“Then, what,” you ask me, “is the aim, the object, in pursuing this ignus fatuus of the heart and fancy?”
In a word, then, virtue is my object—felicity my aim; or, rather, I am lured towards the former through the medium of the latter. And whether the tie which binds me at once to moral and physical good, is a fragile texture and transient existence, or whether it will become “close twisted with the fibres of the heart, and breaking break it,” time only can determine—to time, therefore, I commit my fate; but while thus led by the hand of virtue, I inebriate at the living spring of bliss;
“While reeling through a wilderness of joy,"= can you wonder that I fling off the goading chain of prudence, and, in daring to be free, at once be virtuous and happy.
My father’s letter is brief, but pithy. My brother is married, and has sold his name and title for a hundred thousand pounds; and his brother has a chance of selling his happiness forever for something about the same sum. And who think you, is to be the purchaser? Why our old sporting friend D————. In my last grousing visit at his seat, you may remember the pert little girl, his only daughter, who, he assured us, was that day unkennelled for the first time, in honour of our success, and who rushed upon us from the nursery in all the bloom of fifteen, and all the boldness of a hoyden; whose society was the house-keeper, and the chamber-maid, whose ideas of pleasure extended no farther than a blind-man’s-buff in the servant’s hall, and a game of hot cockles with the butler and footman in the pantry. I had the good fortune to touch her heart at cross-purposes, and completely vanquished her affection by a romping match in the morning; and so it seems the fair susceptible has pined in thought ever since, but not “let concealment prey on her damask cheek,” for she told her love to an old maiden aunt, who told it to another confidential friend, until the whole neighbourhood was full of the tale of the victim of constancy and the fatal deceiver.
The father, as is usual in such cases, was the last to hear it; and believing me to be an excellent shot, and a keen sportsman, all he requires in a son-in-law, except a good family, he proposed the match to my father, who gladly embraced the offer, and fills his letters with blossoms, blushes, and unsophisticated charms; congratulates me on my conquest, and talks either of recalling me shortly to England, or bringing the fair fifteen and old Nimrod to Ireland on a visit with him. But the former he will not easily effect, and the latter I know business will prevent for some weeks, as he writes that he is still up to his ears in parchment deeds, leases, settlements, jointures. Mean time,
“Song, beauty, youth, love, virtue, joy, this group
Of bright ideas, flowers of Paradise as yet unforfeit,”
crown my golden hours of bliss; and whatever may be my destiny, I will at least rescue one beam of unalloyed felicity from its impending clouds—for, oh! my good friend, there is a prophetic something which incessantly whispers me, that in clouds and storms will the evening of my existence expire.
Adieu, H. M.