‘My dear Friend,—I am quite ashamed of not answering your kind and hearty letter of invitation sooner. But a listless and irresolute disposition has made my mind for some time past as flimsy as a dish-clout, and I must _confess_ that I have invariably "left undone those things which I _ought_ to have done"—“for there was no health in me,” indeed, not enough to enable me “to do many things which I _ought not_ to have done.” Original sin and depravity just enabled me to _read_ when I should have _written_, and to lie in bed when I should have got up, &c. I wished to commit other _guess_ crimes than those, to have rambled over a great part of the kingdom and revelled with distant friends. But prudence, in the shape of rheumatism, and in many other hideous shapes, prevented me. Yet, in spite of all these admonitions, I had a month’s mind to accept of your hospitable offer. But we have guests at our apartments now, my two aged sisters, and, when they depart, winter will begin to show his sour face and chain me to my chimney corner till after Christmas, when I shall be unfettered, merely to be dragged into the hurry and din of London, which are every year more and more insupportable. I have long ceased to like the country, except in long days and fine weather, and, in winter, prefer London with all its horrors and fatigues to rural amusements. Indeed, autumn with all its golden glow and variegated charms for landscape painters is to me a constant _memento mori_, with its withered leaves tumbling about my ears; and all my most severe attacks of rheumatism have been during the equinoctial winds and rains; so that I am afraid of trusting myself far from home at this season of the year, as one can be sick and cross nowhere so _comfortably_ as at home. ‘Having scribbled my apology, I must now hasten to congratulate you and Mrs. Young on the marriage of our dear and worthy girl Bessy.[145] The match, indeed, is not splendid for either in point of circumstances; but they are quite as likely to scramble happily through life, with good hearts and wishes limited to their means, as the richest peers and peeresses in the land, who generally outlive their income, be it what it will, and have mortifications incident to pride and disappointed ambition which little folk know nothing about. They (I mean our young couple) have my hearty benediction and good wishes. A man without family attachments is an awkward and insulated being, but a woman without a mate is still more insignificant and helpless; and, having become adventurers in the matrimonial lottery, I sincerely hope they will gain a prize in the fortuitous distribution of such happiness as reasonable mortals have a right to expect.