steal weapons out of his own armoury for their entertainment." "I had taken leave of Lord Melcombe the day preceding the coronation, and found him before a looking-glass in his new robes, practising attitudes, and debating within himself upon the most graceful mode of carrying his coronet in the procession. He was in high glee with his fresh and blooming honours; and I left him in the act of dictating a billet to Lady Hervey, apprising her that a young lord was coming to throw himself at her feet."-p. 159. Mr. Cumberland went to Ireland with Lord Halifax in 1761; and the celebrated SingleSpeech Hamilton went as chief secretary.His character is well drawn in the following sentences. : He spoke well, but not often, in the Irish House of Commons. He had a striking countenance, a graceful carriage, great self-possession and personal courage: He was not easily put out of his way by any of those unaccommodating repugnances that men of weaker nerves, or more tender consciences, might have stumbled at, or been checked by: he could mask the passions that were natural to him, and assume those that did not belong to him he was indefatigable, meditative, mysterious: his opinions were the result of long labour and much reflection, but he had the art of setting them forth as if they were the starts of ready genius and a quick perception: He had as much seeming steadiness as a partisan could stand in need of, and all the real flexibility that could suit his purpose, or advance his interest. He would fain have retained his connection with Edmund Burke, and associated him to his politics, for he well knew the value of his talents; but in that object he was soon disap pointed: the genius of Burke was of too high a caste to endure debasement."—pp. 169, 170. In Dublin Mr. Cumberland was introduced to a new and a more miscellaneous society than he had hitherto been used to, and has presented his readers with striking sketches of Dr. Pococke and Primate Stone. We are more amused, however, with the following picture of George Faulkner. "Description must fall short in the attempt to convey any sketch of that eccentric being to those who have not read him in the notes of Jephson, or seen him in the mimickry of Foote, who, in his portraits of Faulkner, found the only sitter whom his extravagant pencil could not caricature; for he had a solemn intrepidity of egotism, and a daring contempt of absurdity, that fairly outfaced imitation, and, like Garrick's Ode on Shakespeare, which Johnson said "defied criticism," so did George, in the original spirit of his own perfect buffoonery, defy caricature. He never deigned to join in the laugh he had raised, nor seemed to have a feeling of the ridicule he had provoked. At the same time that he was preeminently, and by preference, the butt and buffoon of the company, he could find openings and opportunities for hits of retaliation, which were such left-handed thrusts as few could parry: nobody could foresee where they would fall; nobody, of course, was fore-armed and as there was, in his calculation, but one supereminent character in the kingdom of Ireland, and he the printer of the Dublin Journal, rank was no shield against George's arrows, which flew where he listed, and hit or missed as chance directed,-he cared not about consequences. He gave good meat and excellent claret in abundance. I sat at his table once from dinner till two in the morning, whilst George swallowed immense potations, with one Bolitary sodden strawberry at the bottom of the glass, which he said was recommended to him by his doctor for its cooling properties! He to his recollection or equilibriuin the whole time, and was in excellent foolery. It was a singular coinci dence, that there was a person in company who bad received his reprieve at the gallows, and the very judge who had passed sentence of death upon him But this did not in the least disturb the harmony of the society, nor embarrass any human creature present."-pp. 174, 175. At this period of his story he introduces several sketches and characters of his literary friends; which are executed, for the most part, with great force and vivacity. Of Garrick he says— "Nature had done so much for him, that he could not help being an actor; she gave him a frame of so manageable a proportion, and from its aptitude and elasticity, he could draw it out to fit flexibility so perfectly under command, that, by rs any sizes of character that tragedy could offer to him, and contract it to any scale of ridiculous di minution, that his Abel Drugger, Scrubb, or Frib ble, could require of him to sink it to. His eye, in the meantime, was so penetrating, so speaking: his brow so movable, and all his features so plas tic, and so accommodating, that wherever his mind impelled them, they would go; and before his tongue could give the text, his countenance wea'd express the spirit and the passion of the part he was encharged with."