Your own
Frederick.
LETTER XXVI.
Mr. Otway to Mrs. Douglas.
Dearest Friend,
My former letters have been faithful transcripts from the book of our lives, and Frederick has filled up all interstices, but before I proceed to the main purpose which induces me to write to-day, I must indulge myself, and not displease you, by saying a few words of this dear youth, whom I have hitherto only mentioned incidentally, because I wished to see how he would bear the whirl of a London scene, and comport himself in some situations as trying as they were novel to him, ere I trumpeted his praise. You know how I abhor flattery, and will therefore give me credit for believing what I express of admiration for your son, who really astonishes me. Though introduced for the first time to what is called, certainly not par excellence, the Great World, he is neither awkward nor confused. The easy polish of true refinement which he learned at home, in the bosom of that loved retreat where all the best affections of his noble and manly heart are centered, frank him into a metropolitan drawing-room, as fearlessly as into your's at Glenalta; and his manners exhibit the happiest combination of boldness, in which there is no mixture of presumption, and modesty without mauvaise honte. With all the freshness of curiosity, and the candour of one who disdains subterfuge, he flies about collecting information—gratifying his good taste, and honestly confessing his previous ignorance of a thousand objects which have ceased to stimulate, if they ever did so, the vapid group by which we are environed. The courage with which Frederick dares to express his own thoughts, instead of borrowing the hacknied reverberation of opinions often adopted without discrimination, and rendered current by an idle multitude, who, contented to follow a fashionable leader, never exert a faculty for themselves, has something in it that commands attention, and I continually hear the inquiry of "who is he?" succeed the avowal of some sentiment on his part at variance with the modish creed.
If the novelty of Frederick's remarks occasionally excite a smile, it is evidently always accompanied with a desire to know more of him. Even those who would not, for any consideration, imitate his example, involuntarily respect the power of his valorous intrepidity; and that which in a vulgar man would be denominated mere boorishness, assuming a very different character when associated with native elegance and good breeding, the automaton throng are forced to admit the superiority which they dare not copy, and venerate the independence to which they cannot aspire. I assure you also, that he is an object of great admiration amongst the young ladies, one of whom having heard, I suppose, that he was an Irishman, sweetly lisped a few evenings ago, in half articulated accents, "le bel sauvage!" Tell Fanny that this anecdote is genuine, which she may be at first inclined to doubt; and tell her likewise that many a pretty head is half turned round to see that Frederick lingers near the harp or piano-forte, though he does come from that
"Land of bogs,
With ditches fenced—a Heaven fat with fogs."