L---, May --, 1822.
You are mistaken, my dear Monkton! Your description of the gaiety of
"the season" gives me no emotion. You speak of pleasure; I remember no
labour so wearisome; you enlarge upon its changes; no sameness appears to
me so monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From
the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a
recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot penetrate
the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your suppers at
D---- House, nor even in your waltzes with Eleanor.
It is a ruin rather than a house which I inhabit. I have not been at
L----- since my return from abroad, and during those years the place has
gone rapidly to decay; perhaps, for that reason, it suits me better, _tel
maitre telle maison_.
Of all my possessions this is the least valuable in itself, and derives
the least interest from the associations of childhood, for it was not at
L----- that any part of that period was spent. I have, however, chosen
it from my present retreat, because here only I am personally unknown,
and therefore little likely to be disturbed. I do not, indeed, wish for
the interruptions designed as civilities; I rather gather around myself,
link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find
among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only
experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese,
my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square--the circle is my
own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty corners which
it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the remainder of
mankind.
About a mile from L----- is Mr. Mandeville's beautiful villa of E-----,
in the midst of grounds which form a delightful contrast to the savage
and wild scenery by which they are surrounded. As the house is at
present quite deserted, I have obtained, through the gardener, a free
admittance into his domains, and I pass there whole hours, indulging,
like the hero of the _Lutrin, "une sainte oisivete,"_ listening to a
little noisy brook, and letting my thoughts be almost as vague and idle
as the birds which wander among the trees that surround me. I could
wish, indeed, that this simile were in all things correct--that those
thoughts, if as free, were also as happy as the objects of my comparison,
and could, like them, after the rovings of the day, turn at evening to a
resting-place, and be still. We are the dupes and the victims of our
senses: while we use them to gather from external things the hoards that
we store within, we cannot foresee the punishments we prepare for
ourselves; the remembrance which stings, and the hope which deceives, the
passions which promise us rapture, which reward us with despair, and the
thoughts which, if they constitute the healthful action, make also the
feverish excitement of our minds. What sick man has not dreamt in his
delirium everything that our philosophers have said?* But I am growing
into my old habit of gloomy reflection, and it is time that I should
conclude. I meant to have written you a letter as light as your own; if
I have failed, it is no wonder.--"Notre coeur est un instrument
incomplet--une lyre ou il manque des cordes, et ou nous sommes forces de
rendre les accens de la joie, sur le ton consacre aux soupirs."
* Quid aegrotus unquam somniavit quod philosophorum aliquis non
dixerit?--LACTANTIUS.