If I did not know Lucy perfectly, I should perhaps hesitate in the next advice I am going to give you; which is, to make her the confidante, and the only confidante, of your gallantries, if you are so unhappy as to be inadvertently betrayed into any:  her heart will possibly be at first a little wounded by the confession, but this proof of perfect esteem will increase her friendship for you; she will regard your error with compassion and indulgence, and lead you gently back by her endearing tenderness to honor and herself.

Of all tasks I detest that of giving advice; you are therefore under infinite obligation to me for this letter.

Be assured of my tenderest affection; and believe me,

      Yours, &c. 
          Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 117.

To the Earl of ——.

Silleri, April 8.

Nothing can be more true, my Lord, than that poverty is ever the inseparable companion of indolence.

I see proofs of it every moment before me; with a soil fruitful beyond all belief, the Canadians are poor on lands which are their own property, and for which they pay only a trifling quit-rent to their seigneurs.

This indolence appears in every thing:  you scarce see the meanest peasant walking; even riding on horseback appears to them a fatigue insupportable; you see them lolling at ease, like their lazy lords, in carrioles and calashes, according to the season; a boy to guide the horse on a seat in the front of the carriage, too lazy even to take the trouble of driving themselves, their hands in winter folded in an immense muff, though perhaps their families are in want of bread to eat at home.

The winter is passed in a mixture of festivity and inaction; dancing and feasting in their gayer hours; in their graver smoking, and drinking brandy, by the side of a warm stove:  and when obliged to cultivate the ground in spring to procure the means of subsistence, you see them just turn the turf once lightly over, and, without manuring the ground, or even breaking the clods of earth, throw in the seed in the same careless manner, and leave the event to chance, without troubling themselves further till it is fit to reap.

I must, however, observe, as some alleviation, that there is something in the climate which strongly inclines both the body and mind, but rather the latter, to indolence:  the heat of the summer, though pleasing, enervates the very soul, and gives a certain lassitude unfavorable to industry; and the winter, at its extreme, binds up and chills all the active faculties of the soul.

Add to this, that the general spirit of amusement, so universal here in winter, and so necessary to prevent the ill effects of the season, gives a habit of dissipation and pleasure, which makes labor doubly irksome at its return.

Their religion, to which they are extremely bigoted, is another great bar, as well to industry as population:  their numerous festivals inure them to idleness; their religious houses rob the state of many subjects who might be highly useful at present, and at the same time retard the increase of the colony.