of 7770. Mr. William Marshman to whom it is directed, was, as appears by other original documents in my possession, a very worthy and confidential English servant of Lord Botetourt's.

The letter of the manufacturer, "BUZAGLIO" or "Buzaglo," (and not "BUZAGIO" as it seems to be spelt upon the Stove,) is not directed, and the envelope is lost, but from its date and address, it was most probably written to Lord Botetourt himself. That Buzaglo was a foreigner, may be gathered from his style as well as his name, and the Paraphe, or individual flourish appended to it, but which cannot be imitated in type, and it also appears that Great Britain, and not the Continent, had the honor of producing this magnum opus.'

It is amusing to see the unction with which honest Buzaglo speaks of its magnificence, when we have it in its full proportions before us. Could he leave his narrow cell for a moment, and gaze on the fairy wonders which Berlin and Bermingham hourly produce from the same rugged material, and of which it may truly be said 'materiem superabat opus,' what would he think of the condition of art in his day? But I will not detain your readers from the perusal of the curious documents entrusted to me by my friend.

"LONDON the 15th August 1770.

'My Lord,'-Sensible of the obligation by your Lordship's order I thankfully acknowlege the favor, flattering myself of having discharged my duty therein and that it will merit your Lordship's approbation, assuring your Lordship that cost nor trouble was spared in the execution; The Elegance of workmanship and Impression of every particular joint does honor to Great Britain, it excels in grandeur any thing ever seen of the kind, and is a Master piece not to be equalled in all Europe, it has met with General applause, and could not be sufficiently admired, The said

Machine &c is contained in seven cases, and Inclosed Directions for Erecting it &c: Your Lordship will be pleased to order the strict observance thereof, as I am very particular that it may be faithfully Erected, I am with most profound respect

My Lord

Your Lordship's

most obedient

and most humble Serv't BUZAGLO."

Very particular Printed Directions "for putting up the new Invented Warming Machines" and also for using them are among the papers in my possession.

The letter below is indorsed, (I think very probably by Robert Carter Nicholas,) as follows:

"Mr. Thos. Conway's Letter signifying the Duke of Beaufort's desire that the H. of Burgesses would accept the Stove wrote for by Lord Botetourt.' It is directed,-" To Mr. Marshman

at the Palace in Williamsburgh Virginia."

LONDON 28 Jan'y, 1770.

"Sir, I wrote to you by the Royal Exchange to tell you that I knew the Duke of Beaufort would fulfill our most worthy and late friends Intention, and now I have in command from his Grace to desire Mr. Nelson &c to desire the House of Burgess to accept the Stove. I am Your friend and Serv't, THO. CONWAY.”

Unhappily no light is thrown on the correct reading of the motto about which "A Quondam Delegate" in the April number 1848, rapped me gently over the knuckles. Tell your correspondent I know very well that if "regnum" is to be supplied, the reading should be "En dat Virginia Quartum;" but suppose it was 'regionem,' or 'coronam' that was understood, and the motto on the Stove

does not 'scratch Priscian' at all. At all events, I am not responsible for Buzaglo's Latin, and only purported to give the motto as it actually exists upon the Stove.

"Esto perpetua"-that is-the Stove-not the motto, and when in the fulness of years its vital spark shall be extinguished, I hope the Historical Society of Virginia will see that it has decent burial.

In the mean time, by way of keeping up its historical associations, I propose that it be called in future "THE BOTETOURT STOVE."

G. A. M.

From the London News, Nov. 29.

THE LATE MISS BERRY.

An event occurred last Saturday night week which makes us ask ourselves whether we have really passed the middle of our century. In the course of that night, Nov. 20, one died who could and did tell so much of what happened early in the reign of George III., that her hearers felt as if they were in personal relatious with the men of that time. Miss Berry was remarkable enough in herself to have excited a good deal of emotion by dying any time within the last seventy years. Dying now, she leaves as strong as ever the impression of her amiable faculties, her generous and affectionate nature, and her high accomplishments, while awakening us to a retrospect of the changes and fashions of our English intellect, as expressed by literature. She was not only the woman of letters of the last century carried far forward into our own-she was not only the woman of fashion who was familiar with the gayeties of life before the fair daughters of George III. were seen abroad, but she was, in fact, the repository of the whole literary history of four-score years; and when she was pleased to throw open the folding doors of her memory, they were found to be mirrors, and in them was seen the whole procession of literature, from the mourn ful Cowper to Tennyson the laureate.

