to their ledgers of a morning, or anxious after the duty is over, to revisit their snug domiciles at Pentonville or Paradise Row.

Nothing can exceed in interest the view from the centre of one of the bridges. By paying the smallest of fees, you may select one where there are no hurrying passengers to distract you. The forest of masts towards "the pool," divides attention with the forest of steeples of every conceiveable form rising above the housetops. Alas! for the faded glories of wherries and watermen; only a few relics are left stranded on the beach; for who can resist the tight, glittering, rapid steamers that ply along the river, to the total demolition of the picturesque ?

After all, the interest of London, to a new visiter for amusement, is concentrated in a few spots. Every one of course saunters through the aisles of St Paul's, hears the choral service, and pays his pence to the whispering gallery. Many of the monuments, I blush to see it, are unsightly tasteless things. Had we come towards the end of April, or the beginning of May, we might have been lucky enough to catch the audience (of a sermon) of a stray Bishop or two: or to have heard the "sayings and doings" going on at Exeter Hall, a great favourite with the ladies, where orthodox churchism reigns one hour, to be succeeded in the next by various heterogeneous "denominations" of all sorts, or perchance by a collection of "nigger" sympathizers under Sir Fowell Buxton, whose porter views, with Meux's, are in general acceptance. Great on such occa sions are the plaudits lavished by tiny feet and parasol points on the crack speakers of the day, and immense the consumption of sweetmeats and sandwiches out of little tin boxes, sodden by the heat of the pocket.

You may go to Westminster Abbey, and hear the crgan roll its thunders through the long-drawu aisles.

lapping your soul in Elysium, as wave after wave of melody passes like a flood upon your soul; you may walk where banners flutter above your heads; you may stand over the graves of "England's noble dead;" you may muse on past glory and the nothingness of human ambition; you may dream that the spirit of the departed sons of genius have received you in "poet's corner :" but beware lest you wait till the service is over, or you will be cruelly taken in, to the distraction of your thick-coming fancies, and your many meditations, by the approach of some pealing ringer or other functionary, with "Please sir, it's tuppence now for them as wants to stop."

Then away to the zoological galleries, to the monkeycage, where you see a lively representation of almost human passions and jealousies, provided you chuck a piece of gingerbread through the bars; dip down to the cool passage of the Thames Tunnel, talking away of Brunel and the triumphs of mechanical art; look at Howel & James's windows, and treat your fair one to a new shawl, that you may see in perfection that most refined of all fine gentlemen, a London fashionable shopkeeper, one of a tribe who in general, like valets dress better than dukes and earls. Steam it to Richmond, and know how high charges may go, and a mutton chop be charged 3s. 6d. at the "Star and Garter." Hear a new opera crashed through at Drury Lane, refresh yourself with oysters and half and half, not to such an extent, however, by dint of finishing with "blue ruin," as to get finished yourself, and win gratuitous lodgings in the station house, after B 219. has given you in charge for paternally embracing the lamppost-and you will have done enough for one day. A week may serve you, and if you employ your time as well as I have done, you will be glad of a little repose, and welcome again the quietness of your ordinary residence, and the monotony of our common and

less fatiguing occupations. I am too tired to scratch another word, and I dare say have said a lot of nonsense; but sensible or nonsensical, I am ever, my dear friend, yours sincerely.

LETTER LXIX.*

An Interchange of Sympathy.

9. February 1743.

Dear Sir, I should not have been thus long in making my best acknowledgments for your last kind letter, had not my absence from home, and a late unhappy domestic affair, prevented me, and engrossed all my thoughts. The misfortunes of an excellent sister and her children, by her husband's ill success in trade, yet attended to with the utmost honesty and sobriety, so that, to his own ruin, he has been a considerable benefactor to the public while in trade, and his creditors at last no losers, but himself undone. I do not know whether this be an alleviation or aggravation of the misfortune, but I can tell you, with the utmost truth, that I share with this distressed sister and her children (who all live with me) the small revenue it has pleased God to bless me with, with much greater satisfaction than others spend theirs on their pleasures. I do not know how it is, but though I am far from a hero, yet I find Brutus expresses my exact sentiments when he says to Cicero," Aliter alii cum suis vivunt. Nihil ego possum in Sororis meæ liberis facere, quo possit expleri voluntas mea aut officium." But you will reprove me, I know, for this false modesty in apologizing for this comparison, and say, Where is the wonder that a man who pretends to be a Christian should not come behind a Pagan, how great soever in the performance of moral duties! However this be, I can assure you my only concern on this occasion was for an

Warburton to Doddridge.

incomparable mother, whom I feared the misfortunes of a favourite daughter would have too much affected. But, I thank God, religion, that religion which you make such amiable drawings of in all your writings, was more than a support to her. But I ask pardon for talking so long of myself. This is a subject, too, I hate to think of, and never talk of, yet I could not forbear mentioning it to a man I so much esteem, and whose heart I know to be so right.

It was with great concern I found good Mrs Doddridge so ill at Bath. I know the grief this must have occasioned you, but I know your sufficiency. I trust in God she has by this time received the expected benefit from the waters. It was by accident, a little before I left Mr Allen's, I saw her name in Leake's book (for there I had not received your last.) visited her twice. The first time, she was going out to drink the waters, the second time, a-visiting: so I had not the pleasure of being long with her. You may be assured I would not hinder her the first time, and I made a conscience of it, not to do it the second; for it was a new acquaintance she was going to make; a matter perhaps, as use ful for her amusement while she staid at Bath, as the other for her health. Thus you see, my good friend, we have ali something to make us think less complaisantly of the world. Religion will do great things. It will always make the bitter waters of Marah wholesome and palatable. But we must not think it will usually turn water into wine because it did so once. Nor is it fit that it should, unless this were our place of rest, where we were to expect the bridegroom. I do the best I can to make life passable, and should, I think, do the same if I were a Pagan! To be always lamenting its miseries, or always seeking after its pleasures, takes off equally from the work of our salvation: and though I be extremely cautious what sect I follow in religion, yet

1

any in philosophy will serve my turn, and honest Sancho Pancha's as well as any; who, on his return from an important commission, when asked by his master whether they should mark the day with a Clock o a white stone, replied, " Faith, sir, if you will be ruled by me, with neither, but with good brown ochre." What this philosopher thought of his commission, 1 think of human life in general, good brown ochre is the complexion of it.

W. WARBURTON.

LETTER LXX.
Burns to Mrs Dunlop.

Ellisland, 13th December, 1789.

Many thanks, dear Madam, for your sheetful of rhymes. Though at present 1

am below the veriest prose, yet from you every thing pleases. ] am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness, or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous head-ache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up my excise-books, being scarce able to lift my head, much less to ride once a week over ten muir parishes. What is man? To-day in the luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence; in a few days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being, counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments by the repercussions of anguish, and refused or denied a comforter. Day follows night, and night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no