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opinions among the inhabitants, some holding fast by the old way, and some embracing the new notions brought amongst them by the French, make that once lovely country a theatre of agony, and produce such dearness of provisions, that at Genoa a dog's head was sold for five shillings during the siege, and friends, enemies, soldiers, traders, alike perished more by hunger than by the sword.

1813. Compliments of the season. It is a very old fashion. Our ancestors used to send mistletoe to each other. The Romans presented dates and dried figs to their friends, and the modern Italians make up elegant boxes of sweetmeats for the same purpose. We keep our oaks as clean as we can from all parasitical plants. We leave the sugar plums for children, and send empty wishes of a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,that good custom is going out apace. Well, Ovid's line to Germanicus was the prettiest:

"Dii tibi dent annos, à te nam cætera sumes."

even

Buonaparte doubtless thought such a speech would suit him some months ago, but he must renounce all hope of being Germanicus.

1814. Your partiality will encourage me to a long chat with you concerning the atmospheric stones which have attracted much of my attention. I do believe that Diana of the Ephesians was no other than one of these, and it was thought, you know, that she fell down from Jupiter, but I have heard a Camb-man maintain that it was possible that the moon might produce them, an idea best befitting to a lunatic. Dr. Milner's joke on such immechanical notions is the very best I know, - the ready furnished house. They must, I think, go up before they fall down, and certainly there are more volcanoes at work than we are watching, which fill the air with substances of an attractive kind, which, for the most part, assume conical shapes, as Nature when alone appears particularly to delight in. The Dea Pessinuntia, or Cybele of classic mythology, was, I fancy, a mere meteoric composition. They washed her with much silly reverence, you remember, and Heliogabalus's black stone, which he drove into

Rome with four white horses, was nothing better, only the form happened to be perhaps a more regular and perfect cone. He was a Syrian, you know, and this, dropping from heaven as they believed, served excellently to represent their Bel, or Baal, or lost Thammuz, the Sun, in short, of which divinity he was priest, as a pyræum of aspiring flame.

Let me hope that you will not pursue geology till it leads you into doubts destructive of all comfort in this world, and all happiness in the next. I am not afraid of Gibbon. Whoever has a true taste of Cicero's sweetness and Virgil's majesty, will not take his modern terseness of expression or neatness of finish, so completely French, for perfection. . . . With regard to our own nobility and people of fashion getting into these horrid scrapes of swindling and stock-jobbing,* and the Lord knows what, they fright me to read them. We need no longer say with Captain Macheath:

"I wonder we ha'n't better company
Upon Tyburn tree."

The executive Power should really address them now in the official phrase of

My Lords and Gentlemen!

Meanwhile Alexander deserved much of the bustle we made about him. When a child, it seems, his grandmother, the great autocratix Catherine, took an English boy out of a merchant's counting-house at Petersburg, and put him about the young Czar as a playfellow, and to teach him our language. When she had done with him he was sent off of course, and Alexander confessed that his companion was forgotten. One day, however, in the crowds of London, the Emperor recognized a face that he knew, and made the man come up and say in what way he was now, and how he could be served; after which interview no time was lost, till the Prince Regent had not promised only, but actually provided, this old companion of his new friend with a place in the Treasury of £500 a year. Such actions are like those related in novels, and acted on the stage...

*This evidently alludes to the fraud for which Lord Dundonald was unjustly punished.

I refused every invitation for the shows in the Park, and saw the red glare over London so plainly from my own gate, that every moment added to my rejoicing that I was no nearer the crush and the crowd when so many unnamed human creatures perished. Miles Peter Andrews, the rich and gay, sent out two hundred cards of invitation to see the festivities from his windows, verandah, &c., but Miles Peter Andrews (his friends say) went off before the fireworks; so his heir removed the body and received company himself. You and I have read of a golden age, a silver, and an iron age: is not that we live in, the marble age? so smooth, so cold, so polished.

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Meantime 't is really curious to hear the different opinions of those who live at the Fountain Head of information. London at this moment exhibits bills stuck up on every post, with Murder in large letters on it, soliciting the apprehension of a felon who has killed his sweetheart, and the lawyers all declare that the annals of Newgate are disgraced (comical enough) by the proceedings of the common people these last three years. Per contra, as shopkeepers would express it, you may see the good people (I visit many of those who style themselves the Evangelicals) congratulating me and each other on the diffusion of religious knowledge and consequent virtuous behavior. Jews, say they, are converting, slaves releasing, and heathen nations obtaining instruction by means of missionaries warm in the cause of piety, and useful in researches for bettering the general condition of mankind. Preachers, no longer supine, vie with each other in eloquent persuasion of their hearers. Who, twenty or thirty years ago, would have run after any one of those who now adorn our pulpits? and are, as far as I can observe, very coolly listened to. Such is my survey of London in 1814.

