into their eyes. They requested its reiteration— told me they should carry Mr Hayley's works back with them to Portugal, and spread the fame and generosity of their author along the shores of the Tagus.

Ah! you read Mr aright: he is very brilliant, very engaging, but much too fine to pay any attention to the communication of little plans which have no interest in common with his pleaHe did indeed say he had seen you, but made no mention of what you desired him to inform me, that kindly purposed visit of Mrs French and yourself, which the death of that lady so cruelly prevented.

sures.

Our races were very brilliant; rank, youth, and distinguished beauty, with all the advantages of jewels, and picturesque ornaments, swarmed over the ball-room. I designed accompanying my friends and guests, Lady Blakiston, Colonel and Miss Cane, into the gay crowd, and made up a dress for the purpose; but a perilous attack of my father's, the preceding Saturday, incapacitated me for cheerful endurance of the frizzeur's operations, and other uninteresting attentions of the toilette. As it happened, Lady B. was too much irritated to go into public, by a sudden influx and reflux of affectionate pleasure. It was occasioned by the not so early expected appearance of a be

loved sister, whom she had not seen for nine years; and that of a scarce less beloved nephew, just returned from a sixteen years residence in the East Indies. They staid only a few hours the first raceday, and left my friend to grieve for their departure, ere the kiss of welcome was grown cold upon her lip.

Tempted by the golden afternoon, I have taken a long walk. It has fatigued me too much to prolong my letter. Adieu, therefore, dear Mrs Hayley, and believe me always-Yours.

LETTER LXXXII.

To the EDITOR of the GENERAL EVENING POST.

Oct. 11, 1789.

SIR,-There is a little misinformation in your account of the late Mr Day of Anningsly. His estate, after paying his mother's jointure, which he had generously augmented, was twelve hundred per annum. He married the ingenious and amiable Miss Mills of Yorkshire, whose fortune was twenty-three thousand pounds.

In his death, the indigent of his neighbourhood have an unspeakable loss-but let him be spoken of as he was, for truth is better than indiscriminate eulogium.

Mr Day, with very first-rate abilities, was a splenetic, capricious, yet bountiful misanthropist. He bestowed nearly the whole of his ample fortune in relieving the necessities of the poor; frequently, however, declaring his conviction, that there were few in the large number he fed, who would not cut his throat the next hour, if their interest could prompt the act, and their lives be safe in its commission. He took pride in avowing his abhorrence of the luxuries, and disdain of even the decencies of life; and in his person, he was generally slovenly, even to squalidness. On being asked by one of his friends, why he chose the lonely and unpleasant situation in which he lived? He replied, that the sole reason of that choice was, its being out of the stink of human society.

It had been said, and I believe with truth, that he put a total stop to all correspondence between Mrs Day and her large and respectable family-connections in Yorkshire, who had never ceased to regret so undeserved an instance of morose deprivation. She not only sacrificed her friends to gratify her husband's unsocial spleen, but all the

comforts of that affluence to which she had been accustomed. Before this lady married our gloomy philosopher, her generosity had been eminently distinguished in the large social circle in which she moved. Society is the proper sphere of action for the benevolent virtues. It is the duty of those who possess such virtues to exert them there, that the influence of excellent example may not be lost upon mankind, through the inevitable disgust it must receive from vo❤ luntary seclusion, and avowed contempt,

I am, Sir, &c.

LETTER LXXXIII,

REV. DR WARNER.

Nov. 5.

WELCOME home again, my dear Mercury, for the great Babylon seems, in my contemplations, a sort of desart without you. What an eternal rambler you are!-but I must not be an austere mistress, and deny you leave of absence, nor yet make consent ungracious, by giving it in a grumbling accent. You will stay at home till spring—

and Heaven knows where several of us may be ere that day! So many of my acquaintance have, of late, died suddenly, that I often feel my spirits tinged with an apprehensive gloom, which tells me health itself, and middle life, form a tenure scarce less frail than disease and old age, by which to hold the lives of those we love.

Mr Selwyn obliged me more than I can express by his kind visit. Regret will intrude upon all our pleasures, and she insisted upon her sigh of tribute for the shortness of that interview. Mr Selwyn has sweet manners. You would learn from your friend how much my poor father has lost of the little he retained when you saw him, of talents and animation, that once lifted him much above the every-day mortals; but all in him is second childhood now, with the melancholy difference of intellectual retrogression instead of advancement. Yet, yet how much I dread to see this vegetation cease, I might, philosophically speaking, be half-ashamed to confess. The voice 'of nature, however, pleads for the excess of this feeling, and his exemption from suffering acquits it of crime.

The inclosed will shew you what haste I make to avail myself of your vowed services, over which I am at once pleased, proud, and grateful.