To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, Aug. 11.
We embark to-morrow, and hope to see you in less than a month, if
this fine wind continues.
I am just come from Montmorenci, where I have been paying my
devotions to the tutelary deities of the place _for the last time_.
I had only Fitzgerald with me; we visited every grotto on the lovely
banks, where we dined; kissed every flower, raised a votive altar on
the little island, poured a libation of wine to the river goddess; and,
in short, did every thing which it became good heathens to do.
We stayed till day-light began to decline, which, with the idea of
_the last time_, threw round us a certain melancholy solemnity; a
solemnity which
"Deepen'd the murmur of the falling floods,
And breath'd a browner horror on the woods."