Richards or Octavians—not but you may tell Mr. Elliston if he can come on the 7th Sunday in Trinity I shall be glad to see him. Tell him to write by return. He can play on Monday in London-monday, Aug. 12. I have no strength or time for compliments. Wishing you good health, Yours in great pain,

TATE WILKINSON.

The reader must look at the foot of the following for its merit. The name of Mrs. Abington crossed our path as we were thinking of nothing less, and the words that preceded it seemed as if they would be transcribed. But in truth that name is a spell which might " turn to favour and to prettiness" a greater portion of nothing than is here appended to it. Not that we are at all sure the familiar note of one pretty woman to another should ever be more pregnant of matter than that which we now present.

My lovely Lady,-Have you left me off? I think it long since I had the happiness of seeing either your pretty eyes, or improving from your pretty manners. I am quite unwell, or I should have ventured again to Leicester Square, but hope you will call in Pall Mall on Your obliged friend,

F. ABINGTON.

As the following letters, of the celebrated author and actor of the Man of the World, have not brevity among their merits, we shall not usher them in by any long preface, but merely observe that Love à la Mode is evidently an object of no little importance in the eyes of its author. Here are two letters, to different persons, and written at five years distance from each other, and they treat of nothing else.

London, July 19th, 1773.

Dr Sir, I this instant recd your favor of the 16th and am sorry I cannot accept of your invitation. My affairs are so urgent in this part of the world that I am afraid I shall not be able to leave London this summer-not even to pay my respects at Methly. When you come to this town I shall be very glad to see you. You will find me in James-street, Covent Garden, at one Babels, a paper mache warehouse. I wish you would not think I am stricter with you than with any other person respecting Love à la Mode. I assure you I am not. You are the only one I ever permitted to play it. As to those around you who have illegally taken the liberty of treating it as their own, be assured nothing but the want of time to attend to them keeps them from the justice of the law, which they will certainly feel the first week that I can spare from my present avocations. I am, Sir, &c.

CHARLES MACKLIN.

London, April 28, 1769. Sir,-I have just recd. your's of the 26 inst. and take the first opportunity of answering it. You tell me that my real piece, of Love à la Mode, was never acted at York, Newcastle, &c. and I tell you that I know very well what kind of a farce called Love à la Mode was acted in those places, and how near in expression, fable, and character it was to mine. And I tell you besides, that there was enough of those materials mine to make the piratical use of them very troublesome, and a very expensive affair to you, to Mr. Baker, and to your whole company. Most men, when they set about invading another man's property, or to break a law, think they are so very ingenious and cunning in the manner of doing it as to elude the punishmt of the law. But a Judge, a Jury, or a Lord Chancellor are generally as ingenious and as cunning as most men. And depend upon it that both you and Mr. Baker, if that

As

is the name of the proprietor of the York theatre, are fully within the power of the law from your acting my farce of Love à la Mode, notwithstanding any omissions, alterations, or additions that your design, or cunning, or ignorance of the true text may have caused to be the state of it when you acted it. And if this opinion of mine is founded in law, you ought to have apprehensions of consequences-tho' you are pleased to tell me that the apprehension of the consequences from acting Love à la Mode was not the motive for answering my letter. But Sir-to cut this matter very short-I will not consent to your acting either the real or a fictitious Love à la Mode, as it may respect mine, at no time, nor upon any account whatever. Whenever I hear that you have done it after this letter, the next post, or as soon as legal forms will permit, you, Mr. Baker, and your whole company, shall hear from the law, without any farther notice; and then you know we shall soon learn the consequences, whether we apprehend them or not. You inform me that the first act of the piece in question was published in a magazine about two or three years since. I know it, and so do the publishers I believe by this time, to their smart-for they have learned the consequences of such piracy from the law and as they tell me now, tho' they were as stout as you when I first applied to them about it, that they shall ever hereafter apprehend such consequences. I assure you it has cost them some hundreds already, and unless I make it up with them it will cost them many more. I tell you this as an instance that the pirating a man's work is not so trifling an affair (if properly prosecuted) as most men imagine. Mr. Foot at present is out of town. soon as I see him I shall inform him of your postscript concerning him. I am, Sir, your humble servt. CHARLES MACKLIN. Our next specimen shall be "characteristic" at least, if nothing else. It is from the most sentimental of single gentlemen. We wonder any one could venture to be a poet in the days of Mr. Pratt, so impossible was it to escape the ardour of his admiration-which always, on each new publication, "gave rise to the enclosed." Then he was the most amiable of enthusiasts, who never would let modest merit rest in its "retired spot called Belgrave Place, Pimlico," but insisted on finding a patron for it in the person of a Sir John Carr! Mr. Pratt," the amiable and admired author of Sympathy"-as he used justly enough to call himself whenever he caused the country newspapers to inflict premature death upon him in order that he might have the satisfaction of correcting the ingenious error under his own hand the week after-was also the author of a multiplicity of other meritorious works, none of which the modern reader ever heard of, seeing that it is at least a dozen years since they were in fashion. When they were in fashion, however, none was ever a greater pet than their author among snug coteries and literary ladies ;" and those who aim at, and deserve too, a much higher reputation than ever he dreamt of, might yet have envied that of "The Hermit." The reader will find all his good qualities displayed in the following letter: and as for bad ones, he had none. In fact he was the most harmless of sentimental egotists.

