My mother behaves like an angel on this occasion; expresses herself perfectly happy in my having consulted my heart alone in marrying, and speaks of Emily's tenderness as a treasure above all price. She does not even hint a wish to see me richer than I am. Had I never seen Emily, I would not have married this lady unless love had united us. Do not, however, suppose I have that romantic contempt for fortune, which is so pardonable, I had almost said so becoming, at nineteen. I have seen more of the world than most men of my age, and I have seen the advantages of affluence in their strongest light. I think a worthy man not only may have, but ought to have, an attention to making his way in the world, and improving his situation in it, by every means consistent with probity and honor, and with his own real happiness. I have ever had this attention, and ever will, but not by base means: and, in my opinion, the very basest is that of selling one's hand in marriage. With what horror do we regard a man who is kept! and a man who marries from interested views alone, is kept in the strongest sense of the word. He is equally a purchased slave, with no distinction but that his bondage is of longer continuance. Adieu! I may possibly write again on Wednesday. Your faithful Ed. Rivers. LETTER 218. To Colonel Rivers, Bellfield, Rutland. London, Nov. 18. Fitzgerald is busy, and begs me to write to you. Your cottagers are arrived; there is something very interesting in Miss Williams, and the little boy is an infant Adonis. Heaven send he may be an honester man than his father, or I foresee terrible devastations amongst the sex. We have this moment your letter; I am angry with you for blaspheming the sweet season of nineteen: "O lovely source Of generous foibles, youth! when opening minds Are honest as the light, lucid as air, As fostering breezes kind, as linnets gay, Tender as buds, and lavish as the spring." You will find out I am in a course of Shenstone, which I prescribe to all minds tinctured with the uncomfortable selfishness of the present age. The only way to be good, is to retain the generous mistakes, if they are such, of nineteen through life. As to you, my dear Rivers, with all your airs of prudence and knowing the world, you are, in this respect, as much a boy as ever. Witness your extreme joy at having married a woman with two thousand pounds, when you might have had one with twenty times the sum. You are a boy, Rivers, I am a girl; and I hope we shall remain so as long as we live. Do you know, my dear friend, that I am a daughter of the Muses, and that I wrote pastorals at seven years old? I am charmed with this, because an old physician once told me it was a symptom, not only of long life, but of long youth, which is much better. He explained this, by saying something about animal spirits, which I do not at all understand, but which perhaps you may.