—pp. 245, 246. The following picture of Soame Jenyns is excellent. cieties with the most even temper and undisturbed "He was the man who bore his part in all sohilarity of all the good companions whom I ever knew. He came into your house at the very moment you had put upon your card; he dressed himself to do your party honour in all the colours of the jay; his lace indeed had long since lost its since the days when gentlemen embroidered figured lustre, but his coat had faithfully retained its cut velvets with short sleeves, boot cuffs, and buckram shirts. As nature had cast him in the exact mould of an ill made pair of stiff stays, he followed her so close in the fashion of his coat, that it was doubted if he did not wear them. Because he had a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig that did not cover above half his head. His eyes were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was room between one of these and his nose for another wen, that added nothing to his beauty; yet 1 heard this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon published his history, that he wondered any body so ugly could write a book. "Such was the exterior of a man, who was the charm of the circle, and gave a zest to every company he came into: His pleasantry was of a sort peculiar to himself; it harmonised with everything: it was like the bread to your dinner; you did not perhaps make it the whole, or principal part of your meal, but it was an admirable and wholesome auxiliary to your other viands. Soame Jenyns told you no long stories, engrossed not much of your attention, and was not angry with those that did. His thoughts were original, and were apt to have a very whimsical affinity to paradox in them: He wrote verses upon dancing, and prose upon the origin of evil; yet he was a very indifferent metaphysician, and a worse dancer: ill-nature and personality, with the single exception of his lines upon Johnson, I never heard fall from his lips: Those lines I have forgotten, though I believe I was the first person to whom he recited them; they were very bad, but he had been told that Johnson ridi culed his metaphysics, and some of us had just then been making extemporary epitaphs upon each other. Though his wit was harmless, yet the gene ral cast of it was ironical; there was a terseness in found by Johnson, in the act of meditating on the "That he was fantastically and whimsically vain, all the world knows; but there was no malice in his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pretensions that did not, and by nature could not, belong to him, and at the same time he was inexcusably careless of the fame which We will pronounce no general judgment on he had powers to command. What foibles he had the literary merits of Mr. Cumberland; but he took no pains to conceal; and the good qualities our opinion of them certainly has not been of his heart were too frequently obscured by the raised by the perusal of these memoirs. There carelessness of his conduct, and the frivolity of his is no depth of thought, nor dignity of sentimanners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trini ment about him;-he is too frisky for an old and order for society, if he would have been amen-man, and too gossipping for an historian. His able; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had style is too negligent even for the most famigood sense, great propriety, with all the social at-liar composition; and though he has proved tributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man. Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chambers in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table." pp. 257-259. "I have heard Dr. Johnson relate with infinite humour the circumstance of his rescuing Goldsmith from a ridiculous dilemma, by the purchase-money of his Vicar of Wakefield, which he sold on his behalf to Dodsley, and, as I think, for the sum of ten pounds only. He had run up a debt with his landlady, for board and lodging, of some few pounds, and was at his wits end how to wipe off the score, and keep a roof over his head, except by closing with a very staggering proposal on her part, and taking his creditor to wife, whose charms were very far from alluring, whilst her demands were extremely urgent. In this crisis of his fate he was himself, upon other occasions, to be a great number of phrases into this work, which, we master of good English, he has admitted a are inclined to think, would scarcely pass current even in conversation. "I declare to truth"-"with the greatest pleasure in life" "she would lead off in her best manner," &c. are expressions which we should not expect to hear in the society to which Mr. Cumberland belongs;-"laid," for lay, is still more insufferable from the antagonist of Lowth and the descendant of Bentley;-"querulential" strikes our ear as exotic;-locate, location, and locality," for situation simply, seem also to be bad; and "intuition" for observation sounds very pedantic, to say the least of it. Upon the whole, however, this volume is not the work of an ordinary writer; and we should probably have been more indulgent to its faults, if the excellence of some of the au thor's former productions had not sent us to its perusal with expectations perhaps somewhat extravagant. (July, 1803.) The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Including her Correspond. ence, Poems, and Essays. Published by permission, from her Original Papers. 