Oct. 30, 1813.

My Dear Sir John,-I am anxious to be assured that health is restored to the interesting partner of your bosom; the Hermit's benediction ever attends her.

Having no progress to report in matters of business, I will hope to amuse you by engaging you in a little literary commission. Do you know the personal character and situation of Montgomery?-a poet whose" World before the Flood" I have recently read with such very high delight that my admiration of his talents gave rise to the enclosed. If you find that he is (what I

am persuaded he must be) a very amiable man, though probably in humble condition, pray obtain his direction, and if you think my applause worth his acceptance, pray forward the enclosed to him in a frank. If you happen not to have seen the Poem it commends, you and lady Carr will feel obliged to me for leading you to the pleasure, which I am confident his poetry will afford you. It is published by Longman and Co.

Before I quit the subject of Fine Arts, let me ask you if you are acquainted with my friend Caroline Watson, the admirable engraver? She lives in a retired spot, called Belgrave Place, Pimlico-the street hardly containing more than a single house. I wish you would call on her in my name, as think you will have great pleasure in surveying her drawings; and I wish you to patrouise an engraving that she has lately finished from a sweet Holy Family of Raphael.

A Love for the fine arts is one of the best lenetives to sooth and cheer us under the vexatious chances of life. May they long afford you enjoyments unmixed with vexations-So prays Your ever sincere and affectionate friend, THE HERMIT.

My Eyes (thank Heaven) are considerably recovered; but I am crippled by severe Rheumatism, in the Hip. Its pain, however, is not severe; unless 1 use the injured limb uumercifully.-My spirits are as cheerful as ever.

Adio!

The following is from the blue-est of spinsters. It has not much to recommend it; but as the public received its writer with favour under the portentous form of six posthumous volumes in octavo, they will not object to a dozen lines in addition.

Lichfield, Nov. 17, 1807.

Sir, I cannot help thinking that the time has long passed away in which a publication of the sort you meditate can be likely to interest the public. Twenty-seven years are gone since it paid all the commiseration, respect, and attention of which its light and veering nature is capable, to the fate and to the virtues of the gallant and unfortunate André. To me he was dear as a brother, and I shall ever affectionately cherish his memory; but the general mind has not the constancy of personal friendship. Yet should you persist in attempting to rake up, in the hope of rekindling, the extinguished embers of public interest and pity, and continue to think my monody may encrease your chance of success by appearing in your work, you have my free consent to insert it. I cannot be repulsive to the request of a friend of the Mallet family. I am, Sir, Your Obt. St.

ANNA SEWARD.

We shall close our specimens for this month with one of Robert Burns's prose extravaganzas. Considering the extreme delicacy of taste displayed in Burns's poetry, and its total want of any thing farfetched and overstrained, his familiar letters present a singular anomaly ; which, however, we must content ourselves with illustrating, without staying to discuss.

Dumfries, Dec. 1795.

Inclosed is the "address"—such as it is ; and may it be a prologue to an overflowing house! If all the town put together have half the ardour, for your success and welfare, of my individual wishes, my prayer will most certainly be granted. Were I a man of gallantry and fashion, strutting and fluttering in the foreground of the picture of life, making this speech to a lovely young girl might be construed to be one of the doings of all-powerful Love. But you will be surprised, my dear Madam, when I tell you that it is not Love, nor even Friendship-but sheer avarice. In all my justlings and jumblings, windings and turnings, in life, disgusted at every corner, as a man of the least taste and sense must be, with vice, folly, arrogance, impertinence, nonsense, and stupidity, my soul has ever, involuntarily and instinctively,

selected as it were for herself a few whose regard, whose esteem, with a miser's avarice, she wished to appropriate and preserve. It is truly from this cause, ma chere Mademoiselle, that any, the least, service I can be of to you gives me most real pleasure. God knows, I am a powerless individual; and when I thought on my friends, many a heartache it has given me! But if Miss Fontenelle will accept this honest compliment to her personal charms, amiable manners, and gentle heart, from a man too proud to flatter, though too poor to have his compliments of any consequence; it will sincerely oblige her anxious friend and most devoted humble servant,

ROBERT BURNS.

TOKENS OF THE TIMES.

