he had no sons-by colonising Nova Scotia. Cornwallis and my father, whom he patronised, were sent out, the first persons in every sense of the word; and poor dear mamma was left sine pane almost, I believe, certainly sine nummo, with her odd little charge, a girl without a guinea, whose mind however she ceased not to cultivate in every possible manner. For French, writing, and arithmetic, I had no instructor but herself; and when she went from home where I could not be taken, my temporary abode was the great school in Queen Square, where Mrs. Dennis and her brother, the Admiral Sir Peter Dennis, said I was qualified, at eight years old, for teacher rather than learner; and he actually did instruct me in the rudiments of navigation, as the globes were already familiar to me. The smallpox, however, and measles, interrupted my studies for awhile, when my Grandmother Cotton invited my mother and myself to spend a summer in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, where she had a fine country-seat called East Hyde, not far from Luton, to which I made reference in "Retrospection" (vol. ii. p. 434). This lady, daughter to Sir Thomas Lynch, after whom I was named, had possessed an immense fortune in Jamaica; but being left an orphan at five years old, was, as she always said and I believe, purchased of Lord Torrington her mother's brother, by Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton for his son Thomas, the child he educated himself in the Tower of London, when confined there on account of his correspondence with the Electress Sophia.*

• Sir William Wraxall, in his Historical Memoirs (vol. i. p. 304),

Certain it is that Lady Cotton was scarce fifteen years older than her own eldest son, my dear Uncle Robert, husband of Lady Betty Tollemache; which she considered as little to the honour of her father-in-law who, she believed, obtained her fortune to his family by any means he could.

She had made a second choice when left a widow at thirty-seven years old, with many children, all mortally offended at her marrying again; but Captain King was dead, and they were reconciled at the time I am speaking of. At East Hyde I learned to love horses; and when my mother hoped I was gaining health by the fresh air, I was kicking my heels on a corn binn, and

in reference to the adventures of the Stuart family, relates an extraordinary anecdote about the destroying of the correspondence of the Electress Sophia with the Court of St. Germains. “It ought not to surprise us (he says) on full consideration that Sophia should feel the warmest attachment to James the Second." On this Mrs. Piozzi remarks in the margin: "It surprises me, because my own great-grandfather was put into the Tower, for corresponding with the Electress, by James the Second; and, being permitted to have any one of his family with him, chose a little boy, whom he taught to read and write there. My greatgrandmother used to walk on Tower Hill till she saw her husband's signal poked out of some grated window. She was, by birth, Hester Salusbury, of Llewenney, and married to Sir Robert Cotton, of Combermere. I have seen, when a child, some of the Electress's letters signed Sophia. I remember nothing of them, but my uncle said they were full of Latin quotations: his son, father to Lord Combermere, burned them. I have looked in Lord Orford's miscellaneous works, and perceive that he and my friend Wraxall are of a mind about Sophia, of whose letters I can recollect only the odd signature, writing her name with a long; but my cousin was a strange fellow to throw them into the fire."

learning to drive of the old coachman; who, like every body else, small and great, delighted in taking me for a pupil. Grandmamma kept four great ramping warhorses, chevaux entiers, for her carriage, with immense long manes and tails, which we buckled and combed; and when, after long practice, I showed her and my mother how two of them (poor Colonel and Peacock) would lick my hand for a lump of sugar or fine white bread, much were they amazed; much more when my skill in guiding them round the court-yard on the break could no longer be doubted or denied, though strictly prohibited for the future.

Among our Hertfordshire neighbours was Sir Henry Penrice, Judge of the Admiralty, who by the heiress of that branch of the Spencer family had only one daughter, the all-accomplished Anna Maria, who sought my mother's friendship the more eagerly, as she felt her heart daily more and more attached to my father's brother, Doctor Thomas Salusbury, of the commons. My resemblance to my papa's whole family fixed me a favourite. My mother thought herself ill-used by them, and so in fact she was; her husband having left his brother a power of attorney to do everything for him, and he neglecting all mamma's entreaties, having forbore to change the hands of a mortgage upon that portion of the Welsh estate appointed for her jointure. Worse than that: my mother had scraped up, by dint of miserable privations, money for the purpose; but Uncle Thomas neglected his absent brother's interest, and the estate was lost. Love was, however, his apology; and

a faint hope, perhaps, that so immense a fortune as that of Miss Penrice might in some wise and on some future day benefit her child, hushed all mamma's complaints. The lovers married. Sir Henry died, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, both in his place, his title, and his

estate.

My father had meanwhile, I fear, behaved perversely, quarrelling and fighting duels, and fretting his friends at home. My mother and my uncle, taking advantage of his last gloomy letter, begged him to return and share the gaieties of Offley Place, mentioned in Retrospection," vol. i. p. 213: likewise, if I remember rightly, in the Travel Book (vol. ii.), where I recollect the plains of Kalin reminding me of our dear airings upon Lily Hoo,- the common near our house, joining to that of Offley,-scenes I shall see no more!

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Here I reigned long, a fondled favourite. Kind Lady Salusbury felt her health decline, but told her husband she should die more happily, persuaded that he would not marry, as he was so attached to the good girl she now considered as her own, having nearly lost her precious life by a severe miscarriage. She, however, lived with him nine years, and said it were pity I should not learn Latin, Italian, and even Spanish, in all which she was conversant. Study was my delight, and such a patroness would have made stones students.

The Lisbon earthquake had impressed her strongly; and my mother, who was particularly fond of Spanish literature, made me translate a sermon in that language, written and preached in the Jewish synagogue at Lon

don by Isaac Netto,-whose name is all I can bring back to mind, and dedicate it to my dear aunt, Anna Maria Salusbury. A set of pearl and garnet ornaments, which I gave afterwards to Lady Keith, was my shining recompense; but such was my father's conduct, she never did love him. My mother she respected, and dear Doctor Collier, a constant guest, did all he could to keep us all happy in one another. Felicity, in this world, however, lasts not long. Poor Lady Salusbury died, at forty-one years old, of dropsy in the breast, and uncle said he had no kindness but for me. I think I did share his fondness with his stud; our stable was the first for hunters of enormous value,- for racers, too; and our house, after my aunt's death, was even haunted by young men who made court to the niece, and expressed admiration of the horses. Every suitor was made to understand my extraordinary value. Those who could read, were shown my verses; those who could not, were judges of my prowess in the field. It was my sport to mimic some, and drive others back, in order to make Dr. Collier laugh, who did not perhaps wish to see me give a heart away which he held completely in his hands, since he kindly became my preceptor in Latin, logic, rhetoric, &c.

We began, I think, before I was thirteen years old. On the day I was sixteen he confessed sixty-four, I remember, and said he was just four times my age, so I suppose he was. The difference or agreement never crossed my mind, nor seemed to have crossed his. A friendship more tender, or more unpolluted by interest