--
Yours, &c.
Amiens, November, 1792.
The arrival of my friends has occasioned a short suspension of my
correspondence: but though I have been negligent, I assure you, my dear
brother, I have not been forgetful; and this temporary preference of the
ties of friendship to those of nature, will be excused, when you consider
our long separation.
My intimacy with Mrs. D____ began when I first came to this country, and
at every subsequent visit to the continent it has been renewed and
increased into that rational kind of attachment, which your sex seldom
allow in ours, though you yourselves do not abound in examples of it.
Mrs. D____ is one of those characters which are oftener loved than
admired--more agreeable than handsome--good-natured, humane, and
unassuming--and with no mental pretensions beyond common sense tolerably
well cultivated. The shades of this portraiture are an extreme of
delicacy, bordering on fastidiousness--a trifle of hauteur, not in
manners, but disposition--and, perhaps, a tincture of affectation. These
foibles are, however, in a great degree, constitutional: she is more an
invalid than myself; and ill health naturally increases irritability, and
renders the mind less disposed to bear with inconveniencies; we avoid
company at first, through a sense of our infirmities, till this timidity
becomes habitual, and settles almost into aversion.--The valetudinarian,
who is obliged to fly the world, in time fancies herself above it, and
ends by supposing there is some superiority in differing from other
people.
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