I am going with him this afternoon to visit Miss Fermor, to whom he has a letter from the divine Emily, which he is to deliver himself.

He is very handsome, but not of my favorite stile of beauty:  extremely fair and blooming, with fine features, light hair and eyes; his countenance not absolutely heavy, but inanimate, and to my taste insipid:  finely made, not ungenteel, but without that easy air of the world which I prefer to the most exact symmetry without it.  In short, he is what the country ladies in England call a sweet pretty man.  He dresses well, has the finest horses and the handsomest liveries I have seen in Canada.  His manner is civil but cold, his conversation sensible but not spirited; he seems to be a man rather to approve than to love.  Will you excuse me if I say, he resembles the form my imagination paints of Prometheus’s man of clay, before he stole the celestial fire to animate him?

Perhaps I scrutinize him too strictly; perhaps I am prejudiced in my judgment by the very high idea I had form’d of the man whom Emily Montague could love.  I will own to you, that I thought it impossible for her to be pleased with meer beauty; and I cannot even now change my opinion; I shall find some latent fire, some hidden spark, when we are better acquainted.

I intend to be very intimate with him, to endeavour to see into his very soul; I am hard to please in a husband for my Emily; he must have spirit, he must have sensibility, or he cannot make her happy.

He thank’d me for my civility to Miss Montague:  do you know I thought him impertinent? and I am not yet sure he was not so, though I saw he meant to be polite.

He comes:  our horses are at the door.  Adieu!

      Yours,
          Ed. Rivers.

Eight in the evening.

We are return’d:  I every hour like him less.  There were several ladies, French and English, with Miss Fermor, all on the rack to engage the Baronet’s attention; you have no notion of the effect of a title in America.  To do the ladies justice however, he really look’d very handsome; the ride, and the civilities he receiv’d from a circle of pretty women, for they were well chose, gave a glow to his complexion extremely favorable to his desire of pleasing, which, through all his calmness, it was impossible not to observe; he even attempted once or twice to be lively, but fail’d:  vanity itself could not inspire him with vivacity; yet vanity is certainly his ruling passion, if such a piece of still life can be said to have any passions at all.

What a charm, my dear Lucy, is there in sensibility!  ’Tis the magnet which attracts all to itself:  virtue may command esteem, understanding and talents admiration, beauty a transient desire; but ’tis sensibility alone which can inspire love.

Yet the tender, the sensible Emily Montague—­no, my dear, ’tis impossible:  she may fancy she loves him, but it is not in nature; unless she extremely mistakes his character.  His approbation of her, for he cannot feel a livelier sentiment, may at present, when with her, raise him a little above his natural vegetative state, but after marriage he will certainly sink into it again.