Falkland | Page 2

compassionate you. No
one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and
hermitage cannot penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not
envy you in your suppers at D---- House, nor even in your waltzes with
Eleanor.
It is a ruin rather than a house which I inhabit. I have not been at L-----
since my return from abroad, and during those years the place has gone
rapidly to decay; perhaps, for that reason, it suits me better, tel maitre
telle maison.
Of all my possessions this is the least valuable in itself, and derives the
least interest from the associations of childhood, for it was not at L-----
that any part of that period was spent. I have, however, chosen it from
my present retreat, because here only I am personally unknown, and
therefore little likely to be disturbed. I do not, indeed, wish for the
interruptions designed as civilities; I rather gather around myself, link
after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find among
my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only
experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese,
my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square--the circle is my
own empire and of thought and self; and it is to the scanty corners

which it leaves without, that I banish whatever belongs to the
remainder of mankind.
About a mile from L----- is Mr. Mandeville's beautiful villa of E-----, in
the midst of grounds which form a delightful contrast to the savage and
wild scenery by which they are surrounded. As the house is at present
quite deserted, I have obtained, through the gardener, a free admittance
into his domains, and I pass there whole hours, indulging, like the hero
of the Lutrin, "une sainte oisivete," listening to a little noisy brook, and
letting my thoughts be almost as vague and idle as the birds which
wander among the trees that surround me. I could wish, indeed, that
this simile were in all things correct--that those thoughts, if as free,
were also as happy as the objects of my comparison, and could, like
them, after the rovings of the day, turn at evening to a resting-place,
and be still. We are the dupes and the victims of our senses: while we
use them to gather from external things the hoards that we store within,
we cannot foresee the punishments we prepare for ourselves; the
remembrance which stings, and the hope which deceives, the passions
which promise us rapture, which reward us with despair, and the
thoughts which, if they constitute the healthful action, make also the
feverish excitement of our minds. What sick man has not dreamt in his
delirium everything that our philosophers have said?* But I am
growing into my old habit of gloomy reflection, and it is time that I
should conclude. I meant to have written you a letter as light as your
own; if I have failed, it is no wonder.--"Notre coeur est un instrument
incomplet--une lyre ou il manque des cordes, et ou nous sommes forces
de rendre les accens de la joie, sur le ton consacre aux soupirs."
* Quid aegrotus unquam somniavit quod philosophorum aliquis non
dixerit?--LACTANTIUS.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
You ask me to give you some sketch of my life, and of that bel mondo
which wearied me so soon. Men seldom reject an opportunity to talk of
themselves; and I am not unwilling to re-examine the past, to

re-connect it with the present, and to gather from a consideration of
each what hopes and expectations are still left to me for the future.
But my detail must be rather of thought than of action; most of those
whose fate has been connected with mine are now living, and I would
not, even to you, break that tacit confidence which much of my history
would require. After all, you will have no loss. The actions of another
may interest--but, for the most part, it is only his reflections which
come home to us; for few have acted, nearly all of us have thought.
My own vanity too would be unwilling to enter upon incidents which
had their origin either in folly or in error. It is true that those follies and
errors have ceased, but their effects remain. With years our faults
diminish, but our vices increase.
You know that my mother was Spanish, and that my father was one of
that old race of which so few scions remain, who, living in a distant
country, have been little influenced by the changes of fashion, and,
priding themselves on the antiquity of their names, have looked with
contempt upon the modern distinctions and the mushroom