by the

power

of

meant her niece to be the sole heiress of her very large fortune, should oppose the connexion, especially as, superadded to the inferiority of his fortune, the too vulnerable heart of Mr C. B. had been drawn into temporary alienation, from his engagement to Miss beauty, to which that lady had no pretension. They married in June last, and Mrs G. never saw her nièce afterwards, speaking, both of her and her husband, with unabating and incessant asperity. But during Mrs B.'s illness, Mrs G. was agitated and miserable;—and, two days after the melancholy event, went, at four o'clock in the evening, to that house of death. She entered in violent agitation, and, doubtless, very real anguish. She wept over the corpse, loud and bitterly, repeatedly kissing the face, with passionate affection; but, strange to tell, her indignation at the family remained unquenched by those agonized tears; and she refused, with scorn, the offered hand of old Mrs B. who had been a careful and tender nurse to her daughter-in-law, through the fatal illness.

Does not this visit remind you of Miss Howe's to Harlow Place?-the struggle of wild despondent tenderness for her lost friend, with disdain of the inhabitants; though Miss Howes's continued affection for Clarissa, was a contrast to

Mrs G.'s ungoverned resentment. So much the more bitter must have been the anguish of the latter, standing by the coffin, when, like Miss Howe, with wild impatience, she pushed aside the face-cloth.

Yesterday morning, Miss Nott came to desire I would pass that evening with her. At a quarter past six, the night being fair, star-light, and frosty, I set out to walk to my appointed visit. My way was by Mr C. B.'s house. I observed the chamber of the deceased, where both the shutters were open, to be extremely light, and the shadows of several people, walking about the room, were visible on the ceiling. As I stood contemplating the awful scene, I heard the knocking of hammers, that were sodering up the coffin. The lines from Shakespeare's description of the martial field, the night before the battle of Agincourt, rushed upon my recollection:

"While, from the tents,

The armourers, accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Gave dreadful note of preparation."

The loud and dismal funeral-bell tolled this morning at break of dawn, and finished the mournful scene.

Adieu.

LETTER LIV.

MRS MOMPESSAN.

Lichfield, March 5, 1787.

PERFORMING my promise to you, I have attentively read over the first volume of Sully's Memoirs. Sometimes it interested me very much; but I waded through a great deal of it fatigued, and without interest. The little pleasure which reading history generally gives me; the slight and fading impression which its events are apt to leave upon my mind, probably results from my total want of taste for splendour, precedence, and power to influence the destiny of others. To me it seems a species of insanity, when a man, whom destiny has made a king, or a minister, sacrifices the lives of his fellow creatures, and produces all the numerous collateral miseries, parental, filial, paternal, and connubial, consequent upon every single deprivation; for what appears to me so little worth the hazard as an extension of empire, and the gewgaws of rank, even up to that troublesome bauble, the imperial sceptre. How much rather would I possess the inevitable future fame

of Hayley, of Cowper, and that of the philanthrophic hero, the illustrious Howard, than the military and regal reputation of your favourite Henry of France. Often, while reading history, do I exclaim, in the words of the philosophic poet,

"Ah! what avails it me to trace the springs
That move of empire the tremendous wheel!
Ah! what to me are Statesmen, Courts, and Kings,
Hands stain'd with blood, or arms begirt with steel!
To those whom nature taught to think and feel,
Heroes, alas! are things of small concern."

I admire the disinterested firmness of Sully's attachment to his intrepid Henry, and the inflexible honesty respecting pecuniary circumstances with which his ministry commences; but I want him to have felt and expressed more regret for the devastations and calamities consequent upon the struggles for the crown of France.

You remember the tower which was blown up at Dreux, by Sully's advice. I can scarce forgive the ruthless composure with which he describes himself as standing bye to wait the event; and with which he beholds it fall, dragging with it a multitude of men, women, and children, that were buried in the ruins. I know that these are the unavoidable evils of war, but do not take delight in their being circumstantially brought to my senses. I cannot love the heroes who cause

them, in despite of dear Toby Shandy's beautiful apology for the military profession, when he says, "It is one thing for a soldier to gather laurels, and another to scatter cypress." I expect to be more agreeably interested in the progress of this work, when Henry is settled on his throne. I hope he will then no longer think that to shed rivers of human blood will cover him with increasing glory; yet I, even I, almost catch his military enthusiasm, when, in an hazardous battle, he bids his armies fix their attention upon his plume of white feathers, and to follow where it leads, assuring them, that they will always see it in the road to honour and to victory.

Since I finished the last sentence, I am advanced half way in the second volume, and am more than ever dissatisfied with Monsieur le Roi. There is a continued ungrateful inattention to the interests of his faithful friend, and able minister, Sully, for which I hate him. As to his caresses, I think nothing of them, and wonder they could impose upon so wise a man, so often were they bestowed upon those whom Sully knew he despised. Witness, amongst many similar instances, the apparent affection with which he received the Duke de Main, embracing him, and holding his hand as they walked, with the insidious whisper of contempt for him, to Sully, over