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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.