in a fashion peculiar
to herself; but her manners, Monkton! how can I convey to you their
fascination! so simple, and therefore so faultless--so modest, and yet
so tender--she seems, in acquiring the intelligence of the woman, to
have only perfected the purity of the child; and now, after all that
I have said, I am only more deeply sensible of the truth of Bacon's
observation, that "the best part of beauty is that which no picture can
express." I am loth to finish this description, because it seems to me
scarcely begun; I am unwilling to continue it, because every word seems
to show me more clearly those recesses of my heart, which I would have
hidden even from myself. I do not yet love, it is true, for the time
is past when I was lightly moved to passion; but I will not incur that
danger, the probability of which I am seer enough to foresee. Never
shall that pure and innocent heart be sullied by one who would die to
shield it from the lightest misfortune. I find in myself a powerful
seconder to my uncle's wishes. I shall be in London next week; till
then, fare well. E. F.

When the proverb said, that "Jove laughs at lovers' vows," it meant not
(as in the ordinary construction) a sarcasm on their insincerity, but
inconsistency. We deceive others far less than we deceive ourselves.
What to Falkland were resolutions which a word, a glance, could over
throw? In the world he might have dissipated his thoughts in loneliness
he concentred them; for the passions are like the sounds of Nature,
only heard in her solitude! He lulled his soul to the reproaches of his
conscience; he surrendered himself to the intoxication of so golden a
dream; and amidst those beautiful scenes there arose, as an offering to
the summer heaven, the incense of two hearts which had, through those
very fires so guilty in themselves, purified and ennobled every other
emotion they had conceived,

God made the country, and man made the town.

says the hackneyed quotation; and the feeling awakened in each, differ
with the genius of the place. Who can compare the frittered and divided
affections formed in cities with that which crowds cannot distract by
opposing temptations, or dissipation infect with its frivolities?

I have often thought that had the execution of Atala equalled its
design, no human work could have surpassed it in its grandeur. What
picture is more simple, though more sublime, than the vast solitude of
an unpeopled wildernes