ving
every order of men in some degree dependent on the other; and admits
of those gentle and almost imperceptible gradations, which the poet so
well calls,

"Th' according music of a well-mix'd state."

The prince is here a centre of union; an advantage, the want of
which makes a democracy, which is so beautiful in theory, the very
worst of all possible governments, except absolute monarchy, in
practice.

I am called upon, my Lord, to go to the citadel, to see the going
away of the ice; an object so new to me, that I cannot resist the
curiosity I have to see it, though my going thither is attended with
infinite difficulty.

Bell insists on accompanying me: I am afraid for her, but she will
not be refused.

At our return, I will have the honor of writing again to your
Lordship, by the gentleman who carries this to New York.

I have the honor to be, my Lord,
Your Lordship's, &c.
Wm. Fermor.

LETTER 131.

To the Earl of ----.

Silleri, April 20, Evening.

We are returned, my Lord, from having seen an object as beautiful
and magnificent in itself, as pleasing from the idea it gives of
renewing once more our intercourse with Europe.

Before I saw the breaking up of the vast body of ice, which forms
what is here called _the bridge_, from Quebec to Point Levi, I
imagined there could be nothing in it worth attention; that the ice
would pass away, or dissolve gradually, day after day, as the influence
of the sun, and warmth of the air and earth increased; and that we
should see the river open, without having observed by what degrees it
became so.

But I found _the great river_, as the savages with much
propriety call it, maintain its dignity in this instance as in all
others, and assert its superiority over those petty streams which we
honor with the names of rivers in England. Sublimity is the
characteristic of this western world; the loftiness of the mountains,
the grandeur of the lakes and rivers, the majesty of the rocks shaded
with a picturesque variety of beautiful trees and shrubs, and crowned
with the noblest of the offspring of the forest, which form the banks
of the latter, are as much beyond the power of fancy as that of
description: a landscape-painter might here expand his imagination,
and find ideas which he will seek in vain in our comparatively little
world.

The object of which I am speaking has all the American magnificence.

The ice before the town, or, to spea