those who look anxiously up to him for relief, which no human art can, perhaps, administer.

I have uniformly beheld, with reverence and delight, the efforts of France to throw off the iron yoke of her slavery; not the less oppressive for having been bound with ribbands and lilies. Ill betide the degenerate English heart that does not wish her prosperity.

You ask me after Mrs Cowley. I have not. the pleasure of her acquaintance-but am familiar with her ingenious writings. This age has produced few better comedies than her's.

You are very good to wish to see me in London; but I have no near view of going thither. You will be sorry to hear that I have lost my health, and am oppressed with symptoms of an hereditary and dangerous disease.

Lichfield has been my home since I was seven years old this house since I was thirteen; for I am still in the palace, and do not think of moving at present. It is certainly much too large for my wants, and for my income; yet is my attachment so strong to the scene, that I am tempted to try, if I recover, what strict economy, in other respects, will do towards enabling me to remain in a mansion, endeared to me as the tablet on which the pleasures of my youth are impressed, and the

images of those that are everlastingly absent.

Adieu. Yours.

LETTER IX.

MRS HAYLEY.

July 27, 1790.

I AM much obliged by my dear Mrs Hayley's kind letter, and by the welcome design it announces, of favouring me with her company; but I hope she will not limit her stay to the couple of days she mentions.

Thank you for the kind sympathy you express in my filial regrets, and in my loss of health. The affection for my father, which was ever very passionate, pity had so much increased as to more than balance, in the scale of sorrow, the consciousness of bodily and mental decay which so long preceded his death. Alas! there is a wide difference between words, in which we miss the vigour of the understanding, and everlasting silence.

Your observation, that woman is never so permanently dear to any man as to her father, is ge

nerally just, and exceptions perhaps are few. It is difficult even for those who feel passion to distinguish it from affection. The difference is seldom known till the former is lost in unrestrained gratification. Men are rarely capable of pure unmixed tenderness to any fellow-creature except their children. In general, even the best of them, give their friendship to their male acquaintance, and their fondness to their offspring. For their mistress, or wife, they feel, during a time, a tenderness more ardent, and more sacred; a friendship softer and more animated. But this inexplicable, this fascinating sentiment, which we understand by the name of love, often proves an illusion of the imagination ;—a meteor that misleads her who trusts it, vanishing when she has followed it into pools and quicksands, where peace and liberty are swallowed up and lost. By observations like these, your friend is perfectly reconciled to her " single blessedness;" so Shakespeare calls old-maidism—but it is, perhaps, too proud and boastful a term?

"Who dreams, alas! of blessedness below?
The hope-flush'd enterer on the stage of life,
The youth to knowledge unchastized by sorrow!"

Adieu! Adieu.

LETTER X.

DAVID SAMWEL, ESQ.

August 16, 1790.

SIR, I am very sorry for the death of your gallant, accomplished, and virtuous friend, Captain Trevanen, your associate under that benevolent hero Captain Cook ;-sorry also that my sorrow must be fruitless ;—yet assure yourself, were it in my power, I should have real and great satisfaction in obliging you, to whom I am myself so much obliged;-but, with me, every exertion and power of the imagination is insurmountably impeded by an oppressive and dangerous disease upon my lungs, which allows me no breath but what I obtain by effort, and makes my life resemble the existence of the dying. My physicians, finding my disease baffle the power of medicine, order me to the sea-side. I am preparing to set out, with much reluctance, to leave my home, and with little hope from my banishment.

You are too partial to me, in supposing it in my power to perpetuate the memory of the lost

Trevanen. So little value did the society, which struck a medal in honour of Captain Cook, set upon my poem on his death, that, while they avowedly presented one to every person who had taken public interest in his fate and virtues; while they gave Mr Green of this town a medal, merely for having displayed, in his museum, some relics of those illustrious voyages, they took no notice of

me.

Nothing can be more interesting than your description of your deceased friend;—a voluntary victim, in the prime of his days, to the ambition of the empress ;—yet, I confess, my sense of right and wrong always revolted against the idea of a man hazarding his life in the service of any country but his own—I mean in promoting its ambitious views of extended empire.

Adieu, Sir! and believe me always your obliged friend and servant.