this strain to you, when I write on purpose to congratulate you on a wedding?-How soon children become, from playthings, subjects of education; then objects of anxiety for their settling in the world; and then, very often, are transplanted wide away from their parents' home-perhaps to America. The more particularly fortunate you :-so I began, and so I conclude.

year;

Stoke Newington, Jan. 1824.

MY DEAR MRS. ESTLIN,

I WILL not say I was not disappointed in being obliged to give up the hope of seeing you this but know best the time that suits you you, and I dare say you have done what is right and proper. With regard to myself, I do not reckon much upon any enjoyment that has months between it and me. I am arrived at a period when life has no more to give, and every year takes away from the powers both of body and mind; when the great tendency is to inaction and rest, and when all subject of thankfulness or congratulation must be, not how much you enjoy, but how little you suffer. Then the powers of man strive-how vainly !-to penetrate the veil; to pierce the thick darkness that covers the future: life seems of no value but for what lies beyond it;

and even our views of the future are perhaps cheerful or gloomy according to the weather or

our nerves.

Stoke Newington, Nov. 23, 1824.

It is so long since I heard of you or yours, that I begin to be impatient, and moreover I am disappointed; for you certainly did flatter me some time ago with the idea that I should see you here before this summer was ended. And now, while I had hardly finished my sentence, your kind letter arrives. Let me beg of you to give up your reasons against paying me a visit before this year is concluded. Think of my age, and come to me while my eyes serve me to look on your countenance, and my ears can catch your words, and my heart can be exhilarated by the conversation of a friend.

I think nothing flourishes more in Newington than schools. We have several set up lately, besides charity-schools, of which so many have been established, that I should imagine there is not an individual among the lower order who cannot get his son instructed, if he really desires it. We have some little Greek boys here, who, in their national costume, are great objects of curiosity. They are protected by Mr. Bowring. By the way, are you not sorry Lord Byron is dead, just when he was

going to be a hero? He has filled a leaf in the book of fame, but it is a very blotted leaf.

It is amazing how building increases everywhere near London, though, as I said, my neighbours decrease. This is the necessary lot of age. One of our ministers prays, that when we come to die we may, have nothing to do but to die. In one sense the petition is rational: but if it means, nothing to do for ourselves; nothing to do for others; nothing to do in any of the useful stations of life; the languor and privations, if not the sufferings of age, more than balancing its few enjoyments; then, truly, I do not think the blessing is much to be prayed for. I am rather getting into a melancholy vein, and I ought not, for I have much to be thankful for, and shall have more when your next letter comes to tell me, as I hope it will, Such a day, such an hour, I have taken my place for London, thence to proceed to Newington,-where you will be sincerely welcomed by, dear Mrs. Estlin, your affectionate friend.

LETTERS TO MRS. FLETCHER.

MY DEAR MADAM,

you,

Sept. 1813.

I HAVE to thank you for your very entertaining letter. I would have undergone a good wetting, and even a suspicion of danger, to have enjoyed the grandeur of your thunder-storm. Indeed I am rather partial to a death by lightning; and were I to choose the mode of my departure, should certainly prefer to be "by touch ethereal slain." However, as I have no right to choose for I am glad you got shelter under the roof of your hospitable, though penurious, farmer. Surely he must be a phænomenon even in the Highlands: but I believe it is rare in all professions for the same person to amass and to enjoy riches. Even with regard to the treasures of the mind, which one should suppose would include the power of using them, the laborious collector of facts and dates produces some ponderous volume, which sleeps on the shelf till some light and airy wit skims it for tale and anecdote, or some original genius shapes and moulds it into a system.

I am now reading the third and fourth volumes of Mrs. Montague's Letters. To me, who have lived through all the time she writes of, they are interesting,-independent of the wit and talent,-as recalling a number of persons and events once present to my mind: they are also, I think, very entertaining, though, as letters, somewhat studied. With all her advantages she seems not to have been happy. She married not Mr. Montague from affection. It is evident she looked upon him as a wise and kind friend, but nothing more;—a little too wise sometimes, when he kept her in the country longer than she liked. To a person so married, nothing will fill the mind and give a permanent interest to life, but children. She lost her child; and notwithstanding all that nature and all that fortune had given, and high cultivation, and chosen society, and public esteem, she speaks of life as a thing to be got through, rather than to be enjoyed.

Stoke Newington, June 1814. WHAT do I think of the French!-In the first place, it requires some time before one can think at all, events succeed each other with such astonishing rapidity. The constitution held out to the king's acceptance was indeed all one can wish, the principles of liberty were carried