There is one virtue I admire extremely in you both; I mean, that humane and tender compassion for the poor men, which prompts you to be always seen together; if you appeared separate, where is the hero who could resist either of you?

You ask me how I like the French ladies at Montreal:  I think them extremely pleasing; and many of them handsome; I thought Madame L——­ so, even near you and Miss Montague; which is, I think, saying as much as can be said on the subject.

I have just heard by accident that Sir George is arrived at Montreal.  Assure Miss Montague, no one can be more warmly interested in her happiness than I am:  she is the most perfect work of Heaven; may she be the happiest!  I feel much more on this occasion than I can express:  a mind like hers must, in marriage, be exquisitely happy or miserable:  my friendship makes me tremble for her, notwithstanding the worthy character I have heard of Sir George.

I will defer till another time what I had to say to Major Melmoth.

  I have the honour to be,
      Madam,
        Yours &c. 
          Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 10.

Silleri, August 24.

I have been a month arrived, my dear, without having seen your brother, who is at Montreal, but I am told is expected to-day.  I have spent my time however very agreably.  I know not what the winter may be, but I am enchanted with the beauty of this country in summer; bold, picturesque, romantic, nature reigns here in all her wanton luxuriance, adorned by a thousand wild graces which mock the cultivated beauties of Europe.  The scenery about the town is infinitely lovely; the prospect extensive, and diversified by a variety of hills, woods, rivers, cascades, intermingled with smiling farms and cottages, and bounded by distant mountains which seem to scale the very Heavens.

The days are much hotter here than in England, but the heat is more supportable from the breezes which always spring up about noon; and the evenings are charming beyond expression.  We have much thunder and lightening, but very few instances of their being fatal:  the thunder is more magnificent and aweful than in Europe, and the lightening brighter and more beautiful; I have even seen it of a clear pale purple, resembling the gay tints of the morning.

The verdure is equal to that of England, and in the evening acquires an unspeakable beauty from the lucid splendor of the fire-flies sparkling like a thousand little stars on the trees and on the grass.

There are two very noble falls of water near Quebec, la Chaudiere and Montmorenci:  the former is a prodigious sheet of water, rushing over the wildest rocks, and forming a scene grotesque, irregular, astonishing:  the latter, less wild, less irregular, but more pleasing and more majestic, falls from an immense height, down the side of a romantic mountain, into the river St. Lawrence, opposite the most smiling part of the island of Orleans, to the cultivated charms of which it forms the most striking and agreeable contrast.