5 vols. 8vo. London: 1803. THESE Volumes are so very entertaining that we ran them all through immediately upon their coming into our possession; and at the same time contain so little that is either difficult or profound, that we may venture to give some account of them to our readers without farther deliberation. The only thing that disappointed us was the memoir of the writer's life, prefixed by the editor to her correspondence. In point of composition it is very tame and inelegant; and ather excites than gratifies the curiosity of the reader, by the imperfect manner in which the facts are narrated. As the letters themselves, however, are arranged in a chronological order, and commonly contain very distinct notices of the writer's situation at their dates, we shall be enabled, by our extracts from them, to give a pretty clear idea of her Lady. ship's life and adventures, with very little assistance from the meagre narrative of Mr. Dallaway. Lady Mary Pierrepoint, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston, was born in 1690; and gave, in her early youth, such indications of a studious disposition, that she was initiated into the rudiments of the learned languages along with her brother. Her first years appear to have been spent in retirement; and yet the very first series of letters with which we are presented, indicates a great deal of that talent for ridicule, and power of observation, by which she afterwards became so famous, and so formidable. These letters (about a dozen in number) are addressed to Mrs. Wortley, the mother of her future husband; and, along with a good deal of girlish flattery and affectation, display such a degree of easy humour and sound penetration, as is not often to be met with in a damsel of nineteen, even in this age of precocity. The following letter, in 1709, is written upon the misbehaviour of one of her female favourites. acter in a different light, and was at any rate biassed by her inclinations, appears to have addressed a great number of letters to him upon this occasion; and to have been at considerable pains to relieve him of his scruples, and restore his confidence in the substantial excellences of her character. These letters, which are written with a great deal of female spirit and masculine sense, impress us with a very favourable notion of the talents and dispositions of the writer; and as they exhibit her in a point of view altogether different from any in which she has hitherto been presented to the public, we shall venture upon a pretty long extract." own hand, an assurance of my friendship. After all this, I exact nothing from you: If you find it inconvenient for your affairs to take so small a fortune. I desire you to sacrifice nothing to me: I pretend no tie upon your honour; but, in recompense for so clear and so disinterested a proceeding, must I ever receive injuries and ill usage? “I will state the case to you as plainly as I can, and then ask yourself if you use me well. I have "My knighterrantry is at an end; and I believe I showed, in every action of my life, an esteem for shall henceforward think freeing of galley-slavesyou, that at least challenges a grateful regard. I and knocking down windmills, more laudable un- have even trusted my reputation in your hands; for dertakings than the defence of any woman's repu-I have made no scruple of giving you, under my tation whatever. To say truth, I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex; and my only consolation for being of that gender, has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them! But I own, at present, I am so much out of humour with the actions of Lady H***, that I never was so heartily ashamed of my petticoats before. My only refuge is, the sincere hope that she is out of her senses; and taking herself for the Queen of Sheba, and Mr. Mildmay for King Solomon, I do not think it quite so ridiculous: But the men, you may well imagine, are not so charitable; and they agree in the kind reflection, that nothing hinders women from playing the fool, but not having it in their power." Vol. i. pp. 180, 181. 44 "Perhaps I have been indiscreet: I came young into the hurry of the world; a great innocence, and an undesigning gaiety, may possibly have been construed coquetry, and a desire of being followed, though never meant by me. I cannot answer for the observations that may be made on me. All who are malicious attack the careless and defenceless: I own myself to be both. I know not any thing I can say more to show my perfect desire of pleasing you. and making you easy, than to proffer to be confined In the course of this correspondence with with you in what manner you please. Would any the mother, Lady Mary appears to have con- woman but me renounce all the world for one ? er ceived a very favourable opinion of the son; would any man but you be insensible of such a and the next series of letters contains her an- proof of sincerity ?"-Vol. i. pp. 208-210. tenuptial correspondence with that gentleman, t' other so bad, as you fancy it. Should we ever live One part of my character is not so good, nor from 1710 to 1712. Though this correspond- together, you would be disappointed both ways; ence has interested and entertained us as you would find an easy equality of temper you do much at least as any thing in the book, we are not expect, and a thousand faults you do not imaafraid that it will afford but little gratification gine. You think, if you married me, I should be to the common admirers of love letters. Her passionately fond of you one month, and of someLadyship, though endowed with a very lively esteem, I can be a friend; but I don't know whebody else the next. Neither would happen. I can imagination, seems not to have been very sus-ther I can love. Expect all that is complaisant and ceptible of violent or tender emotions, and to easy, but never what is fond, in me. have imbibed a very decided contempt for sentimental and romantic nonsense, at an age which is commonly more