![]() | The history of Lady Julia Mandeville | ![]() |
To Henry Mandeville, Esq;
London, June 20th.
YOU can have no idea, my dear Mr. Mandeville, how weary I am of being these few day only in town: that any one, who is happy enough to have a house, a cottage, in the country, should continue here at this season, is to me inconceivable: but that gentleman of large property, that noblemen, should imprison themselves in this smoaking furnace, when the whole land is a blooming garden, a wilderness of sweets; when pleasure courts
I cannot resist addressing them in a stanza or two of a poem, which deserves to be written in letters of gold.
"Mean time, by pleasure's sophistry allur'd,From the bright fun and living breeze ye stray:
And, deep in London's gloomy haunts immur'd,
Brook o'er your fortune's, freedom's health's decay,
O blind of choice, and to yourselves untrue!
The young grove shoots, their bloom the fields renew,
While he doth riot's orgies haply share,
Or tempt the gamester's dark destroying snare,
Or at some courtly shrine with lavish incense bend.
"And yet full oft your anxius tongues complain
That careless tumult prompts the rustic throng;
That the rude village inmates now disdain
Those homely ties which rul'd their fathers long:
Alas! your fathers did by other arts
Draw those kind ties around their simple hearts,
And led in other paths their ductile will:
By succours, faithful consul, courteous chear,
Won them the ancient manners to revere,
To prize their country's peace, and heaven's due rites fulfill."
Can a nobleman of spirit prefer the rude insults of a licentious London rabble, the refuse of every land, to the warm and faithful attachment of a brave, a generous, a free, and loyal yeomanry in the country? Does not interest, as well as virtue and humanity, prompt them, by living on their estates, to imitate the Heavens, which return the moisture they draw from the earth, in grateful dews and showers?
When I first came to Belmont, having been some years abroad, I found my tenants poor and dejected, scarce able to gain i hard penurious living. The neighbouring gentlemen spending two thirds of the year in London, and the town, which was the market for my estate, filled only with people in trade, who could scarce live by each other: I struck at the root of this evil, and, by living almost altogether in the country myself, brought the whole neighbourhood to do the same: I
Have you had my old men to dine? at sixty I admit them to my table, where they are always once a fortnight my guests. I love to converse with those, "whom age and long experience render wise; and in my idea of things, it is time to slacken the reins of pride, and to wave all sublunary distinctions, when they are so near being at an end between us. Besides I
Adieu! my esteemed, my amiable friend! how I envy you your larks and nightingales!
Your faithful Belmont.
![]() | The history of Lady Julia Mandeville | ![]() |