To Colonel Bellville.
Wednesday.
I AM charmed with Lady Mary; her address
is easy, polite, attentive; she is tall,
brown, well made, and perfectly graceful;
her air would inspire awe, if not softened
by the utmost sweetness and affability of
behaviour. She has great vivacity in her
looks and manner; her hair is quite white:
her eyes have lost their lustre, yet it is
easy to see she has been very handsome; her
hand and arm are yet lovely, of which she
is not a little vain: take her for all in all,
she is the finest ruin I ever beheld.
She is full of anecdotes of the Queen's
time, chosen with judgment, and told with
spirit, which makes her conversation infinitely
amusing. She has been saying so
many fine things of Harry, who by the way
strongly resembles her, that I begin to think
the good old Lady has a matrimonial design
upon him: really not amiss such a scheme;
fine remains, an affluent fortune, and as to
years, eighty is absolutely the best age I
know for a wife, except eighteen. She
thinks him, what is extremely in his favor,
very like her brother, who was killed at the
battle of Almanza.
She has the talkativeness of age, which
where there is sense and knowledge of the
world, I do not dislike; she is learned in
genealogy, and can tell you not only the intermarriages,
but the family virtues and
vices, of every ancient house in the kingdom;
as to the modern ones, she does not
think them worth studying. I am high in
her favor, because my blood has never been
contaminated by a city marriage. She
tells me, the women of my family have always
been famous for a certain ease and bon
air, which she is glad to see is not lost; and
that my grand-mother was the greatest ornament
of Queen Mary's court.
She has a great contempt for the present
race of beauties, says the very idea of grace
is almost lost, and that we see nothing now
but meer pretty women; that she can only
account for this, by supposing the trifling
turn of their minds gives an insignificance
to their persons; and that she would advise
them to learn to think and act, in order
to their being able to look and move,
with dignity. "You, nephew, she says,
"who remember each bright Churchill of
the Galaxy, will readily come into my
opinion." She does me the honor, however,
to say I am the most graceful woman
she has seen since the Queen's time.
She is a great politician, and something
inclined to be a tory, though she professes
perfect impartiality; loves the King, and
idolizes the Queen, because she thinks she
sees in her the sweet affability so admired
in her favorite Queen Mary––Forgives
the cits for their opposition to peace, because
they get more money by war, the criterion
by which they judge every thing:
but is amazed nobles, born guardians of
the just rights of the throne, the fountain
of all their honors, should join these interested
Change-alley politicians, and endeavour,
from private pique, to weaken the
hands of their sovereign: But adds, with a
sigh, that mankind were always alike, and
that it was just so in the Queen's time.
"But pray, nephew, this Canada;–I
remember when Hill was sent against it
in the Queen's time, it was thought of
great consequence; and two or three years
ago pamphlets were wrote, I am told by
men very well born, to prove it was the only
point we ought to have in view; but a point
in which we could scarce hope to succeed.
Is it really so trifling an acquisition? And
how comes the nature of it to be so changed
now we are likely to keep it?"
"The terms of peace talked of, madam,
said Lord Belmont, if we consider them
in the only just light, their relation to
the end for which war was undertaken,
are such as wisdom and equity equally
dictate. Canada, considered merely as
the possession of it gives security to our
colonies, is of more national consequence
to us than all our Sugar-islands on the
globe: but, if the present inhabitants are
encouraged to stay, by the mildness of
our laws, and that full liberty of conscience
to which every rational creature has
a right; if they are taught, by every honest
art, a love for that constitution which
makes them free, and a personal attachment
to the best of princes; if they are
allured to our religious worship, by seeing
it in its genuine beauty, equally remote
from their load of trifling ceremonies
and the unornamented forms of the
dissenters: if population is encouraged;
the waste lands settled; and a whale
fishery set on foot, we shall find it, considered
in every light, an acquisition beyond
our most sanguine hopes."
O Ciel! I am tired. Adieu!
A. Wilmot
