rather from necessity than choice: it seems to me that there is nothing
in the world to arouse me. I only ask for action, but I can find no
motive sufficient to excite it: let me then, in my indolence, not, like
the world, be idle, yet dependent on others; but at least dignify the
failing by some appearance of that freedom which retirement only can
bestow.

My seclusion is no longer solitude; yet I do not value it the less. I
spend a great portion of my time at E------. Loneliness is attractive to
men of reflection, nor so much because they like their own thoughts, as
because they dis like the thoughts of others. Solitude ceases to charm
the moment we can find a single being whose ideas are more agreeable to
us than our own. I have not, I think, yet described to you the person of
Lady Emily. She is tall, and slightly, yet beautifully, formed. The ill
health which obliged her to leave London for E------, in the height of
the season, has given her cheek a more delicate hue than I should think
it naturally wore. Her eyes are light, but their lashes are long and
dark; her hair is black and luxuriant, and worn in a fashion peculiar to
herself; but her manners, Monkton! how can I convey to you their
fascination! so simple, and therefore so faultless--so modest, and yet so
tender--she seems, in acquiring the intelligence of the woman, to have
only perfected the purity of the child; and now, after all that I have
said, I am only more deeply sensible of the truth of Bacon's observation,
that "the best part of beauty is that which no picture can express."
I am loth to finish this description, because it seems to me scarcely
begun; I am unwilling to continue it, because every word seems to show me
more clearly those recesses of my heart, which I would have hidden even
from myself. I do not yet love, it is true, for the time is past when
I was lightly moved to passion; but I will not incur that danger, the
probability of which I am seer enough to foresee. Never shall that pure