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intellectual resources, with all the reality of pastoral exertion, and with that animated cheerfulness which diffuses its sunshine around her. My dear friend, there are not many such women. It is almost needless to say she never married; but, her pension considered, it is to the credit of the men to observe, that she rejected, in her youth, many advantageous offers of that sort.

I write to you from a pleasant, though lowroofed dressing-room, whose uneven floor is covered with a very beautiful carpet of natural flowers, shaded in cross-stitch by the fingers of this ever-busy Arachne. It is surrounded by book-cases, filled with an admirable collection of history, travels, memoirs, moral philosophy, divinity, and the works of our best poets-but the exhaustless stores of my friend's cultivated mind are a living library, to which it is yet pleasanter to resort. Her knowledge of history, ancient and modern, the chronologic exactness of her memory, and a fund of anecdotes, make her a most delightful and interesting companion; especially from the animated manner in which she communicates her intellectual stores. Never are they obtruded, nor ostentatiously pursued, but applied, in the most natural manner, to the conversation of the moment.

This rural apartment is consigned to me, where

I pass my mornings, and where Mrs M. declares herself my visitor. It looks upon her lawny walks, and breathes the very spirit of peace and pleasantness. You would be happy here;—you, to whom friendship, books, and the charms of nature are all-in-all sufficient. Adieu!

LETTER XXI.

DAVID SAMWELL, ESQ.

Mansfield Woodhouse, May 15, 1791.

You instance my obligations to you, Sir, by the kind interest you take in my health, and in the distinctions which, with all a friend's partiality, you desire my muse should receive.

I own the neglect of the Royal Society, in the disposition of the medals struck in honour of Captain Cook, hurt me; especially as the president, Sir Joseph Banks, is my acquaintance. Though I confess my chagrin, yet it finds ample compensation in the generous indignation with which you reprobate his preference of those who direct their attention to the moths, butterflies, and curry-combs of that voyage, to her who attempt

ed to sing the purposes, the exploits, and the virtues of its commander.

It is curious that your bounty to me enabled Mr Green to display, in his museum, those Otaheitean curiosities, whose exhibition obtained him a medal. I presented him with a part of your present, and was doubly glad that I had done so, when I found his displaying them rewarded by a distinction which cheered and delighted his honest benevolent heart. If there is ought of estimable in my composition, it consists in an utter exemption from envy, which even my enemies confess; yet, being an hereditary exemption, it proves my happiness, rather than my virtue.

I had not turned an unobserving eye upon the poetic merit of the Ode on St David's Day. Without suspecting it to have been written by a friend, its spirit, the grace of its imagery, and the music of its numbers, had attracted my attention. Nothing is pleasanter than to find the source of a composition, which had pleased us, in the talents of one we esteem.

You have an excellent heart; every thing proves it.—You are alive to friendship; you see every little merit in others in the brightening light of your own benevolence; and the love of your native country glows in your bosom. I am glad to find that Spain will be obliged to yield her palm

of primal discovery in the western world to ancient Britain.

I hope, at last, there will be no war with Russia; that Mr Pitt's brain will not become incurably diseased by the manie militaire. Why should we augment the ruinous weight of our immense national debt, and grind the faces of the poor with taxes in endless accumulation, beneath a visionary dread lest the balance of power should be lost in Europe?

You are very good to be solicitous for my health. It seems to renovate very much beneath the fresh and balmy gales that blow around this beautiful retreat of friendship, and the sylvan graces. Nothing can be more to my taste than such a retirement, and few things more my wish than that you should believe me your ever-obliged friend.

LETTER XXII.

HUMPHRY REPTON, ESQ.

Mansfield Woodhouse, June 1, 1791.

I SEEM here to be in a domain of yours, since everywhere I go you are mentioned. As for Major Rooke, he speaks of you con amore. What charming urbanity in his voice, his look, his address! I see him, I listen to him with reverence and love. Yesterday we dined in his Juan Fernandez seclusion. It is infinitely to my taste. Bolder and more magnificent scenery may excite my admiration;-but they are the simple graces of retreats like these that I delight in contemplating glades and lawny walks, not beyond the reach of my humble fortune, should I be induced to quit Lichfield, the home of my youth, for a still more rural retirement, as life declines.

Mrs Mompessan, whose guest I now am, has sylvan taste and industry. In early youth, she became mistress of this, the estate of her ancestors, who certainly dreamt of nothing less than scenic beauty. She found massy stone walls dividing trim gardens;-a straight brook and crowded

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