indulgent. There are no raptures nor ecstasies, therefore, in these letters; no flights of fondness, nor vows "As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great of constancy, nor upbraidings of capricious af-pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your fection. To say the truth, her Ladyship acts a part ir. the correspondence that is not often allotted to a female performer. Mr. Wortley, though captivated by her beauty and her vivacity, seems evidently to have been a little alarmed at her love of distinction, her propen-ness. sity to satire, and the apparent inconstancy of her attachments. Such a woman, he was afraid, and not very unreasonably, would make rather an uneasy and extravagant companion to a man of plain understanding and moderate fortune; and he had sense enough to foresee, and generosity enough to explain to her, the isk to which their mutual happiness might be exposed by a rash and indissoluble union. Lady Mary, who probably saw her own char If you can resolve to live with a companion that will have all the deference due to your superiority of good sense, and that your proposals can be agreeable to those on whom I depend, I have nothing to say against them. account; but a retirement in the country is not so disagreeable to me, as I know a few months would for life, 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary make it tiresome to you. Where people are ried of one another. If I had the personal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for happiYou would be soon tired with seeing every day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the defects; lessened, which is always a great charm. I should which would increase in proportion as the novelty have the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know a love may be revived, extinguished: But there is no returning from a dé which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity, has goût given by satiety."-Vol. i. pp. 212–214. "I begin to be tired of my huniity; I have car ried my complaisances to you farther than I ought, You make new scruples: you have a great deal of fancy! and your distrusts, being all of your own making, are more immovable than if there were some real ground for them. Our aunts and grandmothers always tell us, that men are a sort of animals, that if ever they are constant, 'tis only where they are ill-used. 'Twas a kind of paradox I could never believe; but experience has taught me the truth of it. You are the first I ever had a correspondence with; and I thank God, I have done with it for all my life. You needed not to have told me you are not what you have been; one must be stupid not to find a difference in your letters. You seem, in one part of your last, to excuse yourself from having done me any injury in point of fortune. Do I accuse you of any? an opinion of your merit, which, if it is a mistake, I would not be undeceived. It is my interest to believe (as I do) that you deserve every thing, and are capable of every thing; but nobody else will believe it, if they see you get nothing."--Vol. i. pp. 250—252. The second volume, and a part of the third, are occupied with those charming letters, written during Mr. Wortley's embassy to Constantinople, upon which the literary reputation of Lady Mary has hitherto been exclusively founded. It would not become us to say any thing of productions which have so long engaged the admiration of the public. The grace and vivacity, the ease and conciseI have not spirits to dispute any longer withness, of the narrative and the description which you. You say you are not yet determined. Let me determine for you, and save you the trouble of they contain, still remain unrivalled, we think, writing again. Adieu for ever; make no answer. by any epistolary compositions in our lan I wish, among the variety of acquaintance, you may guage; and are but slightly shaded by a find some one to please you and can't help the sprinkling of obsolete tittle-tattle, or womanvanity of thinking, should you try them all, you ish vanity and affectation. The authenticity wont find one that will be so sincere in their treat of these letters, though at one time disputed, ment, though a thousand more deserving, and every has not lately been called in question; but one happier."-Vol. i. pp. 219-221. the secret history of their first publication has never, we believe, been laid before the public. The editor of this collection, from the origina! papers, gives the following account of it. These are certainly very uncommon productions for a young lady of twenty; and indicate a strength and elevation of character, that does not always appear in her gayer and more ostentatious performances. Mr. Wortley was convinced and re-assured by them; and they were married in 1712. The concluding part of the first volume contains her letters to him for the two following years. There is not much tenderness in these letters; nor very much interest indeed of any kind. Mr. Wortley appears to have been rather indolent and unambitious; and Lady Mary takes it upon her, with all delicacy and judicious management however, to stir him up to some degree of activity and exertion. There is a good deal of election-news and small politics in these epistles. The best of them, we think, is the following exhortation to impudence. I "In the later periods of Lady Mary s life, she employed her leisure in collecting copies of the letters she had written during Mr. Wortley's