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quence, in characteristic discrimination and in piety.

Thus fortifying their understandings and their hearts, I would disdain coercion, and even teasing interference every thing that wears the slightest appearance of suspicious watchfulness. So should their home be delightful; nor would an indiscriminating desire of leaving it for the married state, subject them to the danger of an unhappy marriage-while their habits of life and taste for literature, must preclude the discontents of celibacy, should celibacy be their lot.

All you write on the subject of your oceanic enthusiasm, peculiarly gratifies me. What exquisite delights do they lose-and the word they comprehends the million-to whom sensations like these are unknown! Among my hundred sonnets, now ready for the press, but waiting the dawn of happier periods for their publication, there is one so entirely in unison with the third page of the letter before me, that I am tempted to inclose it.

I hope our churlish summer and drizzling autumn have produced no lasting bad consequence to your health. We expected from this month a little golden influence of sunny morn and noon ;— and behold it anticipates the glooms of Novem ber! Adieu!

* Ninety-fifth Sonnet.-S.

LETTER IL

MISS PONSONBY.

Lichfield, Oct. 30, 1797.

BE my beloved Miss Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor assured, that I consider Langollen Vale as my little Elysium. It is nowhere that my understanding, my taste, and my sentiments luxuriate in such vivid and unallayed gratification. Whether those arbitrary contingencies of life and health, which so perpetually deride our free-agency, shall propitiate the flattering wishes of my charming friends, or shall impel my next summer's course a less interesting way, is in the book of destiny. I do not presume to read its page, but I know whither my inclinations would point, and how prone they would be to adopt the language of Imogen, and exclaim, "accessible is no way but the Cambrian."

On my road home, imagination gave back to me the image of good Mrs Roberts in a tragi-comic situation, as I had several times, on my late visit, seen her, in the hours of baffled expectation; of chagrin for dinners and suppers, prepared in

vain, mixed with the more serious gloom of sisterly apprehension. She always remains till near dinner time in her very pleasant bed-room on the ground floor; and there, in her tristful days, I used to behold her, the large Venetian sash lifted up to its utmost extent, sitting in an arm-chair before it, in broad attitude, with contracted lips, wide eyes, and Ugolino brow, exactly opposite old *Castel Dinas Bran, which, separated only by that narrow glen, stood staring upon her in rigid opposition;-its dark mass, unsoftened by distance, frowning like herself, in dun cogitation. O! there was no desiring better sympathy, or a more twin resemblance between a matron and a mountain.

Yet do I chide my whimsical fancy for sporting, though but for a moment, with the slightest distresses of an heart so friendly and hospitablewith whatever gives the iron traits to a countenance, which, when all goes well, is open and affectionatc. Alas! disease, embarrassment, anxiety, and mortification, not imaginary, but serious and severe, have gloomed at times one of the cheerfulest dispositions in the world, and somewhat

The singular conic mountain in Langollen Vale, crowned with the bare and desolated fragments of the walls of the Castle.-S.

soured a temper, of which transient impetuosity, and a little jealous soreness, are the only faults.

"Time o'er the form, oppress'd by woes,

Treads with an heavy pace;

Sweeps his broad scythe, and as he goes,
Down falls the summer pride, and shews
Worn nature's furrow'd face."

I congratulate you upon the victory our fleet has obtained over the "slow-ey'd sons of the marshy clime," the glum and treacherous Dutch. Whatever may be our still subsisting dangers, that of invasion melts away in this redeeming victory. I grieve that it has been so sanguinary. Uncle Toby exclaims, when the sarcastic comments of the sub-acid philosopher upon his military hobbyhorse had roused into oratory the generally quiet simplicity of his imagination,-" Brother Shandy, it is one thing for the soldier to gather laurels, and another to scatter cypress." Alas for the quantity of cypress which this life-lavishing victory demands from the genius of Britain! The sun of conquest shone gloriously, but the dark umbrage covers the floods that roll beneath.

However, with the fears of invasion, vanishes also the disgrace of the late rebellion in our navy, and restored confidence in our best bulwark, gives

double welcome to the triumph. Now may British sailors exclaim, with Harry Monmouth

"Our reformation, glittering o'er our fault,

Like to bright metal on a sullen ground,
Doth draw more homage, and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off."

But I hope there will be no more foils to contrast the tried valour of English seamen. It glows with inbred lustre, and wants not shades to augment it. Henceforth, I trust, they will never be found in self-contrast, but in the misconduct of our foes. Mr Sneyd of Belmont's two gallant sons have fortunately escaped unhurt from Duncan's action, so pregnant with wounds and death. I hope they will live among the number of the brave escaped few,

"To stand on tip-toe when that day is named."

Yes, I was sorry to hear Mr Smith, so generally candid, intelligent, and ingenious, set up Homer in unapproachable greatness. His decision was surely, in that instance, the triumph of classic pedantry over classic judgment and literary patriotism. If only the works of one poetic writer were to be preserved from another Gothic devastation, he who, with Smith, should say that

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