LETTER 100.

To the Earl of ——.

My Lord,

Silleri, March 24.

Nothing can be more just than your Lordship’s observation; and I am the more pleased with it, as it coincides with what I had the honor of saying to you in my last, in regard to the impropriety, the cruelty, I had almost said the injustice, of your intention of deserting that world of which you are at once the ornament and the example.

Good people, as your Lordship observes, are generally too retired and abstracted to let their example be of much service to the world:  whereas the bad, on the contrary, are conspicuous to all; they stand forth, they appear on the fore ground of the picture, and force themselves into observation.

’Tis to that circumstance, I am persuaded, we may attribute that dangerous and too common mistake, that vice is natural to the human heart, and virtuous characters the creatures of fancy; a mistake of the most fatal tendency, as it tends to harden our hearts, and destroy that mutual confidence so necessary to keep the bands of society from loosening, and without which man is the most ferocious of all beasts of prey.

Would all those whose virtues like your Lordship’s are adorned by politeness and knowledge of the world, mix more in society, we should soon see vice hide her head:  would all the good appear in full view, they would, I am convinced, be found infinitely the majority.

Virtue is too lovely to be hid in cells, the world is her scene of action:  she is soft, gentle, indulgent; let her appear then in her own form, and she must charm:  let politeness be for ever her attendant, that politeness which can give graces even to vice itself, which makes superiority easy, removes the sense of inferiority, and adds to every one’s enjoyment both of himself and others.

I am interrupted, and must postpone till to-morrow what I have further to say to your Lordship.  I have the honor to be, my Lord,

      Your Lordship’s, &c. 
          W. Fermor.

LETTER 101.

To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.

Silleri, March 25.

Your brother, my dear Lucy, has made me happy in communicating to me the account he has received of your marriage.  I know Temple; he is, besides being very handsome, a fine, sprightly, agreable fellow, and is particularly formed to keep a woman’s mind in that kind of play, that gentle agitation, which will for ever secure her affection.

He has in my opinion just as much coquetry as is necessary to prevent marriage from degenerating into that sleepy kind of existence, which to minds of the awakened turn of yours and mine would be insupportable.

He has also a fine fortune, which I hold to be a pretty enough ingredient in marriage.

In short, he is just such a man, upon the whole, as I should have chose for myself.