FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

At length, then, you are to be mine--you have consented to fly with me.
In three days we shall leave this country, and have no home--no world but
in each other. We will go, my Emily, to those golden lands where Nature,
the only companion we will suffer, woos us, like a mother, to find our
asylum in her breast; where the breezes are languid beneath the passion
of the voluptuous skies; and where the purple light that invests all
things with its glory is only less tender and consecrating than the
spirit which we bring. Is there not, my Emily, in the external nature
which reigns over creation, and that human nature centred in ourselves,
some secret and undefinable intelligence and attraction? Are not the
impressions of the former as spells over the passions of the later? and
in gazing upon the loveliness around us, do we not gather, as it were,
and store within our hearts, an increase of the yearning and desire of
love? What can we demand from earth but its solitudes--what from heaven
but its unpolluted air? All that others would ask from either, we can
find in ourselves. Wealth--honour--happiness--every object of ambition
or desire, exist not for us without the circle of our arms! But the
bower that surrounds us shall not be unworthy of your beauty or our love.
Amidst the myrtle and the vine, and the valleys where the summer sleeps
and "the rivers that murmur the memories and the legends of old amidst
the hills and the glossy glades," and the silver fountains, still as
beautiful as if the Nymph and Spirit yet held and decorated an earthly
home; amidst these we will make the couch of our bridals, and the moon of
Italian skies shall keep watch on our repose.