nice.

There is always something wanting to make our happiness perfect. I think mine would be so now, could I enjoy your company, Rhoda: yet, perhaps, even then, some other wish ungratified would, as some poetic writer observes, ‘corrode and leaven all the rest.’ Be that as it may, I do most ardently long to see and converse with you upon many subjects on which I have not leisure to excercise my pen. The Marchioness almost perpetually engrosses me; yet, when I say this, I do not mean it as a complaint; on the contrary, I consider it as a circumstance that does me infinite honor, while her company gives me delight. She is, in reality, a charming woman. She has all the vivacity natural to the climate she was born in, but none of the insincerity./ She possesses the soul of friendship, blended with all the fine feelings of humanity. An extensive knowledge of books, with an elegant taste for the fine arts, renders her both a very pleasing and a very instructive companion. Her esteem is worth all the pains I can take to cultivate it; for the mind and manners which she condescends to assist in forming, must be extremely defective by nature, if she fails to make them appear amiable by exciting the strongest emulation to reduce to practice every virtue. I think myself peculiarly fortunate in having been introduced to such a woman. I am well convinced it must be my own fault if I do not gain considerable improvement from her conversation.

Never, my dear Rhoda, shall I regret the sufferings I endured on the voyage; since they were only the forerunners of many pleasing events; one of which is the satisfaction of perceiving that my valuable brother is regaining his health and spirits very rapidly, and I now entertain the most sanguine hopes of his perfectly recovering both.