re; she seems content with being my friend
only, without thinking of a nearer connexion; I am rather piqued at a
composure which has the air of indifference: why should not her
impatience equal mine?

The coach is at the door, and my mother waits for me.

Every happiness attend my friend, and all connected with him, in
which number I hope I may, by this time, include Fitzgerald.

Adieu!
Your affectionate
Ed. Rivers.

LETTER 169.

To Captain Fermor, at Silleri.

Aug. 6.

I have been taking an exact survey of the house and estate with my
mother, in order to determine on some future plan of life.

'Tis inconceivable what I felt on returning to a place so dear to
me, and which I had not seen for many years; I ran hastily from one
room to another; I traversed the garden with inexpressible eagerness:
my eye devoured every object; there was not a tree, not a bush, which
did not revive some pleasing, some soft idea.

I felt, to borrow a very pathetic expression of Thomson's,

"A thousand little tendernesses throb,"

on revisiting those dear scenes of infant happiness; which were
increased by having with me that estimable, that affectionate mother,
to whose indulgence all my happiness had been owing.

But to return to the purpose of our visit: the house is what most
people would think too large for the estate, even had I a right to call
it all my own; this is, however, a fault, if it is one, which I can
easily forgive.

There is furniture enough in it for my family, including my mother;
it is unfashionable, but some of it very good: and I think Emily has
tenderness enough for me to live with me in a house, the furniture of
which is not perfectly in taste.

In short, I know her much above having the slightest wish of vanity,
where it comes in competition with love.

We can, as to the house, live here commodiously enough; and our only
present consideration is, on what we are to live: a consideration,
however, which as lovers, I believe in strictness we ought to be much
above!

My mother again solicits me to resume this estate; and has proposed
my making over to her my half-pay instead of it, though of much less
value, which, with her own two hundred pounds a year, will, she says,
enable her to continue her house in town, a point I am determined never
to suffer her to give up; because she loves London; and because I
insist on her having her own house to go to, if she should ever ch