“I am impatient to have my new house fit for habitation, as I think the large and high rooms and its airy situation will be of great service to my health; and I am sure such noble apartments will be a great addition to my pleasures. In the winter of the year and the winter of our life, our principal enjoyments must be in our own house.... I suppose I shall be advised to take some Bath waters before the winter sets in.... I will get the better of my passion for my new house, which is almost equal to that of a lover to a mistress whom he thinks very handsome and very good, and such as will make him enjoy the dignity of life with ease, yet I will give as much of the autumn as I shall be advis’d to the Bath waters.... I have found much more benefit from Bath waters than I have from Tunbridge for some years past; and the accommodations at Bath are infinitely preferable. There are not above two houses on Mount Ephraim and Mount Pleasant that are not mere hovels; the bedchambers are so low and small that one is stifled; and, if the weather is bad, one is confin’d all day in a little parlour not much larger than a bird-cage; so that unless one goes to Tunbridge at the beginning of the season, one is miserably accommodated. “The airings round Bath are delightful. From every window of my house in the Crescent I had the most beautiful prospects imaginable; so that I enjoyed the sweet face of the fair month of May in all her blooming charms. “... I am very far from laughing at you, as you suppose, for indulging reveries about your son’s marrying. I often allow my fancy to dance at Montagu’s wedding; and the times are such I can hardly restrain it from attending his divorce bill through the Houses of Lords and Commons. However, it is better to suppose the times will mend. We do more wisely, when we sweeten present cares with the prospect of future pleasures, than when we embitter present pleasures with future apprehensions.” When Mrs. Montagu made the last reflection, she probably had in her mind the lines in her favourite “Comus:” “... Be not over exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils; For grant they be so, while they rest unknown, Why need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?” “... I have two objects in a daily state of improvement—my nephew Montagu and my new house. Many people would say my pleasure in both will be less when they are arriv’d at their state of perfection, but I am not of that opinion. The pleasures of expectation and of possession are different, but the quiet serenity of the latter is, methinks, the best.”