You may perhaps call my project romantic, but my active temper is ill suited to the lazy character of a reduc’d officer:  besides that I am too proud to narrow my circle of life, and not quite unfeeling enough to break in on the little estate which is scarce sufficient to support my mother and sister in the manner to which they have been accustom’d.

What you call a sacrifice, is none at all; I love England, but am not obstinately chain’d down to any spot of earth; nature has charms every where for a man willing to be pleased:  at my time of life, the very change of place is amusing; love of variety, and the natural restlessness of man, would give me a relish for this voyage, even if I did not expect, what I really do, to become lord of a principality which will put our large-acred men in England out of countenance.  My subjects indeed at present will be only bears and elks, but in time I hope to see the human face divine multiplying around me; and, in thus cultivating what is in the rudest state of nature, I shall taste one of the greatest of all pleasures, that of creation, and see order and beauty gradually rise from chaos.

The vessel is unmoor’d; the winds are fair; a gentle breeze agitates the bosom of the deep; all nature smiles:  I go with all the eager hopes of a warm imagination; yet friendship casts a lingering look behind.

Our mutual loss, my dear Temple, will be great.  I shall never cease to regret you, nor will you find it easy to replace the friend of your youth.  You may find friends of equal merit; you may esteem them equally; but few connexions form’d after five and twenty strike root like that early sympathy, which united us almost from infancy, and has increas’d to the very hour of our separation.

What pleasure is there in the friendships of the spring of life, before the world, the mean unfeeling selfish world, breaks in on the gay mistakes of the just-expanding heart, which sees nothing but truth, and has nothing but happiness in prospect!

I am not surpriz’d the heathens rais’d altars to friendship:  ’twas natural for untaught superstition to deify the source of every good; they worship’d friendship, which animates the moral world, on the same principle as they paid adoration to the sun, which gives life to the world of nature.

I am summon’d on board.  Adieu!

          Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 2.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Quebec, June 27.

I have this moment your letter, my dear; I am happy to hear my mother has been amus’d at Bath, and not at all surpriz’d to find she rivals you in your conquests.  By the way, I am not sure she is not handsomer, notwithstanding you tell me you are handsomer than ever:  I am astonish’d she will lead a tall daughter about with her thus, to let people into a secret they would never suspect, that she is past five and twenty.