any trick played, except the sensations of Morton when going to be executed, and the gay conversation of Claverhouse immediately following, which is a happy contrast indeed.

not how

very sin

I will, however, detain you no longer than to say, much, for it would not be said in an hour, but how cerely I remain, your obliged and faithful friend, whilst H. L. Piozzi.

To Sir James Fellowes.

Bath, Saturday Night, 8 February, 1817. I HAVE disengaged myself from the party this evening was to have been lost in, for the pleasure of thanking dear Sir James for the very friendly letter brought me to-day by his happy father, who was going down the town to sign his name among the honest men who promise to rally round our excellent Constitution. All this looks well, as you say; but I so hate to recollect the times when England was divided between factions much resembling ours, and calling one set petitioners, and the other set abhorrers of the petitions, I suppose.

France is no happier, no richer than Great Britain; all Europe is enveloped in these frightful fogs.

Your friend and I had a very nice conversation about political economy. The people certainly feel offended at seeing one man receive £12,000, another £20,000 o' year in return for no apparent service done; but I am not sure they are injured at all, unless the possessor carries his wealth and spends it in a foreign country. Were we to roast all the race-horses, and give the corn which feeds them to the poor, making "Hambletonian" into soup, &c., what would become of the grooms and the jockies and their helpers and hangers-on? They would know how to till the ground no better than their masters; and we should have so many more thieves, professed, that are now merely amateurs and dillettanti. Servants out of place are among the worst members of society; and a gentleman once told me that none of the wretches sent to Botany Bay were so truly untractable as that class. "They can do nothing," said he, "but wait at table where

* 1680. See Macaulay's History, Vol. I. p. 256.

there is no one to sit down at it, or stand behind a carriage and cry Go on with an air, when no lady listens and no carriage can be found,

"Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,

Where none learn Ombre, none e'er taste Bohea.'"

Mr. Robertson has received his money by now. If everybody was really and bona fide to use their fortunes with economy, what would become of his 120 pipes of wine and of his correspondence abroad? But he hopes to sell some to the sinecurists, I doubt not, while their valets and livery servants drink an inferior sort. Ah me! Government is a long and sometimes a tangled chain, but tearing but one rusty link will rather weaken than brighten it.

Veniamo ad altro, as Baretti used to say. Boswell and he were both of them treacherous inmates, but their books are very pretty, very interesting, and very well written.

The best writers are not the best friends, and the last character is more to be valued than the first by contemporaries; after fifty years, indeed, the others carry away all the applause.

Apropos, Madame D'Arblay is said to be writing a new work; and the "Pastor's Fireside," by Miss Porter, comes in for a large share of praise, after the "Tales of my Landlord." But my paper comes to an end, my candles burn down to the socket, my fire is gone almost out, and I have not yet said, though I hope you have felt, that everything will diminish before either absence or silence can lessen the regard of your obliged and sincere

To Sir James Fellowes.

H. L. PIOZZI.

Bath, 5 March, 1817.

WELL, my dear Sir, Salusbury came to his time, but is obliged to run away so, we have hardly had a moment for necessary chat. I rely on you to tell him what clothes he must wear, what fees he must pay, and to whom. As a prudent mortal, he would willingly have escaped such costly titles; but I really do not think it right to refuse honors from a sovereign when offered them; I am not yet so much a modern democrate. "Stick to the

crown, though it hang upon a thornbush," was old Sir William Wyndham's precept, and we have heard none better. Mr. Dorset Fellowes is Mr. Salusbury ready-made friend; he will kindly in introducing him to you assist, dear Sir,

Your ever obliged and faithful

To Sir James Fellowes.

H. L. P.

Bath, Sunday, March 9th, 1817.

YOUR melancholy letter, my dear Sir, reminded me of an autograph I once saw of Alexander Pope, saying to Martha Blount: "My poor father died in my arms this morning. If at such a moment I did not forget you; assure yourself I never can. - A. P."

I felt something like the same consolation as she must have done.

Mis deeply affected . loses sleep. I have not seen the DP— ; everybody makes too sure; we are all such hopers. Get well, and away for Adbury, where pleasure, and fair weather, and what is well worth both, agreeable entertainments, await you.

