standing. Your mind is too good a soil to run to waste. When I think of your native taste, your delicacy of feeling, and that rectitude of judgment which is your peculiar excellence, I grieve that you know so few who comprehend what you possess, or know what you are capable of acquiring. How pleasing to see the beauties of such a mind expanding! (Will that pleasure ever again be mine?) Let me suppose it, in the mean time, a mirror, in which the images that pass through mine will be reflected. I cannot think how any one who has ever tasted the rich banquet of intellectual pleasure, mingled with the sweets of friendship, can exist deprived of it. Sure the Lotos that Ulysses' friends found, was something like it: no wonder they would not come away. If I did not think of you, and could not write to you, how forlorn I should be, and how little would "the charm of earliest birds," or the wild scenes of enchantment, that rise here and there amidst the brown desert, avail to comfort me. Adieu, my dear. It is time to leave off "chewing the food food of sweet and bitter fancy." night. LETTER XIV. Good TO MISS REID. Fort Angustus, May 25, 1773. SMALL heart have I to write, and can as yet tell you little of Fort Augustus. It was dark before we descended to the house which is to be ours; of which I can only say, that it stands in something like a grove, and that this grove rises on a point at the confluence of the Oich with Loch Ness. We drank tea with our predecessor's family; they are The clergy man of the place* was the only stranger; of whom I was previously told that he was handsomer than any body: he appeared more modest than most handsome men, who are less tolerable, I think, than mere Rev. James Grant, afterwards Minister of Laggan. handsome handsome women. They cannot remove for ten days, and here am I very much indisposed" in the worst inn's worst room;" and, to mend the matter, just above the best bed-room, where all strangers are received; and worse still, this room has a vocal floor, like the one at Luss. Oh! for a carpet! the only luxury (not intellectual) that I have longed for since I left you.Worse and worse-if I do not get better, remember the last word I write is my bencdiction to you. I KNOW not how to console you, nor indeed how to mention the event that has grieved grieved us all so much; yet, after all, this new connexion is a gentleman by birth and education. Very great blame there certainly is, but a small part comparatively remains with those who are in a great measure sufferers. from their own imprudence. The con trivers and ábettors of this rash union are more deserving of your anger than the parties themselves. Marriages thus hasty and clandestine have sometimes proved fortunate beyond all expectation. It was perhaps too great a charge for a creature so young and lovely, without a protector of her own sex, to manage a family, and be obliged to entertain all kinds of company. I know I am certain, your heart must relent towards her, when you consider fully of it. The regiment I am told is ordered abroad; they may be years without meeting; she will return home penitent and thoughtful, to take charge of your affairs; and, her fate being now fixed, will have no object to draw off her attention. I am confined here; and reading some of the the books I had from you is my only consolation! When I am well enough to write more at large, I shall endeavour to amuse you with my crude opinions, for which I shall make no apology, as it is in compliance with your own desire. I am, very sincerely, Yours, with much estecin. LETTER XVI. TO COLLECTOR MACVICAR. Fort Augustus, May 28, 1773. MY DEAR SIR, SINCE I wrote to you last, I have been most intent on biography, and quite engrossed by heroes and legislators. I am afraid and ashamed, after all my promises of frankness, to tell you who is my favourite. When I look up to the great legislator of the north, like Shenstone's little boys, "I do in passing wonderment abound, And think he been the greatest wight on ground." VOL. I. G I am |