LETTER XXIX. LADY GRESley. Langford Cottage, July 30, 1791. DEAR and revered Lady Gresley expressed a wish of hearing from ine. I pay glad obedience to a request so flattering. Probably Mr White will have told your Ladyship how quiet we found the lately turbulent Birmingham, though the country round bore mournful traces of desolating fury. I led him over the lawn to Mosely, where my dear friend, Lady Carhampton, had set up her rest, after a life of filial persecutions. We viewed, with aching heart, the scorched and ruined remains of that spacious and elegant mansion, so late the abode of hospitality and cheerfulness, friendship, piety, charity, and peace. Alas! the flames had resounded in those pleasant apartments, and reduced them to a cluster of falling walls. With a face of woe, her gardener approached the chaise, and, in half-choked utterance, narrated the afflicting particulars: his Lady driven from her house, by a determined mob, who expressed a desire of not injuring her or hers, and even helping to load the waggons she had procured to convey away her goods from a mansion they devoted to destruction, because her landlord was a presbyterian. Dreadful bigotry! by which we see kindled afresh, those flames of intolerant hatred for difference in religious opinions, which have been so full of mischief through former ages. Lady Carhampton took refuge in a cottage at the gate of the lawn, till Sir Robert Lawley's coach arrived to convey her from the dire spectacle of persecuting flames, bursting through every window of her beloved habitation. "The thick drop serene," which had long quenched her sight, perhaps, in that moment, she thought a friendly curtain, drawn between her and an object so cruel; but Mrs Nutterville, the companion of all her exiles, and to whom Mosely was not less dear as an home, beheld that direful resplendence. Mr White has perhaps informed you, that the mob threatened, with a similar fate, the splendid residence of Lord Beauchamp, because he voted for the repeal of the test act. Had not the military arrived in time, it had probably fallen. Mr Fitzthomas's rural parsonage, at the foot of the hill on which stands the princely palace of Ragley, is prettily embosomed in circling glades and shrubberies, whose confines are laved by the silent Arrow, of picturesque course, and with banks very beautifully sylvan. Mr F.'s passion for umbrageous retirement, has made him indulge the growth of his plantations beyond the bounds of comfort; so that, penetrating the recesses of his bowers, we are perpetually exposed to the fate of Absalom. But this is only in the interior scene. A pretty little lawn, half-mooned by the house and shrubberies, admits the near hill, so magnificently villaed. Nothing was ever richer in woodland scenery than the surrounding country, or more friendly than our welcome to the rural parsonage. I delivered your Ladyship's obliging compliments to its owner, who respectfully returns them. His taste and abilities are too decided not to give inevitable value to the consciousness of being cordially remembered by Lady G. We passed Thursday morning in examining the varied splendors of the prouder domain; but in such precincts, my admiration, however highstrung, has nothing interesting about it. Mr W. setting out earlier on Friday morn, arrived at Tewksbury an hour before me. Perceiving him lean out of the inn window, watching my approach, I cried out to him from the chaise, in the words of Prince Henry's Ghost, "False, fleeting, perjur'd Clarence, Probably to the no small amusement of a few street passengers. These enthusiasms have been a source of unmixed delight to me; they have been always felt on approaching scenes dignified by any great event in the years long vanished, or that have been the abode of genius, or the subject of its songs. Many a vexation have they banished, many a gloom have they illuminated. H. White has all this local glow of spirit, and it rendered him a thrice pleasant companion on my journey. Considering how we bustled about in this same town, peeping at the monuments, and all other vestiges of that battle, in which the red roses were blighted, torn up, and deluged in blood;-considering that we walked through the cathedral at Glocester, during choir-service in the afternoon, exulting in the superiority of our own, both as to architectural beauty and choral powers; we did great things, by my reaching Bristol that night, and Mr Whalley's early the next morning. - At ten o'clock, Mr Whalley arrived in his chaise, to conduct me to his Eden, among the Mendip mountains. Singularly, and beyond my high-raised expectations, beautiful I did indeed find it; situated, built, furnished, and adorned in the very spirit of poetic enthusiasm, and polished simplicity. It is about twelve years since Mr Whalley began to cover, with a profusion of trees and shrubs, one of these vast hills, then barren like its brethren. The plantations seem already to have attained their full size, strength, and exuberance of foliage. By the addition of another horse, to help the chaise-horses, we ascended the sylvan steep. At about two-thirds of its height, on a narrow terrace, stands the dear white cottage, whose polished graces seem smilingly to deride its name, though breathing nothing heterogeneous to cottage simplicity. The first floor consists of a small hall, with a butler's pantry to the right, and good kitchen to the left; housekeeper's room beyond that; scullery behind the kitchen; the offices at a little distance, detached from the house, many steps below this bank, and screened from sight by trees. The second floor contains, in front, to the north-west, three lightsome, lovely, though not large, apartments, whose spacious sashes are of the gothic form. These are the dining-room, drawing-room, and elegant boudoir beyond, all |