My dear friend, is not my resolution, never to favour the world with my tour, well grounded? I hope that I have proved to your satisfaction, that I could tell people nothing but what I do not understand, or what is not worth telling them, or what has been told them a hundred times, or what, as a gentleman, I am bound not to publish.
Yours truly,
J. B.
LETTER XI.
OLIVIA TO MADAME DE P——.
L—— Castle.
Friendship, my amiable and interesting Gabrielle, is more an affair of the heart than of the head, more the instinct of taste than the choice of reason. With me the heart is no longer touched, when the imagination ceases to be charmed. Explain to me this metaphysical phenomenon of my nature, and, for your reward, I will quiet your jealousy, by confessing without compunction what now weighs on my conscience terribly. I begin to feel that I can never love this English friend as I ought. She is too English—far too English for one who has known the charms of French ease, vivacity, and sentiment; for one who has seen the bewitching Gabrielle’s infinite variety.
Leonora has just the figure and face that you would picture to yourself for une belle Anglaise; and if our Milton comes into your memory, you might repeat, for the quotation is not too trite for a foreigner,
“Grace is in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.”