LETTER V.

Regrets produced by Contrasts.

Falmouth, March 11, 1787.

What a fool was I to leave my beloved retirement at Evian! Instead of viewing innumerable transparent rills falling over the amber-coloured rocks of Melierie, I am chained down to contemplate an oozy beach, deserted by the sea, and becrawled with worms tracking their way in the slime that harbours them. Instead of the cheerful crackling of a wood-fire in the old baron’s great hall, I hear the bellowing of winds in narrow chimneys. You must allow the aromatic fragrance of fir-cones, such heaps of which I used to burn in Savoy, is greatly preferable to the exhalations of Welsh coal, and that to a person wrapped up in musical devotion, high mass must be a good deal superior to the hummings and hawings of a Quaker assembly. Colett swears he had rather be boarded at the Inquisition than remain at the mercy of the confounded keeper of this hotel, the worst and the dearest in Christendom. We are all tired to death, and know not what to do with ourselves.

As I look upon ennui to be very catching, I shall break off before I give you a share of it.