LETTER LXXX.

REV. DR PARR.

Bridlington, August 17, 1793.

THE last letter with which you honoured me, arrived a few days before I left Scarborough. The rapid course of the intervening period, and those engrossing engagements which gave it wings, have been regretted, because they prevented my earlier acknowledgments of your obliging attention.

Alas! I have no good news to tell you of our highly intelligent and excellent friend, Mr Dewes. The patriot pleasure which he felt from the surrender of Valenciennes to the British arms and their allies by those of the lawless and godless republic, could not exterminate the sad disease which preys upon his frame. Not thinking himself better for his residence on the gay cliff, nor for its saline breezes, he shortened his stay, and is now at Calwich. His letter to me from that place, contains a mournful presentiment concerning the event of his disease, which pained my very

heart. My best hope is, that the depression on his spirits magnifies his danger; but he seems very

ill.

When you favour me with your company at Lichfield, you will meet with little of the provocation you apprehend from its stalled divinities. I think they would shun you for a double reason: your abilities, which they would fear,—your politics, which they would hate ;-or, if they abstained from what must prove such a suicide on the pleasures of the ingenious and ingenuous, they would at least decline entering the political lists with so formidable an opponent.

We Lichfieldians are at present, it is true, very unanimous in our orthodoxy and in our loyalty. The distinctions of whig and tory, that once, and long bred much ill blood amongst us, have lost their force during the elapse of many years; and, in these perilous times, which have so clearly shown the mischiefs of plausible theories, they are totally dissolved. One common sentiment pervades our bosoms, which have, perhaps, not perfect congeniality on other themes. We feel grateful for the protection, freedom, and comfort we enjoy beneath the influence of a constitution, which has given to our little island such mighty consequence in the consideration of Europe through a century's course; whatever of human, and therefore

inevitable imperfection, may be found in its construction by those Utopian searchers, who call themselves philosophers, and who would beguile us from our safe-holds by visionary plans of unattainable excellence.

I was born and educated in whiggism, if Mr Dewes was not. I have never forsaken its principles. In my infancy and youth, the discontented and factious were called tories. They abused government, and styled it corrupt on account of its changed form from kingly despotism to balanced influence. The discontented and factious of these days call themselves Whigs, and abuse government because it has not that complete purity, ill suited to the vices of mankind, bestowing upon the quiet and the grateful the title of Tories; but when, some forty years back, they assigned to such the name of Whigs, and avowed their detestation of the English Revolution, our constitution was essentially all it is now. Tests and septennial parliaments, their present reprobation, existed then.

Beautiful edifices of polity are raised by men of dazzling abilities, assuming the title of philosophers. But, to render them safe on experiment, as they are plausible in theory, mankind must have been created, not as they are, mulish, selfish, and malevolent, but ductile, disinterested, and kind.

Thus these fair and promising edifices, being built on sandy foundations, fall, `on trial, into an heap of shapeless ruins, and, in that fall, overwhelm freedom, security, subordination, mercy, and piety; as the example of France evinces.

If to be a philosopher is, as I understand it to be, a lover of wisdom; if to be a patriot is to be a lover of the country we inhabit, to be zealous for her interests, and tenacious of her glory, then the most ignorant amongst the contented and the grateful, have more real claim to those appellations than the daring innovators who, with the dreadful example before their eyes, seek to lift the flood-gates of a torrent which they know they have no power to bank up again.

So the regicides are renewing their bloody work, and exciting new detestation, which, I trust, will edge, with yet more resistless force, the swords of chastising justice.

You received my last letter, directed to Hopton, where your visit would diffuse the glow of social and intellectual pleasures. When you honour my house, you will not find the luxuries of Hopton, but all the cordiality of its welcome.Adieu !

LETTER LXXXI.

MR SAVILLE.

Bridlington, Monday, Aug. 19, 1793.

AMIDST the pleasures your ingenious letter of the 10th instant gives me, I perceive, with regret, that you think the recovery of a sufficient degree of health to resume your musical engagements improbable. Alas! I hoped that brighter prospects had arisen to you from the placid bosom of the Weymouth ocean.

I grieve to say, that Mr Dewes still remains very ill; and that the storm of Saturday night was fatal to two ships, one on the Scarborough coast, and one on this. The tide of the ensuing morning brought one floating mangled corse to the beach. Yesterday the sun shone clear and bright, but the wind was north-east, and blew keenly, and the tempest of the night had left the sea in tumult. At twelve we went out an airing in Mr Gisbon's coach. On our return, at two, it was high-water, and Mr Gisbon ran to inform us that the ocean had, in our absence, arisen to the grandest-possible height, short of those dire storms