The climate is all the year agreable and healthy, in summer divine; a man at my time of life cannot leave this chearing, enlivening sun without reluctance; the heat is very like that of Italy or the South of France, without that oppressive closeness which generally attends our hot weather in England.

The manner of life here is chearful; we make the most of our fine summers, by the pleasantest country parties you can imagine.  Here are some very estimable persons, and the spirit of urbanity begins to diffuse itself from the centre:  in short, I shall leave Canada at the very time when one would wish to come to it.

It is astonishing, in a small community like this, how much depends on the personal character of him who governs.

I am obliged to break off abruptly, the person who takes this to England being going immediately on board.

  I have the honor to be,
    My Lord,
      Your Lordship’s, &c. 
          Wm. Fermor.

LETTER 160.

To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall.

Silleri, July 13.

I agree with you, my dear Temple, that nothing can be more pleasing than an awakened English woman; of which you and my caro sposo have, I flatter myself, the happy experience; and wish with you that the character was more common:  but I must own, and I am sorry to own it, that my fair countrywomen and fellow citizens (I speak of the nation in general, and not of the capital) have an unbecoming kind of reserve, which prevents their being the agreable companions, and amiable wives, which nature meant them.

From a fear, and I think a prudish one, of being thought too attentive to please your sex, they have acquired a certain distant manner to men, which borders on ill-breeding:  they take great pains to veil, under an affected appearance of disdain, that winning sensibility of heart, that delicate tenderness, which renders them doubly lovely.

They are even afraid to own their friendships, if not according to the square and rule; are doubtful whether a modest woman may own she loves even her husband; and seem to think affections were given them for no purpose but to hide.

Upon the whole, with at least as good a native right to charm as any women on the face of the globe, the English have found the happy secret of pleasing less.

Is my Emily arrived?  I can say nothing else.

Twelve o’clock.

I am the happiest woman in the creation:  papa has just told me, we are to go home in six or seven weeks.

Not but this is a divine country, and our farm a terrestrial paradise; but we have lived in it almost a year, and one grows tired of every thing in time, you know, Temple.

I shall see my Emily, and flirt with Rivers; to say nothing of you and my little Lucy.

Adieu!  I am grown very lazy since I married; for the future, I shall make Fitzgerald write all my letters, except billet-doux, in which I think I excel him.