domestic life, and often he stayed in London when he could have been in
the country with his wife, or had her with him in town. "As much as you
say I love the town, if you think it necessary for your interest to stay
some time here, I would not advise you to neglect a certainty for an
uncertainty? but I believe if you pass the Christmas here, great matters
will be expected from your hospitality: however, you are a better judge
than I am." So Lady Mary wrote from Hinchinbrooke in the first week of
December. She did not disguise from him the tedium of her existence.


"I continue indifferently well, and endeavour as much as I can to
preserve myself from spleen and melancholy; not for my own sake; I think
that of little importance; but in the condition I am, I believe it may
be of very ill consequence; yet, passing whole days alone as I do, I do
not always find it possible, and my constitution will sometimes get the
better of my reason. Human nature itself, without any additional
misfortunes, furnishes disagreeable meditations enough. Life itself to
make it supportable, should not be considered too near; my reason
represents to me in vain the inutility of serious reflections. The idle
mind will sometimes fall into contemplations that serve for nothing but
to ruin the health, destroy good humour, hasten old age and wrinkles,
and bring on an habitual melancholy. 'Tis a maxim with me to be young as
long as one can: there is nothing can pay one for that invaluable
ignorance which is the companion of youth; those sanguine groundless
hopes, and that lively vanity, which make all the happiness of life. To
my extreme mortification I grow wiser every day than other [sic]. I
don't believe Solomon was more convinced of the vanity of temporal
affairs than I am; I lose all taste of this world, and I suffer myself
to be bewitched by the charms of the spleen, though I know and foresee
all the irremediable mischiefs arising from it. I am insensibly fallen