embassy, and had transcribed them herself, in two small volumes in quarto. They were, without doubt, return to England for the last time, in 1761, she sometimes shown to her literary friends. Upon her gave these books to a Mr. Snowden, a clergyman of Rotterdam, and wrote the subjoined memorandum on the cover of them: These two volumes are given to the Reverend Benjamin Snowden, thinks proper. This is the will and design of M. minister at Rotterdam, to be disposed of as he Wortley Montagu, December 11, 1761.' "After her death, the late Earl of Bute commissioned a gentleman to procure them, and to offer Mr. Snowden a considerable remuneration, which he accepted. Much to the surprise of that nobleman and Lady Bute, the manuscripts were scarcely safe in England, when three volumes of Lady Mary "I am glad you think of serving your friends. Wortley Montagu's Letters were published by hope it will put you in mind of serving yourself. Beckett; and it has since appeared, that a Mr. Cle need not enlarge upon the advantages of money; had negotiated before, was again despatched to land was the editor. The same gentleman, who every thing we sec, and every thing we hear, puts Holland; and could gain no further intelligence us in remembrance of it. If it were possible to restore liberty to your country, or limit the encroach- from Mr. Snowden, than that a short time before ments of the prerogative, by reducing yourself to a called on him to see the Letters, and obtained their he parted with the MSS. two English gentlemen garret, I should be pleased to share so glorious a poverty with you: But as the world is, and will request. They had previously contrived that Mr. be, 'tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in Snowden should be called away during their pe's power to do good; riches being another word rusal; and he found on his return that they had dis for power; towards the obtaining of which, the first appeared with the books. Their residence was necessary qualification is Impudence, and (as De- unknown to him; but on the next day they brought mosthenes said of pronunciation in oratory) the back the precious deposit, with many apologies. It second is impudence, and the third, still, impu-may be fairly presumed, that the intervening night dence! No modest man ever did, or ever will was consumed in copying these letters by several make his fortune. Your friend Lord Halifax, R. amanuenses."-Vol. i. pp. 29-32. Walpole, and all other remarkable instances of one's quick advancement, have been remarkably impudent. The ministry, in short, is like a play at court: There's a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost people who knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forwards, are sure of a good place. Your modest man stands behind in the crowd, is shoved about by every body, his clothes torn, almost squeezed to death, and sees a thousand get in before him, that don't make so good a figure as himself. "If this letter is impertinent, it is founded upon A fourth volume of Lady Mary's Letters, published in the same form in 1767, appears now to have been a fabrication of Cleland's; as no corresponding MSS. have been found among her Ladyship's papers, or in the hands of her correspondents. To the accuracy of her local descriptions, and the justness of her representations of ori ental manners, Mr. Dallaway, who followed her footsteps at the distance of eighty years, and resided for several months in the vers palace which she had occupied at Pera, bears, a decided and respectable testimony; and, in vindication of her veracity in describing the interior of the seraglio, into which no Christian is now permitted to enter, he observes, that the reigning Sultan of the day, Achmed the Third, was notoriously very regardless of the injunctions of the Koran, and that her Ladyship's visits were paid while the court was in a retirement that enabled him to dispense with many ceremonies. We do not observe any difference between these letters in the present edition, and in the common copies, except that the names of Lady Mary's correspondents are now given at full length, and short notices of their families subjoined, upon their first introduction. At page eighty-nine of the third volume, there are also two short letters, or rather notes, from the Countess of Pembroke, that have not hitherto been made public; and Mr. Pope's letter, describing the death of the two rural lovers by lightning, is here given at full length; while the former editions only contained her Ladyship's answer,-in which we have always thought that her desire to be smart and witty, has intruded itself a little ungracefully into the place of a more amiable feeling. Majesty, no bloodshed ensued. However, things are now tolerably accommodated; and the fair lady rides thrrough the town in the shining berlin of her hero, not to reckon the more solid advantages of 100l. a month, which 'tis said, he allows her. I will send you a letter by the Count Caylus, whom, if you do not know already, you will thank me for introducing to you. He is a Frenchman, and no fop; which, besides the curiosity of it, is one of the prettiest things in the world."