MANNERS, sentiments, feelings-sentiments, feelings, manners, are the never ending cant of the day. The very "soul is sick" of the pertinacity with which these misused words are dinned in the ear from all classes. From the noble to the plebeian, thousands give way to the infection without remarking the inconsistencies which a false application of the terms forces on the notice of such as coolly reflect or perhaps without understanding or caring to understand their true meaning -it is enough that the terms have become the "mode" in certain societies, and that a great portion of every-day society passes them currently. This is a full and sufficient reason for justifying much more extravagant errors, than calling things by wrong names, nicknaming God's creatures, or conventionally twisting the truth into a lie! At the present rate we must soon bid farewell to the established meaning of words. Religion is become a current term for hypocrisy; feeling is to be understood as a sympathy with knavery and crime, and is to be used for what we once called pity; peculation from fine feeling, is, in robbers of the public chest, substituted for felony; sentiment is a puling affectation of opinions gathered from Leadenhall novels and the bas bleus; manners are an intermixture of the puppyism of the Brummel school, the prizefighters' blackguardism, and the post-boys' insolence. The race of Chesterfield gentlemen is nearly extinct or grey with age-the race that in a beggar's garb was instantly recognized for its inherent good manBut the terms manners, sentiments, and feelings, have been perverted in other ways: scenes, where the low and profligate alone formerly felt a sympathetic pleasure, are now haunted by persons of unimpeachable morals, as far as common honesty is concerned, and with superfine coats on their backs. In past times we should have wondered at these things, but how the modern diffusion of intellect and knowledge has not produced a wider effect here, is a problem that can be solved no other way than by ascribing it to the reaction of the money-getting spirit upon our social system-that spirit which, in the sphere of petty accumulation, infallibly renders the mind callous and deceitful. Characters and conduct are become changed in proportion to that moral laxity which is generated by an admiration of wealth, the Dagon of England-the more favoured devotees of which are exonerated from virtuous obligation, and looked upon with unmingled awe and undisguised respect and admiration. Can truth in its severe beauty-can high and chivalric sentiments, generous feelings, and pure manners harmonize with sordid imbecility-with minds that, were they in Heaven, would have their thoughts bent downward,

ners.

Every thing great and good in the world is, according to them, visible in the subterranean treasury of the Bank. The Shylock of Rag-fair, who might live in worse than Israelitish covetousness and groveling of soul, and die in the pestilential cellar in which he first drew breath, if by some lucky hit, some well-managed usury, he become enormously rich, is at once the object of doating admiration-a Phoenix in the public eye; and the very hem of his garment is regarded with veneration by those whom, as well as their faith, he heartily abhors. Let the female, whose susceptible feelings and strong passions have forced her at last to a life of prostitution for her daily sustenance-let her be scoffed at and sent to the tread-mill to labour and to sorrow; but is this the lot of the coarse being who calculatingly sells her person to impotence or age-who, destitute of passion, is excited only by profit, and just knows how to acquire wealth by violating the dictates of nature? No, she is the idol of the money-getting mob, a gilded personification for thousands of all classes to extol, flatter, and admire; for talent (of a certain sort) to honour, peers to bow to, coxcombs to gape at, and for women, at least of exterior and reputed virtue, to make a companion. England is the only modern country among civilized nations where the untalented, unnobled, ungentle, and the vilest possessor of wealth is an envy and marvel with no small portion of its society. This almost religious veneration for riches is most prevalent among minds that are wholly employed in acquiring them for themselves. Among the highminded, riches are coveted to increase luxury, but among the low they are coveted from the pride of outshining a neighbour, and by some of the latter, simply that they may die in the possession of the utmost possible amount of them. With the majority of money-getters, ostentation abroad, and niggardliness at home, is a fundamental principle; all that looks well and wealthy is good, all that looks poor and mean is evil. This rule governs absolutely with them, and is a sad picture of sordid spirit. What claim has he to attention whose coat is threadbare, whose shoes have been mended, whose hat is shabby, let his merit be what it may? In the Highlands of Scotland-among the wild and hospitable Irish, such an one might pass, but nowhere else in these kingdoms. In foreign countries they can believe virtue to be extant under a coat two years old, and the people are not ashamed of associating with the wearer of one. Let a botanist, a man of renown in his science, but meanly dressed, attempt to travel on foot through England, culling his plants on his way with his bag in his hand; however unoffending he may be, what will his scientific plea avail him? The treadmill would be his fate on suspicion of vagrancy-without crime but the being apparently poor, and not satisfying a country justice of the possibility of a man so devoting himself. The plain-garbed curate, perhaps a sincere and devoted representative of a minister of the religion he professes, with eighty pounds a-year his all, sedulous in his holy calling-who notices him but with pity as he walks at humble distance aside or behind his bloated, proud and rich vicar-the representative of luxury and this world-who is the great and admired man with the many? Even the twelve apostles, were they to