suade me it is finely situated; but I should think it more finely situated in the Mall, or even in Cheapside, than here. Indeed, I hardly know where we are, only that it is at a dreadful distance from the theatre royal in Drury-Lane, from the opera, from the masquerade, and every thing in this world. that is worth living for.

I can scarce tell you whither to direct your letters; we are certainly at the ends of the earth, on the borders of the continent, the limits of the habitable globe, under the polar star, among wild people and savages. I thought we should never have come to the end of our pilgrimage; nor could I forbear asking my brother if we were to travel by dry land to the Antipodes; not a mile but seemed ten that carried me from London, the centre of all my joys.

The country is my aversion; I hate trees and hedges, steep hills, and silent vallies: the satirist may laugh, but to me,

Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs,

And larks, and nightingales, are odious things.

I had rather hear London cries, with the rattle of coaches, than sit listening to the melancholy murmur of purling brooks, or all the wild music of the woods; the smell of violets gives me the hysterics; fresh air murders me; my constitution.

will fan me into a catarrh if I stay here much longer.

If these are the seats of the Muses, let them unenvied enjoy their glittering whimsies, and converse with the visionary beings of their own forming, I have no fancy for Dryades and Fairies, nor the least prejudice to human society; a mere earthly beau, with an embroidered coat, suits my taste better than an aereal lover with his shining tresses and rainbow wings.

The sober twilight, which has employed so many soft descriptions, is with me a very dull period; nor does the moon, (on which the poets dote) with all her starry train, delight me half so much as an assembly-room illuminated with wax candles; this is what I should prefer to the glaring sun in its meridian splendour. Day-light makes me sick; it has something in it so common and vulgar, that it seems fitter for peasants to make hay in, or country lasses to spin by than for the use of people of distinction.

You pity me, I know, dear Aurelia, in this deplorable state; the whole creation is a blank to me, it is all joyless and desolate; in whatever gay images the Muses have dressed these rustic abodes, I have not penetration enough to discover them; not the flowery field nor spangled sky, the rosy morn or balmy evening, can recreate my thoughts; I am neither a religious nor poetical enthusiast, and with

out either of these qualifications what should I do in silent retreats and pensive shades?

I find myself little at ease in this absence of the noisy diversions of the town; it is hard for me to keep up my spirits in leisure and retirement; it makes me anxiously inquisitive what will become of me when my breath flies away. Death, that ghastly phantom, perpetually intrudes on my solitude, and, in some doleful knell from a neighbouring steeple, often calls upon me to ruminate on coffins and funerals, graves, and gloomy sepulchres: these dismal subjects put me in the vapours, and make me start at my own shadow; nor have I acquired any degree of fortitude by turning Freethinker, and unlearning

All that the nurse and all the priest have taught.

Pope.

You have been too often of our party not to know my brother is a very infidel; he has a sort of vanity in making me a proselyte, and freeing my mind from those prejudices (as he calls them) and superstitious notions which govern a great part of the world; but as he finds me a little unwilling to resign my immortality, he has furuished me with a system of transmigration, and the eternal wandering of the soul from one species of being to another.

However, I do not find myself a gainer by re

that after the period of this mortal life I might be an angel, or at least equal to those bright essences.

But by this fantastic scheme, to which my brother is making me a convert, my pretensions are sunk; the utmost I can expect, when I have shifted mypresent existence, is to grin in a monkey, or look demure in a broad-faced owl, or to sit a chattering magpye in a bush; it is a chance among which of the animal race I am to be numbered, whether I shall mount the air with the winged inhabitants, or crawl on the earth among my brother reptiles, or graze in the meadows with the horned tribe. Indeed I have no great stomach to grass or hay, and as little inclination to sleep in a den, or stretch my hairy bulk on the dewy plain; but it is yet uncertain whether I am to stalk, or fly, or swim: I am still at a loss which of these various clans to greet as my next kindred.

However, I am better pleased with being what I am than any thing else. I had rather be a celebrated toast, fluttering at a ball among beaus and pretty fellows, than the most gaudy butterfly hovering with painted wings over a bed of tulips. If this should be my ensuing fate, it will be a mortifying descent from a goddess to an insect.

And really there is something so gloomy and uncomfortable in these prospects of futurity, that if I consider them much longer I shall turn Christian again, in defiance of my brother, and a learned unbeliever his companion, who are perpetually ri

diculing my concern about a visionary hereafter, as they term it.

Indeed, this would be the least of my cares were I not extremely at leisure; but as I am, it is impossible for me to avoid being solicitous what fate attends me when I resign this transitory life for I must certainly die: I am mortal beyond contradiction: this truth sits heavy on my soul; there is no flying its evidence, nor does this place afford any amusement to divert the gloomy reflection; If I should turn devotee, you would think it a more wonderful metamorphosis than any I have named: but in all changes I am constantly

P. S. I have a secret to tell you concerning my brother, which you shall know in my next letter; for I am as impatient to discover it as you can be to hear it.

LETTER II.

To AURELIA.

I HAVE too much confidence in my dear Aurelia to conceal any thing from her; nor can it be any injury to my brother to trust you with his character, and know him to be as great a libertine in his