ch other, and that your passion would have gathered strength
from your mutual misfortunes. Undoubtedly virtuous love does find
consolation even in such melancholy retrospects. But Virginia is no
more; yet those persons still live, whom, next to yourself, she held
most dear; her mother, and your own: your inconsolable affliction is
bringing them both to the grave. Place your happiness, as she did hers,
in affording them succour. My son, beneficence is the happiness of the
virtuous: there is no greater or more certain enjoyment on the earth.
Schemes of pleasure, repose, luxuries, wealth, and glory are not suited
to man, weak, wandering, and transitory as he is. See how rapidly one
step towards the acquisition of fortune has precipitated us all to the
lowest abyss of misery! You were opposed to it, it is true; but who
would not have thought that Virginia's voyage would terminate in her
happiness and your own? an invitation from a rich and aged relation, the
advice of a wise governor, the approbation of the whole colony, and the
well-advised authority of her confessor, decided the lot of Virginia.
Thus do we run to our ruin, deceived even by the prudence of those who
watch over us: it would be better, no doubt, not to believe them, nor
even to listen to the voice or lean on the hopes of a deceitful world.
But all men,--those you see occupied in these plains, those who go
abroad to seek their fortunes, and those in Europe who enjoy repose from
the labours of others, are liable to reverses! not one is secure from
losing, at some period, all that he most values,--greatness, wealth,
wife, children, and friends. Most of these would have their sorrow
increased by the remembrance of their own imprudence. But you have
nothing with which you can reproach yourself. You have been faithful in
your love. In the bloom of youth, by not departing from the dictates of
nature, you evinced the wisdom of a sage. Your views were just,
because they were pure, simple, and disinterested. You had, besides, on
Virginia, sacred claims which nothing could countervail. You have lost
her: but it is neither your own imprudence, nor your avarice, nor your
false wisdom which has occasioned this misfortune, but the will of God,
who had employed the passions of others to snatch from you the object of
your love; God, from whom you derive everything, who knows what is most
fitting for you, and whose wisdom has not left you any cause for the
repentance and despai