LETTER CLXV.169.
To Captain Fermor, at Silleri.
Aug. 6.
I have been taking an exact survey of the house and estate with my mother, in order to determine on some future plan of life.
’Tis inconceivable what I felt on returning to a place so dear to me, and which I had not seen for many years; I ran hastily from one room to another; I traversed the garden with inexpressible eagerness: my eye devoured every object; there was not a tree, not a bush, which did not revive some pleasing, some soft idea.
I felt, to borrow a very pathetic expression of Thomson’s,
“A thousand little tendernesses throb,”
on revisiting those dear scenes of infant happiness; which were increased by having with me that estimable, that affectionate mother, to whose indulgence all my happiness had been owing.
But to return to the purpose of our visit: the house is what most people would think too large for the estate, even had I a right to call it all my own; this is, however, a fault, if it is one, which I can easily forgive.
There is furniture enough in it for my family, including my mother; it is unfashionable, but some of it very good: and I think Emily has tenderness enough for me to live with me in a house, the furniture of which is not perfectly in taste.