etical performance of my own. I may almost say with Macbeth,

"I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again, I are not."

But the best of the matter is, that your purpose has been so satis factorily answered. *****

Mrs. Hemans is somewhat too poetical for my taste-too many flowers, I mean, and too little fruit; but that may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman: it is certain that when I was young, I read verses of every kind with infinitely more indulgence, because with more pleasure than I now do-the more shame for me now to refuse the complaisance which I have so often to solicit. I am hastening to think prose a better thing than verse, and if you have any hopes to convince me to the contrary, it must be by writing and publishing another volume of plays as fast as possible. ****

We saw, you will readily suppose, a great deal of Miss Edgeworth, and two very nice girls, her younger sisters. It is scarcely possible to say more of this very remarkable person, than that she not only completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humored ardor of mind which she unites with such formidable powers of acute observation. ****

To Miss Edgeworth--Sir W. Scott.

Miss Harriet had the goodness to give me an account of your safe arrival in the Green Isle, of which I was, sooth to say, extremely glad; for I had my own private apprehensions that your very disagreeable disorder might return while you were among strangers, and in our rugged climate. I now conclude you are settled quietly at home, and looking back in recollectics of mountains, and valleys, and pipes, and clans, and cousins, and masons, and carpenters, and puppy dogs, and all the confusion of Abbotsford, as one does on recollections of a dream. We shall not easily forget the vision of having seen you and our two young friends, and your kind indulgence for all our humors, sober and fantastic, rough or smooth. ***

The Lockharts are both well, and at present our lodgers, together with John Hugh. They all join in every thing kind and affectionate to you and the young ladies, and the best compliments to your brother.

Believe me ever, dear Miss Edgeworth,
Yours with the greatest truth and respect,
WALTER SCOTT.

To a Scotch Cousin-Miss Sinclair.

MY DEAR COUSIN,

London,

Here are we, safely deposited among the rural solitudes and

romantic beauties of Hyde Park! London, at this season, is a mere deserted village! nobody that is any body, in town; not a shutter open in Grosvenor Square. *****

Shall I attempt, in a single page, to describe this gigantic city? Such an achievement would resemble that of Crockford's cook, who distilled a whole ox into a basin of soup. Though Bonaparte struck out the word impossible from his vocabulary, it remairs in mine, and falls, like an extinguisher, upon all my hopes of succeeding; but take Lord Byron's sketch, in full of all demands on ordinary pens:

"A wilderness of steeples peeping,
On tiptoe, through thin sea-coal canopy,

A huge, dun cupola, like a fool's-cap crown,
On a fool's head-and there is London town.'

Some skillful physician once remarked, that England would cer tainly go off in an apoplexy at last, because the circulation toward her extremities grows daily more languid, while every thing tends to the head; and it gave me some idea on the enormous scale which London is on now, compared with former times, to hear, that forty years ago, the mail left this for Scotland with only one letter, and now the average number that departs from. the metropolis every morning is 80,000. How insignificant my own epistle will appear among so many! and we ourselves, after being accustomed to occasion some sensation at inns and villages in the wilds of Wales, feel now reduced again to obscurity, like Cinderella, when her carriage was turned into a pumpkin, her horses into mice, and herself into a mere nobody.

It is highly diverting to watch the incessant stream of anxious, busy faces, unceasingly passing our window. Every one is, of course, pursuing some favorite object, compared with which the whole world besides is insignificant, and all will at last come under the pen of their respective biographers, either in quarto or duodecimo, in magazines, journals, or penny tracts, in the Newgate Calendar, or the annual obituary. *****

You were diverted once to hear of the old lady who had a nervous complaint which could only be relieved by talking; but much as her friends had their complaisance put to the test, by listening without intermission, you must prepare to find me laboring under similar symptoms when we meet. Make up your mind to be considerably bored, and to have occasion for a large share of inexhaustible patience. * * * * *

Our correspondence is now about to terminate in the way that all correspondences ought, by a happy meeting, which will take place delightfully soon, for as A. says, with railways and steamboats, no one place is more than a hop, step, and a jump, from another. In the mean time, I shall say no more, but follow the very judicious advice of our favorite Cowper,

"Tell not as news what every body knows,

And, new or old, still hasten to a close."

To Mrs. H. More-Countess Cremorne.

I almost scruple intruding upon you, my dear Mrs. More, knowing as I do, with sorrow, that you are so very far from well; and also knowing how many letters are pouring in upon you from all your friends and correspondents; but I can not help wishing to tell you how gratefully I feel your kindness in sending me your most valuable book: I wish I could give you the satisfaction of knowing with what sort of pleasure I have been reading it. I wish you could have seen me reading it, as I do the letters of a few beloved friends-slowly, for fear of coming to the end; and reading those parts over and over again which most delight, and I hope, mend my heart. * * * * *

Pray believe me, my dear Mrs. More,
To be your affectionate and gratefu.
F. CREMORNE.

