But sent to a country against which I have a decided prejudice—which I suppose semi-barbarous, semi-civilized; has lost the strong and hardy features of savage life, without acquiring those graces which distinguish polished society—I shall neither participate in the poignant pleasure of awakened curiosity and acquired information, nor taste the least of those enjoyments which courted my acceptance in my native land. Enjoyments did I say! And were they indeed enjoyments? How readily the mind adopts the phraseology of habit, when the sentiment it once clothed no longer exists. Would that my past pursuits were even in recollection, the aspect of enjoyments. But even my memory has lost its character of energy, and the past, like the present, appears one unwearied scence of chill and vapid existence. No sweet point of reflection seizes on the recollective powers. No actual joy woos my heart’s participation, and no prospect of future felicity glows on the distant vista of life, or awakens the quick throb of hope and expectation; all is cold, sullen and dreary.
Laval seems to entertain no less prejudice against this country than his master, he has therefore begged leave of absence until my father comes over. Pray have the goodness to send me by him a box of Italian crayons, and a good thermometer; for I must have something to relieve the tedium vitae of my exiled days; and in my articles of stipulation with my father, chemistry and belles lettres are specially prohibited. It was a useless prohibition, for Heaven knows, chemistry would have been the last study I should have flown to in my present state of mind. For how can he look minutely into the intimate structure of things, and resolve them into their simple and elementary substance, whose own disordered mind is incapable of analyzing the passions by which it is agitated, of ascertaining the reciprocal relation of its incoherent ideas, or combining them in different proportions (from those by which they were united by chance,) in order to join a new and useful compound for the benefit of future life? As for belles lettres! so blunted are all those powers once so
“Active and strong, and feelingly alive,
To each fine impulse,”
that not one “pansee coleur de rose” lingers on the surface of my faded imagination, and I should turn with as much apathy from the sentimental sorcery of Rosseau, as from the volumnious verbosity of an High German doctor; yawn over “The Pleasures of Memory,” and run the risk of falling fast asleep with the brilliant Madame de Sevigne in my hand. So send me a Fahrenheit, that I may bend the few coldly mechanical powers left me, to ascertain the temperature of my wild western territories, and expect my letters from thence to be only filled with the summary results of metoric instruments, and synoptical views of common phenomena.
Adieu.