manners; I have loved seldom,
because I cannot love without esteem.

Believe me, Jack, the meer pleasure of loving, even without a
return, is superior to all the joys of sense where the heart is
untouched: the French poet does not exaggerate when he says,

--Amour;
Tous les autres plaisirs ne valent pas tes peines.

You will perhaps call me mad; I am just come from a woman who is
capable of making all mankind so. Adieu!

Yours,
Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 22.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Sept. 25.

I have been rambling about amongst the peasants, and asking them a
thousand questions, in order to satisfy your inquisitive friend. As to
my father, though, properly speaking, your questions are addressed to
him, yet, being upon duty, he begs that, for this time, you will accept
of an answer from me.

The Canadians live a good deal like the ancient patriarchs; the
lands were originally settled by the troops, every officer became a
seigneur, or lord of the manor, every soldier took lands under his
commander; but, as avarice is natural to mankind, the soldiers took a
great deal more than they could cultivate, by way of providing for a
family: which is the reason so much land is now waste in the finest
part of the province: those who had children, and in general they have
a great number, portioned out their lands amongst them as they married,
and lived in the midst of a little world of their descendants.

There are whole villages, and there is even a large island, that of
Coudre, where the inhabitants are all the descendants of one pair, if
we only suppose that their sons went to the next village for wives, for
I find no tradition of their having had a dispensation to marry their
sisters.

The corn here is very good, though not equal to ours; the harvest
not half so gay as in England, and for this reason, that the lazy
creatures leave the greatest part of their land uncultivated, only
sowing as much corn of different sorts as will serve themselves; and
being too proud and too idle to work for hire, every family gets in
its own harvest, which prevents all that jovial spirit which we find
when the reapers work together in large parties.

Idleness is the reigning passion here, from the peasant to his lord;
the gentlemen never either ride on horseback or walk, but are driven
about like women, for they never drive themselves, lolling at their
ease in a calache: the peasants, I mea