How characteristic this!—­do you not hear him saying it?

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We.now renewed our conversation upon various of our acquaintances, particularly Mr. Pepys, Mr. Langton, and Mrs. Montagu.  We stayed in this field, sitting and sauntering, near an hour.  We then went to a stile, just by the riverside, where the prospect is very beautiful, and there we seated ourselves.  Nothing could be more pleasant, though the wind was so high I was almost blown into the water.

He now traced to me great part of his life and conduct in former times, and told me a thousand excellent anecdotes of himself and his associates.  He summed them all up in a way that gave me equal esteem and regard for him, in saying he found society the only thing for lasting happiness ; that, if he had not met a woman he could permanently love, he must with every other advantage have been miserable- but that such was his good fortune, that “to and at this moment,” he said, “there is no sight so pleasing to me as seeing Mrs. Cambridge enter a room ; and that after having been married to her for forty years.  And the next most pleasing sight to me is an amiable woman.”

He then assured me that almost all the felicity of his life both had consisted, and did still consist, in female society.  It was, indeed, he said, very rare but there was nothing like it.

“And if agreeable women,” cried I, “are rare, much more so, I think, are agreeable men; at least, among my acquaintance they are very few, indeed, that are highly agreeable.”

“Yes, and when they are so,” said he, “it is difficult for you to have their society with any intimacy or comfort; there’are always so many reasons why you cannot know them.”

We continued chatting until we came to the end of the meadow, and there we stopped, and again were joined by the company.

Mr. Cambridge now proposed the water, to which I eagerly agreed.

We had an exceeding pleasant excursion.  We went up the river beyond the Duke of Montagu’s, and the water was smooth and delightful.  Methinks I should like much to sail from the very source to the mouth of the Thames. . . .

After dinner we again repaired to the lawn, in a general body ; but -we- had scarce moved ten paces, before Mr. Cambridge again walked off with me, to a seat that had a very “fine view of Petersham wood, and there we renewed our confabulation.

He now shewed me a note from Mr. Gibbon, sent to engage

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himself to Twickenham on the unfortunate day he got his ducking.(178) It is the most affected little piece of writing I ever saw.  He shall attend him, he says, at Twickenham, and upon the water, as soon as the weather is propitious, and the Thames, that amiable creature, is ready, to receive him.

Nothing, to be sure, could be so apt as such a reception as that “amiable creature” happened to give him!  Mr. Cambridge said it was “God’s revenge against conceit.”