LETTERS BY LAURENCE STERNE, A. M. LETTER I.* To Miss L YES! I will steal from the world, and not a babbling tongue shall tell where I am; Echo shall not so much as whisper my hiding-place. Suffer thy imagination to paint it at a little sun-gilt cottage, on the side of a romantic hill: dost thou think I will leave love and friendship behind me? No! they shall be my companions in solitude, for they will sit down and rise up with me in the amiable form of my L. We will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before the arch-fiend entered that indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our retirement, and produce such fruit as madness, and envy, and ambition, have always killed in the bud. Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in December-some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind. No planetary influence shall reach us, but that which presides and cherishes the sweet *This, and the three subsequent letters, were written by Mr. Sterne to his wife, while she resided in Staffordshire, before their marriage. 1:9 est flowers. God preserve us! How delightful this prospect in idea! We will build and we will plant in our own way-simplicity shall not be tortured by art; we will learn of Nature how to live-she shall be our alchemist to mingle all the good of life into one salubrious draught. The gloomy family of care and distrust shall be banished from our dwelling, guarded by thy kind and tutelary deity; we will sing our choral songs of gratitude, and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes for thy society. L. STERNE. LETTER II. To the Same. You bid me tell you, my dear L. how I bore your departure for S, and whether the valley where D'Estella stands, retains still its looks, or if I think the roses or jessamines smell as sweet, as when you left it. Alas! every thing has now lost its relish and look! The hour you left D'Estella, I took to my bed. I was worn out with fevers of all kinds, but most by that fever of the heart with which thou knowest well I have been wasting these two years, and shall continue wasting till you quit S. The good Miss Sfrom the forebodings of the best of hearts, thinking I was ill, insisted upon my going to her. What can be the cause, my dear L. that I have never been able to see the face of this mutual friend, but 1 feel myself rent to pieces? She made me stay an hour with her, and in that short space, I burst into tears a dozen different times, and in such affectionate gusts of passion, that she was constrained to leave the room, and sympathize in her dressing-room. I have been weeping for you both, said she, in a tone of the sweetest pity, for poor L.'s heart. I have long known it, her anguish is as sharp as yours, her heart as tender, her constancy as great, her virtues as heroic; Heaven brought you not together to be tormented. I could only answer her with a kind look, and a heavy sigh, and returned home to your lodings (which I have hired till your return) to resign |