the duties I have chosen, and a feeling of
conformity to one's situation, lessen the regret I might be inclined to
indulge in. Besides, there are new and delightful ties that bind me to
Canada: I have enjoyed much domestic happiness since I came hither;--and
is it not the birthplace of my dear child? Have I not here first tasted
the rapturous delight arising from maternal feelings? When my eye rests
on my smiling darling, or I feel his warm breath upon my cheek, I would
not exchange the joy that fills my breast for any pleasure the world
could offer me. "But this feeling is not confined to the solitude of
your Canadian forests, my dear friend," you will say. I know it; but
here there is nothing to interfere with your little nursling. You are
not tempted by the pleasures of a gay world to forget your duties as a
mother; there is nothing to supplant him in your heart; his presence
endears every place; and you learn to love the spot that gave him birth,
and to think with complacency upon the country, because it is _his_
country; and in looking forward to his future welfare you naturally
become doubly interested in the place that is one day to be his.

Perhaps I rather estimate the country by my own feelings; and when I
find, by impartial survey of my present life, that I am to the full as
happy, if not really happier, than I was in the old country, I cannot
but value it.

Possibly, if I were to enter into a detail of the advantages I possess,
they would appear of a very negative character in the eyes of persons
revelling in all the splendour and luxury that wealth could procure, in
a country in which nature and art are so eminently favourable towards
what is usually termed the pleasures of life; but I never was a votary
at the shrine of luxury or fashion. A round of company, a routine of
pleasure, were to me sources of weariness, if not of disgust. "There's
nothing in all this to satisfy the heart," says Schiller; and I admit
the force of the sentiment.

I was too much inclined to spurn with impatience the fetters that
etiquette and fashion are wont to impose on society, till they rob its
followers of all freedom and independence of will; and they soon are
obliged to live for a world that in secret they despise and loathe, for
a world, too, that usually regards them with contempt, because they dare
not act with an independence, which would be crushed directly it was
displayed.

And I must freely confess to you that I d