The History of Emily Montague Part 67

One o'clock.

I have been at Sir William Verville's, who is at Bath; I will write, and inclose the letter to him this evening; you shall have his answer the moment I receive it.

We are going to dine at Richmond with Lord H----.

Adieu! my dear Rivers; Bell complains you have never answered her letter: I own, I thought you a man of more gallantry than to neglect a lady.

Adieu!

Your faithful J. Fitzgerald.

LETTER 209.

To Captain Fitzgerald.

Bellfield, Oct. 30.

I am very impatient, my dear friend, till you hear from Sir William, though I have no doubt of his acting as he ought: our cottagers shall not leave us till their fate is determined; I have not told Miss Williams the step I have taken.

Emily is more and more pleased with this amiable girl: I wish extremely to be able to keep her here; as an agreable companion of her own age and s.e.x, whose ideas are similar, and who, from being in the same season of life, sees things in the same point of view, is all that is wanting to Emily's happiness.

'Tis impossible to mention similarity of ideas, without observing how exactly ours coincide; in all my acquaintance with mankind, I never yet met a mind so nearly resembling my own; a tie of affection much stronger than all your merit would be without that similarity.

I agree with you, that mankind are born virtuous, and that it is education and example which make them otherwise.

The believing other men knaves is not only the way to make them so, but is also an infallible method of becoming such ourselves.

A false and ill-judged method of instruction, by which we imbibe prejudices instead of truths, makes us regard the human race as beasts of prey; not as brothers, united by one common bond, and promoting the general interest by pursuing our own particular one.

There is nothing of which I am more convinced than that,

"True self-love and social are the same:"

That those pa.s.sions which make the happiness of individuals tend directly to the general good of the species.

The beneficent Author of nature has made public and private happiness the same; man has in vain endeavored to divide them; but in the endeavor he has almost destroyed both.

'Tis with pain I say, that the business of legislation in most countries seems to have been to counter-work this wise order of providence, which has ordained, that we shall make others happy in being so ourselves.

This is in nothing so glaring as in the point on which not only the happiness, but the virtue of almost the whole human race is concerned: I mean marriage; the restraints on which, in almost every country, not only tend to encourage celibacy, and a destructive libertinism the consequence of it, to give fresh strength to domestic tyranny, and subject the generous affections of uncorrupted youth to the guidance of those in whom every motive to action but avarice is dead; to condemn the blameless victims of duty to a life of indifference, of disgust, and possibly of guilt; but, by opposing the very spirit of our const.i.tution, throwing property into a few hands, and favoring that excessive inequality, which renders one part of the species wretched, without adding to the happiness of the other; to destroy at once the domestic felicity of individuals, contradict the will of the Supreme Being, as clearly wrote in the book of nature, and sap the very foundations of the most perfect form of government on earth.

A pretty long-winded period this: Bell would call it true Ciceronian, and quote

"--Rivers for a period of a mile."

But to proceed. The only equality to which parents in general attend, is that of fortune; whereas a resemblance in age, in temper, in personal attractions, in birth, in education, understanding, and sentiment, are the only foundations of that lively taste, that tender friends.h.i.+p, without which no union deserves the sacred name of marriage.

Timid, compliant youth may be forced into the arms of age and disease; a lord may invite a citizen's daughter he despises to his bed, to repair a shattered fortune; and she may accept him, allured by the rays of a coronet: but such conjunctions are only a more shameful species of prost.i.tution.

Men who marry from interested motives are inexcusable; but the very modesty of women makes against their happiness in this point, by giving them a kind of bashful fear of objecting to such persons as their parents recommend as proper objects of their tenderness.

I am prevented by company from saying all I intended.

Adieu! Your faithful Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 210.

To Colonel Rivers.

Temple-house, Nov. 1.

You wrong me excessively, my dear Rivers, in accusing me of a natural levity in love and friends.h.i.+p.

As to the latter, my frequent changes, which I freely acknowledge, have not been owing to any inconstancy, but to precipitation and want of caution in contracting them.

My general fault has been the folly of chusing my friends for some striking and agreable accomplishment, instead of giving to solid merit the preference which most certainly is its due.

My inconstancy in love has been meerly from vanity.

There is something so flattering in the general favor of women, that it requires great firmness of mind to resist that kind of gallantry which indulges it, though absolutely destructive to real happiness.

I blush to say, that when I first married I have more than once been in danger, from the mere boyish desire of conquest, notwithstanding my adoration for your lovely sister: such is the force of habit, for I must have been infinitely a loser by changing.

I am now perfectly safe; my vanity has taken another turn: I pique myself on keeping the heart of the loveliest woman that ever existed, as a n.o.bler conquest than attracting the notice of a hundred coquets, who would be equally flattered by the attention of any other man, at least any other man who had the good fortune to be as fas.h.i.+onable.

Every thing conspires to keep me in the road of domestic happiness: the manner of life I am engaged in, your friends.h.i.+p, your example, and society; and the very fear I am in of losing your esteem.

That I have the seeds of constancy in my nature, I call on you and your lovely sister to witness; I have been _your_ friend from almost infancy, and am every hour more _her_ lover.

She is my friend, my companion, as well as mistress; her wit, her sprightliness, her pleasing kind of knowledge, fill with delight those hours which are so tedious with a fool, however lovely.

With my Lucy, possession can never cure the wounded heart.

Her modesty, her angel purity of mind and person, render her literally,

"My ever-new delight."

She has convinced me, that if beauty is the mother, delicacy is the nurse of love.

Venus has lent her her cestus, and shares with her the attendance of the Graces.

My vagrant pa.s.sions, like the rays of the sun collected in a burning gla.s.s, are now united in one point.

Lucy is here. Adieu! I must not let her know her power.