As your inclination was not of a retired turn, I consented to a marriage, which, I hope, will be conducive to your felicity. Heaven grant it may! Oh! most gracious Providence, let me not be so curst as to see my children unhappy! I feel I could not support such an afflicting stroke. But I will not anticipate an evil I continually pray to heaven to avert. Adieu, my child! May you meet with no accident or misfortune to make you out of love with the world! Thy tender and affectionate father, E. GRENVILLE. LETTER X. TO Miss GRENVILLE. I have just perused my father's long packet: I shall not however comment upon it, till I have opened my whole mind to you in a more particular manner than I yet have done. The first part of my father's letter has given me much concern, by awakening some doubts, which I knew not subsisted in my bosom. He asks such questions relative to my real state of happiness, as distress me to answer. I have examined my most inward thoughts. Shall I tell you, my Louisa, the examination does not satisfy me? I believe in this life, and particularly in this town, we must not search too deeply--to be happy, we must take both persons and things as we in general find them, without scrutinizing too closely. The researches are not attended with that pleasure we would wish to find. The mind may be amused, or, more properly speaking, employed, so as not to give it leisure to think; and, I fancy, the people in this part of the world esteem reflection an evil, and therefore keep continually hurrying from place to place, to leave no room or time for it. For my own part, I sometimes feel some little compunction of mind from the dissipated life I lead; and wish I had been cast in a less tumultuous scene. I even sometimes venture to propose to Sir William a scheme of spending a little more time at home--telling him, it will be more for our advantage with respect to our health, as the repeated hurries in which we are engaged must, in future, be hurtful to us. He laughs at my sober plan. "Nothing," he says, "is so serviceable to the body, as unbending the mind--as to the rest, my notions are owing to the prejudices of education; but that in time he hopes my rusticity will yield to the _ton_. For God's sake," he continues, "make yourself ready--you know you are to be at the opera--" or somewhere or other. So away goes reflection; and we are whirled away in the stream of dissipation, with the rest of the world. This seems a very sufficient reason for every thing we do, _The rest of the world does so_: that's quite enough. But does it convey to the heart that inward secret pleasure which increases on reflection? Too sure it does not. However, it has been my invariable plan, from which I have not nor do intend to recede, to be governed in these matters by the will of my husband: he is some years older than me, and has had great experience in life. It shall be my care to preserve my health and morals;--in the rest, _he_ must be my guide.