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mother's invitation to pass a month with her at the old family seat at B-n;-apprehensions, which had arisen from her odd declaration, that she hoped her sons would be men of gallantry and intrigue. "Ah, ha!" said my father, seeing them alight with their mamma from the coach, "what have we here? these Coldbrands the giants! these same mighty men !—In the name of chastity let the girl go. If she can be in danger from such heroes, she must be infinitely too seducible to escape by any possible restraints parental prudence can impose." I, who had been educated in the strictest temperance of diet, and who had run about the fields in the bounding vigour of health, and with the gay hopes of dawning womanhood, was yet charmed with the novel ideas of Bn luxuries, and of bowling thither in a coach and four, with two out-riders. Deuce take my Eveish desire of rambling from my pleasant home, and healthy deprivations. Mrs C―n fed me up in that fatal month, like a porket, with chocolate, drank in bed at eight; a nap till ten; tea and hot-rolls at eleven; pease soup at one; a luxurious dinner at four; and an hot and splendid supper at midnight—the day-light intervals filled up with slow airings in the old coach, along the dusty roads, for it was in the heats of a blazing summer; and with lying on a couch, picking

honesty for madam's flower-pots, without any danger of molestation from her puny sons. I wanted to read to her: "No child, I detest reading."-I begged permission to walk about the gardens; no, that would spoil my complexion ;— to pursue my needle-works in her presence; no, that was vulgar. You will imagine how soon I sickened of the joyless luxury, and unsocial grandeur, for they visited but little with the neighbouring families, who were too rational to please, or be pleased with the fine town-lady, who professed to think the months of country-residence worse than annihilation-Alas! my month of vegetation was pledged, and during its oppressive progress, the change of diet, and total want of exercise, gave my constitution its first propensity to plumpness, which, to my regret, no future temperance, or resumed activity, could subdue.--Till this luckless excursion I was light as a wood-nymph. The very many intervening years, and the change of effeminate youth into more decrepitude than usually appears in middle life, had not so obliterated the remembered traces of that pale and penknife face, that shadowy form, which "the blasts of January must blow through and through," but that I instantly knew Sir George C. If he is not more corporally consequential than he was at twenty, he is much more interesting.

His man

ners are those of fashionable life; his language fluent, and correct; and his even affectionate recognizance of our youthful acquaintance, slight as it had been, seemed to spring from a warmth of heart more valuable than exterior grace.

I remembered nothing of these agremens about the Master Marmoset of B- -n. That long commerce with the world should give ease to the address, and readiness to the conversational powers, is nothing rare, but sensibility and cordial ingenuousness, are not presents that time generally makes: Yet I see no reason why it should not. Sickness, disappointment, the tombs of our friends rising around us!—all these things have a natural tendency to soften the heart, and to expand its affections. Why they so commonly produce a contrary effect surpasses my philosophy to trace.

As to Lady Fane, it seems strange that the close impure air of a vast city, reeking with noisome exhalations from the dead, the dying, and the diseased multitude, should be found more salutary to her constitution than the mountain winds, and breezes of the valley. One should suppose that the rudest breath of the hills would be less destructive, while the milder gales must surely bear more renovating power upon their wings, moist with the fresh dews of morning, and wafting the spring, the summer, and autumnal fragrance.

However, when we reflect upon the close sympathy between the body and mind, upon the tendency of corporal debility to deaden the taste for simple pleasures, and for the charms of Nature, we perceive the necessity of city resources, for that varied amusement, which is necessary to every degree of health.

"If Nature pleases not, we fly to Art.”

For myself, I should be sorry to live in any place where the freshness, sweetness, and beauty of the vegetable world, might not daily meet my senses, and pour their soft balms over the pains of disappointment, and the griefs of deprivation. Nature, even in her wintry garb, delights me. You know my situation, though on the edge of a little city, is perfectly rural, unheard its din, and surrounded by fields and groves. While amongst them

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"I find in winter many a scene to please;
The rude stone fence, with fragrant wall-flowers gay,
The sun at noon, seen thro' the leafless trees,

The clear calm ether at the close of day."

You have not, any more than myself, lost your taste for these pure delights of the eye and spirit. I regret that it has so seldom been allowed us to share them together.

LETTER LVIII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, March 25, 1787.

YOUR objection to the little discords which are, in some degree, inevitable to every language, and which, blending with the concords, rather increase than lessen the general harmony; your pettish quarrel with the letter s, which has very picturesque powers of sound; these, and other prejudices of the same sickly complexion, are unfortunate for your poetic pleasures, and render you, who are a man of genius and knowledge, a bad critic.

Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, &c.-even Pope, who is allowed to have carried the delicacy of harmonic refinement as far as it can safely go,— these poets have, in their best passages, a number of lines which contain similar discords to those with which you quarrel in this verse of Dryden's,

"Fed on the lawns, and in the forests rang'd."

It is agreed that the ne plus ultra of verbal melody, exists in the Eloisa to Abelard; yet, con

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