been modernized.




  THE
  HISTORY
  OF
  EMILY MONTAGUE.
  In FOUR VOLUMES.


  By the AUTHOR of
  Lady JULIA MANDEVILLE.


      --"A kind indulgent sleep
  O'er works of length allowably may creep."
                             Horace.

  Vol. 1


  LONDON,
  Printed for J. DODSLEY, in Pall Mall.
  MDCCLXIX.




TO HIS EXCELLENCY GUY CARLETON, Esq. GOVERNOR AND COMMANDER IN
CHIEF OF His Majesty's Province of QUEBEC, &c. &c. &c.

SIR,

As the scene of so great a part of the following work is laid in
Canada, I flatter myself there is a peculiar propriety in addressing it
to your excellency, to whose probity and enlightened attention the
colony owes its happiness, and individuals that tranquillity of mind,
without which there can be no exertion of the powers of either the
understanding or imagination.

Were I to say all your excellency has done to diffuse, through this
province, so happy under your command, a spirit of loyalty and
attachment to our excellent Sovereign, of chearful obedience to the
laws, and of that union which makes the strength of government, I
should hazard your esteem by doing you justice.

I will, therefore, only beg leave to add mine to the general voice
of Canada; and to assure your excellency, that

    I am,
      With the utmost esteem
        and respect,
      Your most obedient servant,
          Frances Brooke.
    London,
  March 22, 1769.



THE HISTORY OF EMILY MONTAGUE.


LETTER 1.


To John Temple, Esq; at Paris.

Cowes, April 10, 1766.

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!

          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 2.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, June 27.

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; its breadth is
ninety miles at its 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 its 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,

          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 3.


To Col. Rivers, at Quebec.

London, April 30.

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,

  "The bloom of opening flowers--"

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:

  _O Venus! O Mere de l'Amour!_

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.

      Adieu!
          J. Temple.



LETTER 4.


To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall.

Quebec, July 1.

'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 inanimate 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:

  "I love you,
  I love you dearly,
  I love you all day long."

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.

          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 5.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, July 4.

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.

      Adieu!
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 6.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Montreal, July 9.

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.

Six in the evening.

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.

Eight o'clock.

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.

Thursday morning.

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.

14th. Eight in the evening.

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.

Four o'clock.

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.

Saturday morning.

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!

      Adieu! my dear!
        Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 7.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Montreal, August 15.

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.

      Adieu!
          Ed. Rivers.

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 8.


To Miss Rivers.

Quebec, Aug. 24.

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.

  Adieu! I am interrupted,
      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 9.


To Mrs. Melmoth, at Montreal.

Quebec, August 24.

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.

  I have the honour to be,
      Madam,
        Yours &c.
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 10.


Silleri, August 24.

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 inanimate 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.

      Yours,
          Arabella Fermor.

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 11.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Sept. 10.

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 dissolvable 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.

      Adieu!
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 12.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Sept. 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!

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.


Eight in the evening.

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 13.


To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.

Montreal, Sept. 2.

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.

  Adieu! my dear.
      Your affectionate
          Emily Montague.



LETTER 14.


To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall.

Quebec, Sept. 15.

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!

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 15.


To Miss Montague, at Montreal.

Silleri, Sept. 16.

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,

      Yours,
          A. Fermor.



LETTER 16.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 18.

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,

  "Whilst the moon dances through the trembling leaves"

(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.

Eight in the evening.

Absolutely, Lucy, I will marry a savage, and turn squaw (a pretty soft
name for an Indian princess!): never was any thing so 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.

      Yours ever,
          A. Fermor.

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 17.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Repentigny, Sept. 18, ten at night.

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.

      Your affectionate
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 18.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Montreal, Sept. 19, eleven o'clock.

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.

One o'clock.

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.

22d in the evening.

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.

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.

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 19.


To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.

Montreal, Sept. 24.

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?

      Adieu!
        Your faithful
          Emily Montague.



LETTER 20.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 24.

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.

      Yours,
          A. Fermor.



LETTER 21.


To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall.

Montreal, Sept. 24.

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 happiness, 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,

      --Amour;
  Tous les autres plaisirs ne valent pas tes peines.

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

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 22.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 25.

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 descendants.

There are whole villages, and there is even a large island, that of
Coudre, where the inhabitants are all the descendants 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.

      Your faithful,
          A. Fermor.

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 23.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 29, 10 o'clock.

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 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.

2 o'clock.

'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 brought 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.

    Adieu! _ma tres chere_.
      Yours,
          A. Fermor.


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.

3 o'clock.

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.

12 o'clock.

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 24.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Sept. 30.

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!

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.

'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 25.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Oct. 3, Twelve o'clock.

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.

      Yours,
          A. Fermor.


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 26.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, Oct. 6.

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.

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 27.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Beaumont, Oct. 7.

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.

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.



LETTER 28.


To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.

Quebec, Oct. 7, twelve o'clock.

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.

      Adieu!
        Your affectionate
          Emily Montague.



LETTER 29.


To Miss Montague, at Quebec.

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.

      Your faithful
          A. Fermor.



LETTER 30.


To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.

Quebec, Oct. 7, three o'clock.

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

          Emily Montague.



LETTER 31.


To Miss Montague, at Quebec.

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!

      Yours,
          A. Fermor.


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.

      Adieu! _ma chere_.



LETTER 32.


To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Kamaraskas, Oct. 10.

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.

Oct. 12.

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.

Isle Barnaby, Oct. 13.

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