his Batchelor's degree at Oxford, to be circumspect and prudent,; and to consider it his first duty to pay every attention to his mother and sisters. On the fourth day of their arrival in town, my wife wrote to me the following epistle; which not inaptly describes a Walk in London. You will perceive, Sir, that she is a woman of plain good sense, and expresses her sentiments as she really feels them. My dear Husband, Dorant's Hotel, Albemarle Street. SINCE I wrote my last letter, which announced to you our safe arrival in this busy place, I have been constantly occupied, with our children, in parading the streets, and visiting the shops: many of the former have been wonderfully altered since we resided here. The neighbourhood of St. Clement's Church and Snow Hill, you would hardly recollect; on so vast and so judicious a scale have been the improvements! The streets formed beyond Cavendish and Portman Squares, are, indeed, astonishingly numerous and beautiful: but, though the rents are in proportion, I understand they pay no taxes for all this beauty and magnificence. How shall I describe to you the improvements around Bloomsbury Square? The Duke of Bedford's house is no more; and in lieu of it, are sprung up many fine broad streets, and two noble squares. These are the leading features of improvement on our side of Temple Bar; of the city, I hear great things, but shall probably see nothing but the Bank, which I hope will always be, as you are wont to say, 'in statu quo.' The West India and London docks will appear to posterity as places of fiction so magnificent, and so various are the alterations. BUT I must not withhold from you some singularities relating to the shops in London. The jutting bow windows and thick wooden frame work, are discarded; and in place of it, we have a smooth and almost flat window, with thin mahogany or brass frames, and, in general, plate glass. The effect is very beautiful, and admirably calculated to display the several goods and merchandizes within, of which it is difficult to say whether silver, glass, steel, jewellery, Tunbridge ware, books, prints, mirrors, or millinery, excel. The alteration of the windows I much approve; because a poor man might accidentally have deprived his family of bread for a week, by breaking a square or two of glass, as the windows originally projected. You will smile at my again mentioning the shops of haberdashers and milliners; but really I was astonished at the elegant appearance of the young women who stood behind the counters. Poor Sophia and Elizabeth were quite Rustics compared with them! A pendant curl, which they call a love-lock, something-like the head-dresses of Vandyke and Lely, shades the forehead and almost obscures one eye; the hair is for mally braided; and rather an apology for a cap is stuck at the back part of the head. I saw Sophia look with surprise, and Eliza with a sort of admiration and respect they both observed, on leaving the first shop into which we entered, that they did not expect to meet with fine gentlewomen serving behind the counter. I must confess I was not so much disgusted with the dress, which is sufficiently airy, as with the manners of some of these young ladies that conceited air, that affectation of gentility, that unqualified stare and freedom of gesture, are quite insufferable! BUT the upholstery and furniture shops are almost beyond conception. To some of these, there is an artificial grandeur of front, which reminds you of entering into an antient temple or theatre. Fluted columns, of the Tuscan, Doric, and Corinthian order, very frequently grace the porticos of some; while to others are af fixed ornaments, which rather resemble the heads of ships, than the appropriate decorations of a shop. You would think, from some of these entrances, that you were going to the inner apartment of a Spanish palace: when lo! out pops the master, from a mahogany sarcophagus, and importunes you to do him the favour of running in debt. His tables are round or oblong, and mounted upwards, reminding you, 'if small things may with great compare,' of Milton's description of Satan's enormous shield. Mahogany is getting quickly out of fashion, and wainscot has been long discarded: nothing now is seen but Rose, and Sattin, and Botany Bay wood. If you ask for an inkstand, a working table, or a celleret, you are sure to have something brought à l'antique, quite the reverse of what you were led to expect. Satyrs, fauns, monsters' heads, and animals of all kinds, come staring upon you in a most tremendous manner. My girls were surprised, and even alarmed: but Henry, who had obtained his ideas of ornament from Vitruvius, Inigo Jones, and Stuart, sat his arms a-kimbo and lustily railed at you, |