This season requires attention in you farmers, and the times require attention from you as an English gentleman, the character perhaps most to be respected of any that Europe has in it.

Stocks rise every hour, but let us not for that reason over-hope ourselves; there are heavy clouds hanging about, and every nation has a right to expect storms: we have not yet had our share.

Farewell, my dear friend, and shew your superiority to disappointment as you have shewn it in a thousand instances to ill-fortune in other forms and shapes-acquiring every one's esteem, and the ever unrivalled regard and value of your obliged servant, H. L. P.

To Sir James Fellowes.

Bath, Sunday, 20 March, 1817.

AT present we are close on Passion Week, a period forgotten in town, I believe, where a gay man once asked me whether

Christmas Day was always on a Fryday? "because," said he, "they call it Good Fryday, don't they? and they neither dance nor play at cards." Such a question could not be asked in Spain or Italy. This moment Miss calls for my letter and expresses uneasiness about the dear D- -r. I hope her affection magnifies the distress; but at our age we must break; and if the last tickets do linger in the wheel, why people will give more than their value for them, though often blanks at last.

These reflections are forced on me by a visit from poor dear Mr. Chappelow, a friend of thirty years' standing, who comes here to take a last leave of poor

To Sir James Fellowes.

H. L. P.!

Begun Sunday, March 29, 1817.

I was going to write you a letter this morning, but Miss called, and I sent it away half written. My spirits have been much lowered by poor Mr. Chappelow's visit, but this is a season for mortification, and a stronger memento mori, saw I never.

Your dear father has sons and daughters round him, but my wretched old friend, a batchelor ecclesiastic, with nobody to tell him that he is getting superannuated, affords indeed a melancholy spectacle.

Mrs. Broadhead, too, dying in the Crescent,* plump and gay three months ago, now pale and wrinkled like one's white handkerchief after Mrs. Siddons' benefit; mondo! mondanio! as Baretti used to say.

Well! here's Monday, the first of Passion week, and I do hope the people's hunger for amusement will be suspended here till Easter holidays.

Pretty little Mrs. G., the doctor's wife, must go abroad, or die at home of weakness and atrophy. Parry's colossal form (tenacious of life) permits not his departure, but detains him here, helpless, hopeless, senseless, except to agonizing pain; gout, stone, and palsey, upon one man. Dreadful! and suspended so (like Mahomet's tomb) between life and death.

No matter, those whose lives are longest forget what past in

*This lady is, I believe, living still.

their maturer years, remembering best the early days of youth. Mr. Chappelow, my superannuated visitant, recollects marrying Doctor Parry when he first took orders. Those whose date is shorter, laugh at the parts that are past. The boy despises the baby; the man contemns the boy; a philosopher scorns the man, and a Christian pities them all. When we approach the confines of immortality, however, the best is to look forward; for retrospection is but a blotted page to wiser and better folks than dear Sir James Fellowes's ever obliged and faithful

To Sir James Fellowes.

H. L. P.

Bath, Monday, 14 April, 1817.

I THANK you, my dear Sir, for your kind letter. You are very good-natured to think about my health, who am, as it appears, neither racked with pain, like our poor friend at T., nor panting with an asthma, like the dear Doctor, about whom I observe Miss

well herself.

to be visibly uneasy, though by no means

That we must either outlive those who are most valued by us, or go ourselves, and quit the stage to them, seems hard to remember, though the first lesson that we learn: what we fear to lose rises in value. Distance has such an effect, that even the apprehension produces consequences. "When you were near me," says Pope, "I only thought of you as a good neighbor; at a hundred miles from me, my fancy formed you beautiful; and now! (they had crossed the seas remember) you are a goddess, and your little sister approaching to divinity."*

This was said in sport, but there is truth in most jests. We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow. Yet let them cross it once, and get fairly out of sight, how soon are they out of mind!

My proximity to the river's brink, all overcast with fog, and now and then disturbed by fume and vapor, shews me very imperfectly the schemes and monstrous projects of our time, and shews me them in disproportions too. They are not regularly

*"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view." - CAMPBELL.