to servility in the many, the league of despotism must be fruitless, when, like the Greeks before the hosts of Xerxes,

"One spirit shall rule the free, and every eye
Glare on their envious foes, not on themselves,
Pernicious fire, to wither all their strength,
To leave them of their boasted vigour drain'd,
Repuls'd, exhaustless, spiritless, and fallen.”

But if in France the systems of freedom shall prove baseless visions, they must dissolve beneath the fatal influence of that wild enthusiasm, which, hurrying one of the noblest of the virtues beyond the bounds of wisdom, forces her into the frontiers of her kindred vice, where, into whose dark complexion her once clear and radiant visage must degenerate. Let me, however, quit the subject, since I feel the presumption of all such remarks to you, who have considered it so deeply, and written upon it largely and well.

Not yet have I thanked you for the kind leavetaking billet with which you favoured me on the eve of your heroic emigration; but dearly welcome was that, as every other token of your amity. With fervent wishes for your prosperity and happiness, I remain, my noble-minded Helen, faithfully yours.

LETTER XLVI.

MRS T

July 29, 1792.

AH! dearest madam, I find, from the contents of your last, that we have each had long and painful experience of sickness and of sorrow, since the year commenced; but you are at present blest with two fine children. I trust they will live to repay you yet more and more for the increase of pain and debility which their birth and infant nurture cost you.

It grieves me, that the changing systems of Mr T's devotion produce gloom and discomfort in your connection with him; but so it must be, except your mind could, Camelion-like, assume the varying colours of his. After having so long administered in the priesthood of Calvinism, he becomes a strict disciple of Barclay, renounces rationality as the guide of faith, and allows no test of truth but inward feeling and imaginary inspiration. From being a warm admirer of the elegant arts, you tell me he places a genius for them on a level with a natural propensi

ty to any particular vice, and thinks it ought to be the study of man to subdue the one, as well as the other. The quakers are a people whom I both love and esteem in their moral capacity. Their freedom from ostentation, the purity, the simplicity, the gentleness of their manners, seem more assimilated to the gospel precepts, than the exterior habits of any other community. But, totally rejecting reason as the director of our religious faith, they divest Christianity of all her superiority over other theology. Every wild enthusiast of the Pagan, the Bramin, the Mahometan worship is as likely to be right as the Christian, if the umpireism of dispassionate examination is to be rejected, and the ardours of zeal confided in implicity. Then, that people of common sense can be so lost in gloomy vision, as to believe there can be merit in suppressing those talents which God has variously dispensed amongst mankind, is strange indeed. What is it but human perverseness, frustrating the evident intentions of providence, just as insanely as does the melancholy papist, who dreams there is virtue in precluding, by celibacy, the sweet and sacred ties of wedded love

"Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities

Of father, son, and brother ?”

The justly blameless arts that grace, adorn, ennoble and sweeten existence, may, doubtless, be cultivated to the glory of our Creator, who surely, not in vain, endowed the human mind with a power of bringing them to admirable perfection. Every thing which employs the attention innocently and ingeniously, has a natural tendency to prevent vice, of which idleness is the nurse, and "to exalt us in the scale of rational beings." A depraved spirit may certainly pervert things in themselves good and laudable; but such adventitious defilement does not stain the ermine whiteness of God's bounteous and varied gifts to the capacities of men.

I am sorry also to hear you confess a growing insensibility to the first and loveliest of the sciences, to which the bias of your genius originally inclined. I deplore the vexations and misfortunes which have palled and sickened those fine perceptions, whose delights might frequently soften and assuage their harassings. May whiter hours restore their softer energy! Adieu!

LETTER XLVII.

Mrs JACKSON.

August 3, 1792.

YES, I thank Heaven, " it is yet with me the season of hope concerning the life of my valued friend." The gleams of amendment, so long impermanent, have of late been more enduring. Sea-bathing is prescribed. Mr Hayley, benevolent as illustrious, has shewn the most friendly attentions to Giovanni's disorder since it became alarming. He warmly invites him to the Sussex coast, where, last summer, a few miles from his Edenic home, he fitted up a marine cottage, that contains five apartments. There he wishes my friend and his daughter to reside, and thither, he says, he will himself accompany them; but, as the distance from hence is nearly twice as far as many of the other coasts, it was necessary to make some inquiries concerning bathing-carts, guides, &c. which, it is very probable, that situation has not, for Mr Hayley swims well, and would not want them; and his passion for hermit-retirement makes me guess, that it rises on