... Do not think I am sniffing at your franks. On the contrary, I am learning properly to value 1s. 3d., by seeing at once how hardly-earned, and how useful, money is in the country. In towns it appears contemptible, because one has always in view the baubles for which it is exchanged—the useless and fatiguing ball or assembly, the cadence of the public singer, the bill for frippery at the milliner’s, the trinket which it is more troublesome to keep than gratifying to show; but in the country, where one sees how much hard labour is necessary to realize a shilling, one is more ready to part with it for the relief of indigence, and less willing to throw it away on vanity and self-indulgence.
TO THE SAME.
Bognor, Sept. 15, 1808.
To amuse Miss Agar, I went yesterday to see Goodwood. Fine undulating lawns, and a luxuriant growth of trees, give it that degree of beauty which few large places in England are without; and the pheasantry is a little spot of great charms. This is a little dip, nearly oval, almost on the top of a high hill, and thickly fenced all round with trees and shrubs. The ground rises from it abruptly, opposite the entrance, and more gradually on either side. In the bottom lies the neat cottage of the protector and guide of the most beautiful race of gold and silver pheasants, which wander about apparently free from restraint, but alas! a few unseen feathers have been clipped, which completely rob them of the liberty of quitting the little circuit allotted to them. There is a total want of water, for which your being able by an effort to see the sea, and your discovering the Isle of Wight with difficulty, when you have mounted to a particular spot, can by no means compensate. The house is unfinished, and the windows seem too small for a building of such extent and magnificence as it is intended to be. You may be sure we did not go to see the dog-kennel, which is the grand curiosity of the place, and of such magnificence as makes one blush; but we were persuaded to pick our way through an ugly, gloomy, damp collection of little rocks and moss and tombstones, to which you descend by a short flight of steps; and this, forsooth, is the dogs’ burial-ground!
TO THE SAME.
Jan., 1809.
I have been reading Petrarch lately, not his sonnets before, but after, the loss of Laura. He is not a true mourner. His genius enabled him to guess at the workings of grief, and to clothe them in beautiful and appropriate expressions; but oh! how different from the deep sorrows of the truth. Yet many passages brought my own loss home to my mind, particularly his delight in her loveliness of form, of manners, and of voice; and his sense of his own privation from these being no more.