LETTER LXVI.*

On the Pleasures of a Country Residence.

There has scarcely one bright September sun darted through my window upon my curtain, but I have resolved to thank you for your very entertaining letter, which I received one day at dinner at Sandleford, and which furnished a very pleasing dessert for the whole party; for, to show you what entire confidence you may place in me, I obeyed your injunction of not betraying your treasonable sentiments, by putting your letter into Mrs Montagu's hand, who forthwith read it aloud; this produced a great deal of pleasantry, and renewed the old critical squabbles again. We had not forces for a regular battle, but many a skirmish did we fight; in these I was sure to be worsted by the disciplined veteran, who, alas! has arms as well as rules.

I need not tell you that my visit was an exceedingly pleasant one: we passed our time in the full enjoyment of the best blessings this world has to bestow-friendship, tranquillity, and literature. You agree with me, I know, in thinking that what makes our accomplished friend so delightful in society is, that in her company les jeux et les ris constantly act as pages and maids of honour to Apollo and the nine, who always owe half their attractions to their lovely train; and who, though very respectable without them, can never be entirely captivating. So well were we pleased with the manner in which we lived together, that we have been actually in treaty for repairing to Sandleford to encore my visit, but we cannot accommodate our time to each other, so I shall stay till Mrs Montagu comes to Bath.

I have lived a most gloriously idle life, all the last months, rambling about the romantic hills and delicious vallies of Somersetshire; it is full of enchanting scenery; the views are rather interesting than magnificent; Mrs Hannah More to Mr Pepys.

scenes,

and that neighbourhood of the friend's house where I was, abounds with the most smiling vallies, the most touching little home views, the prettiest rising and falling grounds, the clearest living streams, and the most lovely hanging woods I ever saw. These gentle which are agreste without being savage, are, I am persuaded, more delightful to live amongst, than the blaze and roar, the awful and astonishing of the sublime of this I am convinced, by a ride we took through the lofty cliffs of Cheddar, so stupendously romantic, that the shade of Ossian or the ghost of Taliessen himself might range, not undelighted, through them; my imagination was delighted, was confounded, was oppressed, and darted a thousand years back into days of chivalry and enchantment, at seeing hang over my head, vast ledges of rock exactly resembling mouldered castles and ruined abbeys. I had a delightful confusion of broken images in my head, without one distinct idea; but the delight was of so serious a nature, that I could scarcely refrain from crying, especially when we sat down upon a fragment of rock, and heard one of Gray's Odes finely set, and sung with infinite feeling. I would have given the world to have my favourite Ode to Melancholy by Beaumont and Fletcher; you know it

An eye that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound,
Gloomy cells, and twilight groves,

Places which pale Passion loves, &c.

But these pensive pleasures should be repeated at long intervals. They wind up the mind too high, and infuse into the spirit a sentiment compounded of sadness and delight, which, though it may qualify one to write odes, yet indispose one for a much more indispensable thing, the enjoyment of the intercourse of ordinary society. But you will grow sick of those sombre scenes,

though I think you would have performed the pilgrimage itself with enthusiasm.

Present my kind compliments to Mrs Pepys: I know Lot where you are, but I suppose on Mount Ephraim. I am your obliged, &c.

LETTER LXVII.

Example of a Friendly Letter-Sir Walter Scott to Miss Joanna Baillie.

My dear Miss Baillie,-The law, you know, makes the husband responsible for the debts of his wife; and therefore gives him a right to approach her creditors with an offer of payment; so that, after witnessing many broken and fruitless resolutions of my Charlotte, I am determined, rather than she and I should appear insensible of your goodness, to intrude a few lines on you, to answer the letter you I wish

honoured her with some time ago. we had the command of what my old friend Pitscottie calls "blink of the sun or a whip of the whirlwind," to transport you to this solitude* before the frost has stripped it of its leaves. It is not indeed (even I must confess) equal in picturesque beauty to the banks of Clyde and Evan; but it is so sequestered, so simple, and so solitary, that it seems just to have beauty enough to delight its inhabitants, without a single attraction for any visitor, except those who come for its inhabitants' sake. And in good sooth, whenever I was tempted to envy the splendid scenery of the lakes of

* Ashiestiel

Westmoreland, I always endeavoured to cure my fit of spleen, by recollecting that they attract as many idie, insipid, and indolent gazers as any celebrated beauty in the land, and that one scene of pastoral hills and pure streams is, like Touchstone's mistress, a poor thing, but mine own.' I regret, however, that these celebrated beauties should have frowned, wept, or pouted on you, when you honoured them by your visit in summer. Did Miss Agnes Baillie and you meet with any of the poetical inhabitants of that district, Wordsworth, Southey, or Coleridge? The two former would, I am sure, have been happy in paying their respects to you; with the habits and tastes of the latter I am less acquainted.

Louisa has lingered with me from day to day in expectation of being called southward: I now begin to think my journey will hardly take place till winter, or early in spring. One of the most pleasant circumstances attending it, will be the opportunity to pay my homage to you, and to claim withal, a certain promise concerning a certain play, of which you were so kind as to promise me a reading. I hope you do not permit indolence to lay the paring of her little finger on you; we cannot afford the interruption to your labours, which even that might occasion. And "what are you doing?" your politeness will perhaps lead you to say: in answer, Why, I am very like a certain ancient king, distinguished in the Edda, who, when Lok paid him a visit,—

"Was twisting of collars his dogs to hold,
And combing the mane of his courser bold."

If this idle man's employment required any apology, we must seek it in the difficulty of seeking food to make messes for our English guests; for we are eight miles from market, and must call in all the country sports to aid the larder. Charlotte's kindest and best wishes attend Miss Agnes Baillie, in which I

heartily and respectfully join; to you, she offers her best apology for not writing, and hopes for your kind forgiveness. I ought perhaps to make one for taking the task off her hands, but we are both at your mercy. I am ever your most faithful, obedient, and admiring

servant.

LETTER LXVIII.

From a Gentleman in London to his Friend.

My dear Friend,-It is a change indeed from our quiet and secluded place of abode, to find one's self in the midst of this vortex of a place. Yet, for a time at least, the variety is by no means without its interest. There are so many objects deserving of attention lying all around us, that a variety of strange and novel feelings are called up. After passing through miles on miles, of what is neither town nor country, but a jumble of both, you come to the outskirts of the great Babylon: the gardens before the villas, become gradually more diminutive, till they degenerate into scanty plots, with a box-tree or two closely clipped before them. You have scarcely time to notice the change, before you are plunged into the thronged and close populous streets of the city. The crowd jostles the bewildered stranger, and it is a great chance if he does not find himself rudely pushed into the kennel by the wooden tray of a butcher's boy. There seems no rest, every face appears calculating gain, or loss.

After a good night's rest, we sallied forth upon this terra incognita. I shall not enter into a detailed description of all our perambulations; but cannot omit to notice the great facilities of conveyance with which the metropolis abound. Omnibuses fly from every principal point, even to the church or chapel of the fashionable or celebrated preacher of the day: these form the great resource of the city clerks in a hurry, when hastening