I cannot describe the shock which your intelligence imparted. It was but a week before that day, on which his final summons was issued, that I received a letter from my valued and lamented friend, full of project and futurity; warm with friendship, and seasoned with that peculiar and pungent humour which rendered him so singularly entertaining and lively a companion. Sic transit gloria mundi! In middle age, rich, healthy, divested of care, and happy in the society of that good young man, who would have thought the end so near? Who could have anticipated this sudden wreck of human hope? Such is life! And does not such a tragedy, as it often presents, call upon the actors in the drama for serious thoughts of what may follow? I will not say that
“We could have better spared a better man,”
for Bentley was an excellent character, but I may truly say, that many who fill a much larger circle than he did in the world’s estimation, would not have left such a chasm in society. To the poor, his loss would be irreparable, were it not that he leaves in George a representative so worthy of him. Oh! when I reflect upon the habit which prevails so generally at present, of taking young people abroad, educating them in distant climes, alienating their minds from the land that gave them birth, and forming their tastes to foreign manners; when I compare this dismal error, and its consequences, with the scene which we are contemplating at Mount Prospect, surely there is reason to apprehend a fatal overthrow for our hapless country. How few George Bentleys are ready to succeed the present generation amongst us! I have seen much of the world in my day, but have latterly lived in such abstraction from its vices and its follies, that they strike me with almost as much wonder in their modern dress, as if I had not before been familiar with their features. True it is, that they are to be found everywhere, and the deepest retirement is not necessarily virtuous, because it is solitary; but the fashionable community of the present day seems to “out-Herod Herod” in all that marks the absence of head and heart. These dear young people are quite an affecting study. I never saw such purity in mortal mould as breathes around them. Each seems to be provided by nature with a safety lamp that preserves them from contact with the noxious miasma of a vicious world; and I should be repaid for much greater dereliction from my usual habits than I submit to here, by the pleasure which I derive from the unsophisticated singleness, instinctive modesty, and fine feeling of my youthful associates, to whom it has fallen to my lot to act the part of Chaperone. Never had Duenna reason to be prouder of a trust than I have of the charge confided to my care; and my vanity has cause of excitement in full proportion with my pride, as the charm of nature in the midst of an artificial society is irresistibly refreshing, like the admittance of Heaven’s sweet breath, the pure mountain breeze, into a heated atmosphere, loaded with the costly, but insalubrious exhalation of a thousand perfumes. You are so much a part of the Glenalta family, through the claims of a long acquaintance and mutual regard, that I do not feel as if I were betraying the delicacy of my young friend Emily Douglas, in telling you of the proof which we have just received of her total indifference to rank and fortune. Two days ago, General Douglas was applied to in form on the part of an old Baronet in this neighbourhood, who requested permission to announce his only son in quality of suitor to his niece, promising that nothing should be wanting in the liberality of settlements to render the proposed alliance agreeable to the young lady and her mother. I need scarcely add, how unhesitatingly these advances were rejected. You are too well acquainted with the charming girl who was the object of them, to doubt her reception of such an offer. Emily’s hand will follow her heart, not precede it; and happy will he be for whom such a treasure may be destined.
When a favourable moment occurs, and that you find dear George capable of deriving pleasure from hearing of a tribute to his uncle’s memory, tell him, that all the gaieties of a week, in prospect, have been suspended at Marsden by the young people, as a mark of the sincere esteem in which our late friend was held by the inhabitants of Glenalta. Adieu, my dear Oliphant. All here unite in kindest remembrances with
Your faithful and affectionate,
Ed. Otway.
LETTER XXXIX.
Emily Douglas to Julia Sandford.
Brighton.