1817.- The improvements in London amused me very much, and such a glare is cast by the gas-lights, I knew not where I was after sunset. Old Father Thames, adorned by four beautiful bridges, will hardly remember what a poor figure he made eighty years ago, I suppose, when gay folks went to Vauxhall in barges,* an attendant barge carrying a capital band of music

* "One evening, at Mrs. Doyley's, when the party had been talking of the glories of Waterloo bridge, then just opened, a gentleman turned to the lady of

playing Handel's water music - as it has never been played since.

*

I saw Mr. Wanzey yesterday evening. His account of the procession at Rome, consisting of Christian slaves liberated by Lord Exmouth, was very Interesting. They walked up the long street, Strada del Popolo, in uniform, and up to St. Peter's Church, attended by all the priesthood singing Litanies, Thanksgivings, &c.; then depositing their stands at the foot of the altar, prostrated themselves before the cross, and returned blessing the English, and crying, as soon as they had passed the church doors, "Vivan i bravi Inglesi! Viva la santa religione," &c.

We are party mad here. I do not mean politically so, but the people run to numberless parties of a night. No illness or affliction keeps them out of a crowd. A lady at my next door almost had her party on Sunday night, and her husband invited a large company to dinner on the Tuesday following. "Nay," said Dr. Gibbs, "I doubt whether Mrs. will live beyond Tuesday. She is very ill indeed." At three o'clock the husband sent to put off his company, and at eight o'clock she died. He sent his cards out that day fortnight, and had his party again. So runs our world away. The men play at macko and lose their thousands all morning; one gentleman was seen to pay seven guineas for the cards he had used in four hours only.

1818. Mrs. Lutwych will have the loss not only of a good husband and certain friend, but she will lose her greatest admirer too, which few people could boast of in conjugal life, besides herself and me. Alas! alas! but we must lose or be lost. Her death would have broken his heart. The most painful sight of all is a sick baby, for there is such a vegetating power, such a disposition in the habit to drive that death away which grown people often seem half to invite, that it shocks one; and I hoped poor Angelo would have been the staff of my age.

the house and said, 'You and I, Mrs. Doyley, remember the time when London had but one bridge.' Miss Grimston was present.". Note by Miss W. Wynn.

"It is very strange that the vulgar mistake of writing adjectives with capital letters occurs frequently in these letters. I have copied some of her oddly affected orthography. She is always set o'laughing. Through a long negotiation she speaks always of the Piano e forte which they are buying for Boddylwyddan." Note by Miss W. Wynn. Was it a vulgar mistake at the time?

You can scarce think how low-spirited all these things make me. I am glad the sea is at hand to wash care away. This weather is melancholy, and so is all one hears, of riots and conspiracies, and people that call aloud for murderers, as the Jews did for Barabbas. The trifling spasms which assailed me this morning will do very little indeed, nothing, I trust, towards releasing me from this busy world, described by many as daily improving. P. S. You wonder at my saying the people call aloud for murderers, but my paper says there were placards distributed in Court while the trials went forward, saying, We want a Bellingham.

1819. Llewenney Hall pulled down too! and its forests Alta cadit quercus; but schools are made of the bricks, and Teachery, as I call it in a word of my own inventing, goes on at a famous rate; yet one does not remember it is ever said in the Old or New Testament, "If you study My ways, and learn My commandments;" but "if you walk in My ways, and observe My commandments to do them," which was surely never so little practised as now. Well, the work of reformation runs forward apace. Female associations are forming every day and everywhere. They come into your kitchens, instruct your servants, tell them how their masters and ladies run to perdition, give them books against tyranny, and tell them they are all slaves.

Your vraie amie octogenaire,

H. L. P.

1820.—I certainly feel sorry for his death; and if I do not feel alarmed, who am three or four years older, it is because even the grim Lion Death may be rendered familiar by stroking, and never suffering him long out of sight. Will you

hear the story of my present neighbor? Zenobia Stevens, of a good family not far off, had a lease of ninety-nine years under the Duke of Bolton, and lived it out. When she went herself and gave it up, her kind landlord begged her to keep the house during her life, and offering her a glass of wine, " One, if your Grace pleases," was her prudent reply, "but as I am to ride twelve miles on a young colt these short evenings, I am afraid of being giddy-headed."

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