It was a curious sight-visible till recently, though now all are gone the chatting of three ladies on the same sofa-the two Miss Berrys and their intimate friend, Lady Charlotte Lindsay. Lady Charlotte Lindsay was the daughter of Lord North; and the Miss Berrys had both received, as was never any secret, the offer of the hand of Horace Walpole. These ladies, of course, brought into our time a good deal of the manners, the conversation and the dress of the last century; but not at all in a way to cast any restraint on the youngest of their visitors, or to check the inclination to inquire into the thoughts and ways of men long dead, and the influence of modes long passed away. It was said that Miss Berry's parties were rather blue; and perhaps they were so; but she was not aware of it; and all thought of contempory pedantry dissolved under her stories of how she once found on the table, on her return from a ball, a volume of "Plays on the Passions," and how she kneeled on a chair at the table to see what the book was like, and was found there-feathers and satin shoes and all -by the servant who came to let in the winter morning light; or of how the world of literature was perplexed and distressed-as a swarm of bees that have lost their queenwhen Dr. Johnson died; or of how Charles Fox used to wonder that people could make such fuss about that dullest of new books, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." As she was entering on the novel-reading age, Evelina came out; and Fanny Burney's series of novels were to that generation of young people what Scott's were to the next but one. If the youths and maidens of that time had bad fiction, they had good history, for the learned Mr. Gibbon gave them volume after volume, which made them proud of their age. They talked about their poets, and no doubt each had an idol in that day as in ours and everybody's. The earnestness, sense, feeling, and point of Cowper delighted some; and they reverently told of the sorrows of his secluded life, as glimpses were caught of him in his walks with Mrs. Unwin. Others stood on tiptoe to peep into Dr. Darwin's "chaise as he went his professional round, writing and polishing his verses as he went; and his admirers insisted that nothing so brilliant had ever been written before. Miss Berry must have well remembered the first exhibition of this brilliancy before the careless eyes

of the world; and she must have remembered the strangeness of the contrast when Crabbe tried the contrast of his homely pathos, encourged to do so by Burke. And then came something which it is scarcely credible that the world should have received during the period of Johnson's old age, and the maturity of Gibbon, and Sir Wm. Jones and Burns-the wretched rhyming of the Batheaston set of sentimental pedants. In rebuke of them, the now mature woman saw the theory Wordsworth rise; and in rebuke of him, she saw the young and confident Jeffrey and his comrades arise, and in rebuke of them saw the Quarterly Review arise, when she was beginning to be elderly. She saw Joanna Baillie's great fame rise and decline, without either the rise or decline changing in the least the countenance or the mood of the happy being whose sunshine came from quite another luminary than fame. She saw the rise of Wordsworth's fame, growing as it did out of the reaction against the pomps and vanities of the Johnsonian and Darwinian schools; anc she lived to see its decline when the great purpose was fulfilled, of inducing poets to say what they mean, in words which will answer that purpose. She saw the beginning and the end of Moore's popularity; and the rise and establishment of Campbell's. The short career of Byron passed before her eyes like a summer storm, and that of Scott constituted a great interest of her life for many years. What an experience-to have studied the period of horrors-represented by Monk Lewis-of conventionalism in Fanny Burney-of metaphysical fiction in Godwin-of historical romance in Scott-and of a new order of fiction in Dickens, which it is yet too soon to characterize by a phrase.

We might go on for hours, and not exhaust the history of what she saw on the side of literature alone. If we attempted to number the scientific men who have crossed her threshold the foreigners who found within her doors the best of London and the cream of society, we should never have done. And of the political changes she sawthe continental wars, the establishment of American independence the long series of French revolutions-the career of Washington, of Napoleon, of Nelson, of Wellington, with that of all the statesmen from Lord Chatham to Peel-from Franklin to Webster. But it is too much. It