ceive this;
which I send, with what I wrote yesterday, by a small vessel which
sails a week sooner then was intended.

Rivers persuades Fitzgerald to apply for the lands which he had
fixed upon on Lake Champlain, as he has no thoughts of ever returning
hither.

I will prevent this, however, if I have any influence: I cannot
think with patience of continuing in America, when my two amiable
friends have left it; I had no motive for wishing a settlement here,
but to form a little society of friends, of which they made the
principal part.

Besides, the spirit of emulation would have kept up my courage, and
given fire and brilliancy to my fancy.

Emily and I should have been trying who had the most lively genius
at creation; who could have produced the fairest flowers; who have
formed the woods and rocks into the most beautiful arbors, vistoes,
grottoes; have taught the streams to flow in the most pleasing
meanders; have brought into view the greatest number and variety of
those lovely little falls of water with which this fairy land abounds;
and shewed nature in the fairest form.

In short, we should have been continually endeavoring, following the
luxuriancy of female imagination, to render more charming the sweet
abodes of love and friendship; whilst our heroes, changing their
swords into plough-shares, and engaged in more substantial, more
profitable labors, were clearing land, raising cattle and corn, and
doing every thing becoming good farmers; or, to express it more
poetically,

"Taming the genius of the stubborn plain,
Almost as quickly as they conquer'd Spain:"

By which I would be understood to mean the Havannah, where, vanity
apart, I am told both of them did their duty, and a little more, if a
man can in such a case be said to do more.

In one word, they would have been studying the useful, to support
us; we the agreable, to please and amuse them; which I take to be
assigning to the two sexes the employments for which nature intended
them, notwithstanding the vile example of the savages to the contrary.

There are now no farmeresses in Canada worth my contending with;
therefore the whole pleasure of the thing would be at an end, even on
the supposition that friendship had not been the soul of our design.

Say every thing for me to Temple and Mrs. Rivers; and to my dearest
Emily, if arrived.

Adieu! your faithful
A. Fermor.

LETTER 152.

To the Earl of ----.

Silleri