To Mrs. Fitzgerald.
Bellfield, Tuesday.
I accept your challenge, Bell; and am greatly mistaken if you find
me so very insipid as you are pleased to suppose.
Have no fear of falling into vegetation; not one amongst us has the
least vegetative quality.
I have a thousand ideas of little amusements, to keep the mind
awake.
None of our party are of that sleepy order of beings, who want
perpetual events to make them feel their existence: this is the defect
of the cold and inanimate, who have not spirit and vivacity enough to
taste the natural pleasures of life.
Our adventures of one kind are at an end; but we shall see others,
as entertaining, springing up every moment.
I dare say, our whole lives will be Pindaric: my only plan of life
is to have none at all, which, I think, my little Bell will approve.
Please to observe, my sweet Bell, to make life pleasant, we must not
only have great pleasures but little ones, like the smaller auxiliary
parts of a building; we must have our trifling amusements, as well as
our sublime transports.
My first _second_ pleasure (if you will allow the expression)
is gardening; and for this reason, that it is my divine Emily's: I must
teach you to love rural pleasures.
Colonel Willmott has made me just as rich as I wish to be.
You must know, my fair friend, that whilst I thought a fortune and
Emily incompatible, I had infinite contempt for the former, and fancied
that it would rather take from, than add to, my happiness; but, now I
can possess it with her, I allow it all its value.
My father (with what delight do I call the father of Emily by that
name!) hinted at my taking a larger house; but I would not leave my
native Dryads for an imperial palace: I have, however, agreed to let
him build a wing to Bellfield, which it wants, to compleat the original
plan, and to furnish it in whatever manner he thinks fit.
He is to have a house in London; and we are to ramble from one to
the other as fancy leads us.
He insists on our having no rule but inclination: do you think we
are in any danger of vegetating, my dear Bell?
The great science of life is, to keep in constant employment that
restless active principle within us, which, if not directed right, will
be eternally drawing us from real to imaginary happiness.
Love, all charming as it is, requires to be kept alive by such a
variety of amusements, or avocations, as may prevent the languor to
which all human pleasures are subject.
Emily's tenderness and delicacy make me ever an expecting lover: she
contrives little parties of pleasure, and by surprize, of which she is
always the ornament and the soul: her whole attention is given to make
her Rivers happy.