ful exertions. France, in her folly, has destroyed them totally, instead of making them conditional. Adieu.

LETTER XIX.

REV. DR WARNER, at Paris.

March 2, 1791.

My dear Sir,-Give me leave to recommend to your attention my friends, Mr and Mrs Burt, a gentleman and lady of fortune and elegant manners and their friend and companion, Mrs Smith, an amiable young woman, and very dear to me-the daughter of Mr Saville, and a great favourite of your friend, the illustrious Mr

who wished her company on his travels, as preceptress to little Alphonso; but the absence of a wife made the scheme more pleasant than prudent. Mrs Burt, educated in a convent, speaks French with fluency.

I am sorry you have lost your agreeable and good friend Mr Selwyn-though he fell ripe fruit into the lap of the universal mother;-but

we never think it time to lose those we love. I hope he has continued his friendship beyond the His memory will sink in my esteem, if

grave.

you are forgotten in his will.

We mourn the death of those who are dear to us; but, if not so grieving, it is more mortifying when friendship, voluntarily and ardently offered, long maintained with the most gratifying attention, and not forfeited by any fault of our own, finds a living tomb in the inconstancy of the human heart.

It has been said that men, though prone to fickleness in their loves, are in their friendships steadier than our sex. I have not found it so. -Mr, after his often plighted amity, thinks it too much, thinly to cover a single halfsheet twice in a year. To that he had, for a considerable time, reduced his once frequent letters. It is now twenty months since I heard from him.

My friends purpose staying a few weeks in Paris. I hope you will visit them, and point out the objects in Paris most worth their attention. They mean to proceed through Switzerland to Italy-but I trust they will not encounter Italian suns in the summer.

I say nothing to you of French politics. The

cause of freedom has had, and still possesses my best wishes; but Mr Burke has taught me to fear for that nation the mischiefs of anarchy. Adieu!

LETTER XX.

MISS POWYS.

Mansfield Woodhouse, May 13, 1791.

My dear friend,-I do most truly sympathize with you in the anxiety and concern which must result from Miss S's situation. Her appearance, when I had the pleasure to pass a few fleeting but valued hours in your society last month, gave flattering hopes of decreasing complaints. They have deceived us ;-however, when afflictions come, it is at once natural and wise, to draw comfort from reflecting, that they might have visited us at times, and under circumstances, which must have augmented their power to distress.

I came hither on Sunday night, to the embowered mansion of Mrs Mompessan, one of the oldest of my friends. She is many years my senior, and, beginning to love me in the giddy, romantic, hoping, happy years of my teens, has never dash

ed the overflowing cup of her kindness with the bitterness of neglect. She was ever a singular but excellent being, uniting the exertion and spirit of the male character, with the melting softness and sympathy of the female heart, when it is most artless and amiable. Her mind has not lost an atom of its candour and generous warmth, beneath all the wear and tear of the feelings, or from the generally benumbing power of years that have past their meridian. Her family is ancient and respectable; her fortune scarcely reaching 2001. per annum, which is her share, with two sisters, in the estate of their ancestors. She has lived upon it, farming, cultivating, and improving it, since she was eighteen years old, her parents dying before that period. By her industry, attention, and taste, she has made a little Eden of a spot which had little original beauty, and from whence prospect is excluded. Far, however, from limiting herself always to the Abbyssinian scene she had raised, her acquaintance and connections have been extended, her excursions frequent, nor confined to this kingdom. She has friends in Switzerland whom she has twice visited. She once resided there two years, on the banks of the celebrated Lake of Geneva, at Lausanne and Vevay, surrounded by the scenes which Rousseau has immortalized. The strength

of understanding and simplicity of manners in the Swiss gentry charmed her, from their congeniality to her own cast of character. Some years after, she twice, at different times, travelled through France and Germany, with a favourite nephew, Mr Heathcote, since made envoy from our court to some of the German ones. Mrs

Mompessan increased her nephew's consequence by her talents, her animated and polite manners, in several of the German courts where they sojourned.

When in England, she used often to be a guest in our family. Confined as I was through my life with invalid parents, it was, till now, only once, and that in my twentieth year, soon after the death of my sister, that I visited her lovely bowers. The morning after my arrival bloomed with all the orient hues of May. I rose early, and walked alone around the pleasure-ground, shedding tears of joy as I rambled contemplating its beauty and extent, and from observing the growth of her plantations, the yet more graceful disposition of her smooth and verdant lawns, her winding shrubberies, and crystal waters, after a lapse of so many years. Nor less am I charmed with the patriarchal simplicity of her ancient mansion, her flocks, and herds, and honest labourers, and with the rare union of scenic beauty and