-Vol. ii. pp. 120–122. birth-night; my brain warmed with all the agreeable "I write to you at this time piping-hot from the ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, brisk tunes, and lively dances can raise there. It is to be hoped that my letter will entertain you; at least you wil certainly have the freshest account of all passages on that glorious day. First, you must know that I more, I believe in my conscience I made one of led up the ball, which you'll stare at; but what is the best figures there: For, to say truth, people sre grown so extravagantly ugly, that we old beauties are forced to come out on show-days, to keep the court in countenance. I saw Mrs. Murray there, through whose hands this epistle will be conveyed; I do not know whether she will make the same compliment to you that I do. Mrs. West was with her, who is a great prude, having but two lovers at a time; I think those are Lord Haddington and Mr. Lindsay; the one for use, the other for show. "The world improves in one virtue to a violent degree-I mean plain dealing. Hypocrisy being, as the Scripture declares, a damnable sin, I hope our publicans and sinners will be saved by the open The next series of letters consists of those profession of the contrary virtue. I was told by a written to her sister the Countess of Mar, from very good author, who is deep in the secret, that at 1723 to 1727. These letters have at least as this very minute there is a bill cooking up at a hurt. much vivacity, wit, and sarcasm, as any that ing seat at Norfolk, to have not taken out of the have been already published; and though they commandments, and clapped into the creed, the contain little but the anecdotes and scandal ensuing session of Parliament. To speak plainly, I am very sorry for the forlorn state of matrimony; of the time, will long continue to be read and which is now as much ridiculed by our young ladies admired for the brilliancy and facility of the as it used to be by young fellows: In short, both composition. Though Lady Mary is exces-sexes have found the inconveniences of it; and the sively entertaining in this correspondence, we appellation of rake is as genteel in a woman as 1 cannot say, however, that she is either very the maid of honour, looks very well now she is out man of quality: It is no scandal to say Miss —, amiable, or very interesting. There is rather again; and poor Biddy Noel has never been quite a negation of good affection, we think, through- well since her last confinement. You may imagine out; and a certain cold-hearted levity, that we married women look very silly: We have no borders sometimes upon misanthropy, and thing to excuse ourselves, but that it was done a sometimes on indecency. The style of the great while ago, and we were very young when we did it."-Vol. iii. pp. 142-145. following extracts, however, we are afraid, has been for some time a dead language. 66 Sixpenny worth of common sense, divided among a whole nation, would make our lives roll "I made a sort of resolution, at the beginning away glibly enough: But then we make laws, of my letter, not to trouble you with the mention and we follow customs. By the first we cut off of what passes here, since you receive it with so our own pleasures, and by the second we are anmuch coldness. But I find it is impossible to forbear swerable for the faults and extravagances of others. telling you the metamorphoses of some of your ac- All these things, and five hundred more, convince quaintance, which appear as wondrous to me as me that I have been one of the condemned evet any in Ovid. Would any one believe that Lady since I was born; and in submission to the Divine H*****ss is a beauty, and in love? and that Mrs. Justice, I have no doubt but I deserved it, in some Anastasia Robinson is at the same time a prude and pre-existent state. I will still hope, however, that a kept mistress? The first of these ladies is ten- I am only in purgatory; and that after whining and derly attached to the polite Mr. M***, and sunk in pining a certain number of years, I shall be trans all the joys of happy love, notwithstanding shelated to some more happy sphere, where virtue wil wants the use of her two hands by a rheumatism. and he has an arm that he cannot move. I wish I could tell you the particulars of this amour; which eeems to me as curious as that between two oysters, and as well worth the serious attention of naturalists. The second heroine has engaged half the town in arms, from the nicety of her virtue, which was not able to bear the too near approach of Senesino in the opera; and her condescension in accepting of Lord Peterborough for her champion, who has signalized both his love and courage upon this occasion in as many instances as ever Don Quixote did for Duleinea. Innumerable have been the disorders between the two sexes on so great an account, besides half the House of Peers being put under arrest. By the Providence of Heaven, and the wise care of his be natural, and custom reasonable; that is, in short, where common sense will reign. I grow very devout, as you see, and place all my hopes in the next life-being totally persuaded of the nothing ness of this. Don't you remember how miserable we were in the little parlour, at Thoresby? we then thought marrying would put us at once into posses sion of all we wanted. Then came though, after all, I am still of opinion, that it is extremely silly to submit to ill-fortune. One should pluck up a spirit, and live upon cordials; when one can have no other nourishment. These are my present endeavours; and I run abort, though I have five thousand pins and needles in my heart. I try to console myself with a small damsel, who is at present every thing I like-but, alas! she is yet in a |