My dear papa talks of taking a house near you, and of having a garden to rival yours: we shall spend a good deal of time with him, and I shall make love to Rivers, which you know will be vastly pretty. One must do something to give a little variety to life; and nothing is so amusing, or keeps the mind so pleasingly awake, especially in the country, as the flattery of an agreable fellow. I am not, however, quite sure I shall not look abroad for a flirt, for one's friend's husband is almost as insipid as one's own. Our romantic adventures being at an end, my dear; and we being all degenerated into sober people, who marry and _settle_; we seem in great danger of sinking into vegetation: on which subject I desire Rivers's opinion, being, I know, a most exquisite enquirer into the laws of nature. Love is a pretty invention, but, I am told, is apt to mellow into friendship; a degree of perfection at which I by no means desire Fitzgerald's attachment for me to arrive on this side seventy. What must we do, my dear, to vary our days? Cards, you will own, are an agreable relief, and the least subject to pall of any pleasures under the sun: and really, philosophically speaking, what is life but an intermitted pool at quadrille? I am interrupted by a divine colonel in the guards. Adieu! Your faithful A. Fitzgerald. LETTER 228. To Mrs. Fitzgerald. Bellfield, Tuesday. I accept your challenge, Bell; and am greatly mistaken if you find me so very insipid as you are pleased to suppose. Have no fear of falling into vegetation; not one amongst us has the least vegetative quality. I have a thousand ideas of little amusements, to keep the mind awake. None of our party are of that sleepy order of beings, who want perpetual events to make them feel their existence: this is the defect of the cold and inanimate, who have not spirit and vivacity enough to taste the natural pleasures of life. Our adventures of one kind are at an end; but we shall see others, as entertaining, springing up every moment. I dare say, our whole lives will be Pindaric: my only plan of life is to have none at all, which, I think, my little Bell will approve. Please to observe, my sweet Bell, to make life pleasant, we must not only have great pleasures but little ones, like the smaller auxiliary parts of a building; we must have our trifling amusements, as well as our sublime transports. My first _second_ pleasure (if you will allow the expression) is gardening; and for this reason, that it is my divine Emily's: I must teach you to love rural pleasures. Colonel Willmott has made me just as rich as I wish to be. You must know, my fair friend, that whilst I thought a fortune and Emily incompatible, I had infinite contempt for the former, and fancied that it would rather take from, than add to, my happiness; but, now I can possess it with her, I allow it all its value.