attention of those who have mind passes listless and uninterested.

1

Adieu !—Do I flatter myself inordinately by the idea, that I am sometimes regretted in that circle at Wellsburn, which so well understands how to speed and illuminate the winter's day?

LETTER XXV.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY, on the Continent.

Lichfield, Feb. 1, 1786.

OFTEN has it been mine to experience that unpleasant sensation of stagnated abilities, under the influence of which you began your letter; but imagination soon gets afloat upon the rising energies of friendly communication. I smiled to see how quickly yours began to glide away through the pages before me, with every sail of the imagination unfurled; yet it grieved me to see the sable flag waving amongst them. Alas! poor

L--Surely the once gay and frolic Estrena will feel some kind regrets, some upbraidings of conscience, when she hears of his death, a con

siderable period of whose existence her capricious desertion had embittered.

I am charmed with your description of Aix, and its emerald avenues-with your picture of the gloomy and infested passage between the cleft rocks on the road to Marseilles, in which the gentle Mrs Whalley was an armed heroine; and with the town itself, that splendid and filthy city, that "stands and stinks in state," and whose operasingers must, to a blind person, suggest the idea of holding their noses while they warble.

I long to wander in the orange-groves of Heiles. Whence comes it, that poetry has not celebrated this Gallic Arcadia? How infinitely more lovely is France in her vegetable than in her human productions? The first perfume the air with their balmy gales and delicious odours, while the latter pollute it with the most odious degree of uncleanliness. The want of taste and solicitude for external purity always destroys my confidence in the internal worth.

Having never seen a large town on the margin of the extended ocean, I had annexed an idea of loneliness to the sea-shore. You describe an extent of coast, many miles in length, populous and busy as the banks of the Thames, and make

me see

* White Cocolleto gleaming on the strand,
And steep Saint Remo running up the rocks,
As eager to approach, with pious haste,
The dome maternal, that majestic sits

Calm on the heights before her olive cone.

And is it no more than thus with the descendants of the great Columbus? Ah! since they must labour for their daily bread, I hope they are unconscious of their illustrious origin, lest reflection, on a degeneracy so cruel, should make the sweat of their brows corrosive to their peace!

But Genoa, the magnificent city!--which seems to possess a right to that boast, which the enamoured Andre thought could belong only to little Lichfield, even to that celebrated exclamation which the Prophet makes for Babylon, "I am, and there is none beside me."

The image in your nocturnal navigation is truly poetic-the moon dropping her brilliants in the sea, and edging its curling waves with silver; --but O! how have you muddied the poetically crystal Arno, by dashing the torch of truth into its waters!

A new star is arisen in our poetic hemisphere, with very powerful lustre; yet I by no means

* Towns on the Italian coast.

think its generally red and angry beams very auspicious to human happiness, or to human virtue. The name of this luminary is Cowper; his work, entitled The Task, has many and great poetic beauties, both as to imagery, landscape, and sentiment; yet the author perpetually shews himself to be a sarcastic misanthropist. It opens, however, with a gay and enchanting genealogy of seats, from the three-legged stool of Alfred to the accomplished sofa of George the Third; but this delicious gaiety of spirit soon shuts in. Do you remember these lines in an old Scotch balled, called The Flowers of the Forest?

"I have seen Tweed streaming
With sun-beams bright gleaming,

Grow drumly and black as he rolls on his way."

So it is with the muse of Cowper.

But Bristol seems the soil where poetic plants, of wonderful strength and luxuriance, spring up amidst the weeds and brambles of vulgar life. The milk-woman's celebrity must have reached you across the seas. She is said to have behaved most ungratefully to her humane and energetic patroness, Miss H. More. Inflexible moral honesty, stern uncomplaining patience, that silently endured the bitterest evils of want, are re

corded by the pen of that celebrated lady, in the anecdotes she formerly gave us of this muse-born wonder. Her writings breathe a gloomy and jealous dignity of spirit. Great delicacy was required in the manner of conferring obligation on a mind so tempered. Miss More's letter to Mrs Montague, prefixed to Lactilla's first publication, struck me with an air of superciliousness towards the Being she patronized; and the pride of genius in adversity revolted. So, in a similar situation, would surly Samuel Johnson have spurned the hand that, after it had procured him the bounty of others, sought to dictate to him as to its use; and that resentment, which, in her, is universally execrated, would, coming down to us now as a record of his emerging talents, have been generally excused, and probably, with whatever little reason, admired. I should not wonder if this sudden reverse of public esteem should send this kindred spirit of the unfortunate Chatterton's to attend his manes in the dreary path of suicide.

From a blind alley of the same distinguished city, a third illiterate genius has started up, with powers little inferior to Lactilla's. He sets his compositions to pleasing, though wild, airs of his own. The world, however, refuses to celebrate and protect him, as it did her; sheltering its con

* Bryant, the maker of tobacco-pipes.