and without it, all that we call happiness besides loses its property.  What is contentment, must be left to every particular person to judge for themselves, since they only know what is so to them which differs in all according to their several humours.  Only you and I agree ’tis to be found by us in a true friend, a moderate fortune, and a retired life; the last I thank God I have in perfection.  My cell is almost finished, and when you come back you’ll find me in it, and bring me both the rest I hope.

I find it much easier to talk of your coming back than your going.  You shall never persuade me I send you this journey.  No, pray let it be your father’s commands, or a necessity your fortune puts upon you.  ’Twas unkindly said to tell me I banish you; your heart never told it you, I dare swear; nor mine ne’er thought it.  No, my dear, this is our last misfortune, let’s bear it nobly.  Nothing shows we deserve a punishment so much as our murmuring at it; and the way to lessen those we feel, and to ’scape those we fear, is to suffer patiently what is imposed, making a virtue of necessity.  ’Tis not that I have less kindness or more courage than you, but that mistrusting myself more (as I have more reason), I have armed myself all that is possible against this occasion.  I have thought that there is not much difference between your being at Dublin or at London, as our affairs stand.  You can write and hear from the first, and I should not see you sooner if you continued still at the last.

Besides, I hope this journey will be of advantage to us; when your father pressed your coming over he told you, you needed not doubt either his power or his will.  Have I done anything since that deserves he should alter his intentions towards us?  Or has any accident lessened his power?  If neither, we may hope to be happy, and the sooner for this journey.  I dare not send my boy to meet you at Brickhill nor any other of the servants, they are all too talkative.  But I can get Mr. Gibson, if you will, to bring you a letter.  ’Tis a civil, well-natured man as can be, of excellent principles and exact honesty.  I durst make him my confessor, though he is not obliged by his orders to conceal anything that is told him.  But you must tell me then which Brickhill it is you stop at, Little or Great; they are neither of them far from us.  If you stay there you will write back by him, will you not, a long letter?  I shall need it; besides that, you owe it me for the last being so short.  Would you saw what letters my brother writes me; you are not half so kind.  Well, he is always in the extremes; since our last quarrel he has courted me more than ever he did in his life, and made me more presents, which, considering his humour, is as great a testimony of his kindness as ’twas of Mr. Smith’s to my Lady Sunderland when he presented Mrs. Camilla.  He sent me one this week which, in earnest, is as pretty a thing as I have seen, a China trunk, and the finest of the