Dr. Franklin to John Alleyne, Esq.

Pray make my compliments and best wishes acceptable to your bride. I am old and heavy, or I should, ere this, have presented them in person. I shall make but small use of the old man's privilege, that of giving advice to younger friends. Treat your wife always with respect; it will procure respect to you, not only from her, but from all that observe it. Never use a slighting expression to her, even in jest; for slights in jest, after frequent bandyings, are apt to end in angry earnest. Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy; at least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences. I pray God to bless you both, being ever your affectionate friend, B. FRANKLIN.

At length we are in peace, God be praised! and long, very long, may it continue! All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. When will mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their differences by arbitration? Were they to do it even by the cast of a die, it would be better than by fighting and destroying each other.

Spring is coming on, when traveling will be delightful. Can you not, when your children are all at school, make a little party, and take a trip hither? I have now a large house, delightfully situated, in which I could accommodate you and two or three friends, and I am but half an hour's drive from Paris.

Let ne conclude by saying to you what I have had too frequent occasion to say to my other remaining old friends, the fewer we become, the more let us love one another. Adieu, &c.

William Cowper to Lady Hasketh.

B. FR.

Huntingdon, October 10, 1765.

MY DEAR COUSIN, I should grumble at your long silence, if I did not know that one may love one's friends very well, though one is not always in a humor to write to them. Besides, I have the satisfaction of being perfectly sure that you have at least twenty times recollected the debt you owe me, and as often resolved to pay it; and, perhaps, while you remain indebted to me, you think of me twice as often as you would do if the account was clear. These are the reflections with which I comfort myself under the affliction of not hearing from you; my temper does not incline me to jealousy, and, if it did, I should set all right by having recourse to what I have already received from you.

I thank God for your friendship, and for all the pleasing circumstances here; for my health of body and perfect serenity of mind. To recollect the past and compare it with the present is all I have need of to fill me with gratitude; and to be grateful is to be happy. Not that I think myself sufficiently thankful, or that I ever shall be so in this life. The warmest heart, perhaps, only feels by fits, and is often as insensible as the coldest. This, at least, is frequently the case with mine, and oftener than it should be. But the mercy that can forgive iniquity will never be severe to mark our frailties. To that mercy, my dear cousin, I commend you, with earnest wishes for your welfare, and remain your ever affectionate W. CowPER.

Dr. Johnson to Mr. Elphinston.

September 25, 1750.

DEAR SIR, You have, as I find, by every kind of evidences, lost an excellent mother, and I hope you will not think me incapable of partaking of your grief. I have a mother now eighty-two years of age, whom, therefore, I must soon lose, unless it please God that she rather should mourn for me.

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. The greatest benefit which one friend can confer upon another is to guide, and incite, and elevate his virtues. This your mother will still perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life and of her death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I can not forbear to mention that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope that you may increase her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her pres

ent state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her instructions or example have contributed.

There is one expedient by which you may, in some degree, continue her presence. If you write down minutely what you remember of her from your earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To this, however painful for the present, I can not but advise you, as to a source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come; for all comfort and all satisfac tion is sincerely wished you by, dear sir, your, &c,

S. JOHNSON. William Cowper, Esq., to Lady Hesketh.

Your letters are so much my comfort, that I often tremble lest by any accident I should be disappointed; and the more, because you have been, more than once, so engaged in company on the writing-day, that I have had a narrow escape. Let me give you a piece of good counsel, my cousin : follow my laudable example; write when you can; take Time's forelock in one hand and a pen in the other, and so make sure of your opportunity. It is well for me that you write faster than any body, and more in an hour than other people in two, else I know not what would become of me. When I read your letters I hear you talk, and I love talking letters dearly, especially from you. Well! the middle of June will not be always a thousand years off; and when it comes I shall hear you, and see you too, and shall not care a farthing then if you do not touch a pen in a month.

*

Henry Kirke White to his Brother Neville.

DEAR NEVILLE, ́

Nottingham,

*

1800.

I can not divine what, in an epistolary correspondence, can have such charms (with people who only write commonplace occurrences) as to detach a man from his usual affairs, and make him waste time and paper on what can not be of the least benefit to his correspondent. Among relations, certainly, there is always an incitement: we always feel an anxiety for their welfare. But I have no friend so dear to me as to cause me to take the trouble of reading his letters, if they only contained an account of his health, and the mere nothings of the day indeed, such a one would be unworthy of friendship. What, then, is requisite to make one's correspondence valuable? I answer, sound sense. Nothing more is requisite: as to the style, one may readily excuse its faults, if repaid by the sentiments. You have better natural abilities than many youth, but it is with regret I see that you will not give yourself the trouble of writing a good letter. There is hardly any species of composition (in my opinion) easier than the epistolary; but, my friend, you never found any art, however