season when first they felt the titillation of love, the budding
passions, and the first dear object of their wishes! how unexperienced
they gave credit to all the tales of romantic loves! Dear George, were
not the playing fields at Eton food for all manner of flights? No old
maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from
King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as
those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending
a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the
cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a
kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living
disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I
found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw
Windsor Castle in no other view than the _Capitoli immobile saxum_. I
wish a committee of the House of Commons may ever seem to be the senate;
or a bill appear half so agreeable as a billet-doux. You see how deep
you have carried me into old stories; I write of them with pleasure, but
shall talk of them with more to you. I can't say I am sorry I was never
quite a schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at
cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I
can remember things that are very near as pretty. The beginning of my
Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's
hallowed grove; not in thumping and pummelling king Amulius's herdsmen.
I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough;
one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as
his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable
circumstances I can recollect is the Triumvirate, composed of yourself,
Charles, and

Your sincere friend.