so much influence; where if I gained none I must become a nuisance. The doctor had no more influence than myself; but being so much about them all, could at least tell me les tracasseries de famille of which I was wholly ignorant. From him in due time I learned what had determined my husband's choice to me, till then a standing wonder. He had, the doctor said, asked several women, naming them, but all except me refused to live in the Borough, to which, and to his business, he observed, that Mr. Thrale was as unaccountably attached now as he had been in his father's time averse from both. And oh! cried the old man, how would my deceased friend have delighted in this happy sight! alluding to my state of pregnancy.

So summer came again, and Streatham Park was improving, and autumn came, and Lady Keith came, and I became of a little more importance. Confidence was no word in our vocabulary, and I tormented myself to guess who possessed that of Mr. Thrale; not his clerks certainly, who scarce dared approach him — much less come near me; whose place he said was either in the drawing-room or the bed-chamber. We kept, meantime, a famous pack of fox-hounds, at a hunting box near Croydon; but it was masculine for ladies to ride, &c. We kept the finest table possible at Streatham Park, but his wife was not to think of the kitchen. So I never knew what was for dinner till I saw it.

Driven thus on literature as my sole resource, no wonder if I loved my books and children. From a gay life my mother held me fast. Those pleasures Mr.

Thrale enjoyed alone; with me indeed they never would have suited; I was too often and too long confined. Although Doctor Johnson (now introduced among us) told me once, before her face, who deeply did resent it, that I lived like my husband's kept mistress, shut from the world, its pleasures, or its cares. The scene was soon to change. Fox-hounds were

sold, and a seat in Parliament was suggested by our new inmate as more suitable to his dignity, more desirable in every respect. I grew useful now, almost necessary; wrote the advertisements, looked to the treats, and people to whom I was till then unknown, admired how happy Mr. Thrale must be in such a wonder of a wife.

I wondered all the while where his heart lay; but it was found at last, too soon for joy, too late almost for sorrow. A vulgar fellow, by name Humphrey Jackson, had, as the clerks informed me, all in a breath, complete possession of it. He had long practised on poor Thrale's credulity, till, by mixing two cold liquors which produced heat perhaps, or two colourless liquors which produced brilliancy, he had at length prevailed on him to think he could produce beer too, without the beggarly elements of malt and hops. He had persuaded him to build a copper somewhere in East Smithfield, the very metal of which cost 2000l., wherein this Jackson was to make experiments and conjure some curious. stuff, which should preserve ships' bottoms from the worm; gaining from Government money to defray these mad expenses. Twenty enormous vats, holding

1000 hogsheads each costly contents!-Ten more holding 1000 barrels each, were constructed to stew in this pernicious mess; and afterwards erected, on I forget how much ground bought for the ruinous pur

pose.

That all were spoiled, was but a secondary sorrow. We had in the commercial phrase, no beer to start for customers. We had no money to purchase with. Our clerks, insulted long, rebelled and ratted, but I held them in. A sudden run menaced the house, and death hovered over the head of the principal. I think some faint image of the distress appears in Doctor Johnson's forty-eighth letter, 1st vol. But God tempers every evil with some good. Such was my charming mother's firmness and such her fond attachment to us both, that our philosophical friend, embracing her, exclaimed, that he was equally charmed by her conduct, and edified by her piety. "Fear not the menaces of suicide," said he; "the man who has two such females to console him, never yet killed himself, and will not now. Of all the bankrupts made this dreadful year,” continued he, "none have destroyed themselves but married men; who would have risen from the weeds undrowned, had not the women clung about and sunk them, stifling the voice of reason with their cries." Ah, Sir James Fellowes, and have not I too been in a ship on fire*, not for two hours, but for two full weeks,

* Alluding to the fire on board an East Indiaman, in which Sir James Fellowes was passenger.

between the knowledge of my danger and the end on't?

Well! first we made free with our mother's money, her little savings! about 3000l.-'twas all she had; and, big as I was with child, I drove down to Brighthelmstone, to beg of Mr. Scrase 6000l. more-he gave it us -and Perkins, the head clerk, had never done repeating my short letter to our master, which only said, “I have done my errand, and you soon shall see returned, whole, as I hope-your heavy and faithful messenger, H. L T.”

Perkins' sons are now in possession of the place, their father but lately dead. Dear Mr. Scrase was an old gouty solicitor, retired from business, friend and contemporary of my husband's father. Mr. Rush lent us 6000l., Lady Lade 5000.-our debts, including those of Humphrey Jackson, were 130,000l., besides borrowed money. Yet in nine years was every shilling paid; one, if not two elections well contested; and we might, at Mr. Thrale's death, have had money, had he been willing to listen to advice, as you will see by our correspondence, which it is now time for you to begin, and be released from these scenes of calamity. The baby that I carried lived an hour-my mother a year; but she left our minds more easy. I lay awake twelve nights and days, I remember, 'spite of all art could do; but here I am, vexing your tired ear with past afflictions.

You will see that many letters were suppressed. But as you have probably thought more of my literary, than

of my moral or social existence, though I hope not, it will be right at least to say that it was during the winters of those happy years when I reigned Queen at Offley Place all summer, that Hogarth made me sit for his fine picture of the Lady's Last Stake, now in possession of Lord Charlemont.

It was then, too, when I was about thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen years old, that I took a fancy to write in the "St. James's Chronicle," unknown to my parents and my tutor too: it was my sport to see them reading, studying, blaming or praising their own little whimsical girl's performances; but such was their admiration of one little verse thing, that I could not forbear owning it, and am sorry that no copy has, I believe, been kept.

The little poetical trash I did write in earnest, is preserved somewhere, perhaps in "Thraliana," which I promised to Mrs. Mostyn: perhaps in a small repository I prepared for dear Salusbury, before our final parting: such I meant it to be; but have no guess how you will find the stuff, or whether he ever thought it worth his while to keep old aunt's school exercises such he would probably and naturally consider them. There is a little poem called "Offley Park” I know; another "On my poor Aunt Anna Maria's favourite Ash Tree;" and one styled "The Old Hunter's Petition for Life," written to save dear Forester from being shot because grown superannuated. There is a little odd metaphysical toy beside, written to divert Doctor Collier after the death of his dog Pompey, for whom James Harris made a Greek epitaph, of which