and innocent heart be sullied by one who would die to shield it from the
lightest misfortune. I find in myself a powerful seconder to my uncle's
wishes. I shall be in London next week; till then, fare well. E. F.



When the proverb said, that "Jove laughs at lovers' vows," it meant not
(as in the ordinary construction) a sarcasm on their insincerity, but
inconsistency. We deceive others far less than we deceive ourselves.
What to Falkland were resolutions which a word, a glance, could over
throw? In the world he might have dissipated his thoughts in loneliness
he concentred them; for the passions are like the sounds of Nature, only
heard in her solitude! He lulled his soul to the reproaches of his
conscience; he surrendered himself to the intoxication of so golden a
dream; and amidst those beautiful scenes there arose, as an offering to
the summer heaven, the incense of two hearts which had, through those
very fires so guilty in themselves, purified and ennobled every other
emotion they had conceived,

God made the country, and man made the town.

says the hackneyed quotation; and the feeling awakened in each, differ
with the genius of the place. Who can compare the frittered and divided
affections formed in cities with that which crowds cannot distract by
opposing temptations, or dissipation infect with its frivolities?

I have often thought that had the execution of Atala equalled its design,
no human work could have surpassed it in its grandeur. What picture is
more simple, though more sublime, than the vast solitude of an unpeopled
wilderness, the woods, the mountains, the face of Nature, cast in the