of the close might have been preserved in this play, without such total revolt of our credulity; but it is most true what Mrs Jackson observes, that, in all Mrs Radcliffe's writings, attentive only to terrific effects, she bestows no care upon their causes, and rashly cuts the knot of probability which she seems to want patience to untie. One has heard of a labouring mountain bringing forth a mouse: In Mrs R.'s writings mice bring forth mountains.

So many men of learning, most of them personally unknown, have written to me on my late publication, that my leisure has been totally absorbed in replying to them, and to my established correspondents on the subject. Thus have I, as yet, been prevented reading Miss More's new work, of which you speak so highly.

I congratulate you with my whole heart, that the continental campaign of this summer hitherto fulfils your prediction rather than mine. If it please God that the tide shall not turn again in favour of France, as it did after her defeats in 1793, and England and Germany will be content with the status quo, without resuming the mad project of coercing her as to the form of her government, we may then not have far to wade over the bloody gulf to the fair shore of peace. Then shall this dire war close, as all wars close, with

no advantages to any party to compensate the belligerent miseries, and well if it is no worse.-Adieu! Adieu !

LETTER XLII.

Rev. R. FELLOWES of Harbury, Warwickshire. Lichfield, July 20, 1799.

ALLOW me to thank you for the honour you have done my late publication by your applausive, and, in itself, beautiful sonnet. Sincere praise is always welcome, but a poet's praise is of very heightened value.

Recently, and for the third time, have I perused late admirable work*. All the vagrant your ideas of my past life on the Christian system, I find collected and given back to me on your pages, connected by the most legitimate chain of inferences, and in language animated and perspicu

ous.

* A Picture of Christian Philosophy, by Robert Fellowes A. B. Oxon. Printed for John White, bookseller, Horace's Head, Fleet Street.-S.

How happily have you removed that dire impediment to rational faith, the doctrine of original sin, which the revived Calvinistic school, of which Mr Wilberforce is the head, so injudiciously presses upon the attention of the public. Its mystical tenets are read and extolled (in preference to those of the authors who represent Christianity as a system of consistent justice, mercy, benevolence, and happiness) from the same disposition, which makes children delight more in perceiving objects of terror presented to their imagination, than those of beauty and pleasure; but no mischievous or obstinate child is rendered gentle or docile by the dread of spectres; neither have the fanatic tenets any tendency to reclaim from vice or irreligious thoughtlessness. The licentious, or giddy votaries of fashion, wish to have an excuse for persisting in their career, and think they have found it in the dark and cruel difficulties in which resumed Calvinism involves Christianity. They say to themselves, "We cannot, in the high-day of our youth and passions, feel all this prescribed misery, which, we are told, is essential to appease our Maker for having created us full of cursedness and sin; we cannot sacrifice all our amusements, even those which are generally allowed to be innocent; and since less sacrifices are fruitless; since the Rock of Salvation is too steep and rug

ged for our strength, we may as well strew all the sensual flowers over the paths which lead to our destruction; if, indeed, the Deity is this hard taskmaster, and if he created so large a part of mankind vessels of wrath; if all are obnoxious to punishment ere yet they know the nature of crime."

Such is the certain mischief of Mr W.'s doctrine, and that of his coadjutors. They transfer the hairy mantle, the tedious pilgrimage, and the voluntary scourge, and all the dark train of monkish self-inflictions, from the body to the mind. If voluntary wretchedness for less than atrocious sin, for the curse of our nature, not self-incurred, be indeed a duty, what, alas! must be the nature of that Power who enjoins it?

O that your volume, in which righteousness shines as a sun, in the pure beams of justice, of mercy, and of earthly happiness, may so gild the gentler ascent from the gulfs of impiety, that its hapless votaries may not despair of attaining the pure summit!

LETTER XLIII.

MRS STOKES.

High Lake, Aug. 23, 1799.

I CAME hither on the 22d of last month, and shall make it six weeks ere I quit this lawny and cheerful shore, and its peopled seas, covered with the sails of commerce. Visits, on my return home, to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, in their beauteous vale, and to Mr and Mrs Roberts, on their grandly scenic mountain, will probably make it at least the middle of September ere I sit down quiet in my own pleasant and embowered mansion at Lichfield.

Our society here is not disagreeable. It consists of several cheerful and well-bred, and some apparently amiable people. For the sympathy of attachment; for kindred spirits to my own; for much that is intellectual, I look not. If they present themselves amongst the stranger tribes of a public place, my heart and my imagination instantly feel their magnetism, and gladly welcome them. Miss Charlotte Lister, of our city, accompanied me hither, entrusted by her mother to