To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, July 10.
By this time, my dear Lucy, I hope you are happy with your brother
and my sweet Emily: I am all impatience to know this from yourselves;
but it will be five or six weeks, perhaps much more, before I can have
that satisfaction.
As to me--to be plain, my dear, I can hold no longer; I have been
married this fortnight. My father wanted to keep it a secret, for some
very foolish reasons; but it is not in my nature; I hate secrets, they
are only fit for politicians, and people whose thoughts and actions
will not bear the light.
For my part, I am convinced the general loquacity of human kind, and
our inability to keep secrets without a natural kind of uneasiness,
were meant by Providence to guard against our laying deep schemes of
treachery against each other.
I remember a very sensible man, who perfectly knew the world, used
to say, there was no such thing in nature as a secret; a maxim as true,
at least I believe so, as it is salutary, and which I would advise all
good mammas, aunts, and governesses, to impress strongly on the minds
of young ladies.