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The intimacy subsisting between herself and Mrs Childers, junior, prevented our meeting as strangers. Yourself, that lady, and your own daughters, were our chief theme, and congeniality of opinion gave it interest. A little also we talked of Major André's lamented fate; and she expressed to me the long regret it had caused Sir Henry Clinton, of whom her filial remembrance was expressed with tearful eyes. From her youthful appearance she must have been born to Sir Henry in a late period of his life.

I am tempted to insert an epitaph which I made upon my lamented friend.

The Dean and Chapter have given me leave to erect a monument for him in the transit aisle of this cathedral. The design is simply elegant. It will be placed in a gothic niche, constituting its frame. That niche is an oblong square, with an elliptic arch above. The whole of the niche is filled up with dark grey marble. Upon that a tablet of white marble contains the name, and date, and the verses. The square is separated from the arch above, by broken fragments of white marble, as pieces of a rock.

Upon those fragments, and as carved from them, stands a beautiful antique urn, of the same spotless material. It stands in the arch, and a column of smoke ascends from it, emblematic of

exhaling life. It will cost me an hundred pounds, and never never could I part with money so willingly, as for this last last tribute to the memory of my dearest friend.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF

JOHN SAVILLE,

Forty-eight years Vicar-choral of this church. He died August the 2d, 1803, aged sixty-seven.

ONCE in the heart, cold in yon narrow cell,

Did each mild grace, each ardent virtue dwell;
Kind aid, kind tears for others' want and woe,
For others' joy the gratulating glow ;
And skill to mark, and eloquence to claim
For genius in each art the palm of fame.
Ye choral walls, you lost the matchless song,
When the last silence stiffen'd on that tongue!
Ah! who may now your pealing anthems raise,
In soul-pour'd tones of fervent prayer and praise?
Saville, thy lips, twice on thy final day,

Here breath'd, in health and hope, the sacred lay.
Short pangs, ere night, the fatal signál gave,

Quench'd the bright sun for thee,-and op'd the grave!
Now from that graceful form and beaming face,
Insatiate worms the lingering likeness chase ;
But thy pure spirit fled, from pains and fears,
To sinless,—changeless,—everlasting spheres.
Sleep, then, pale mortal frame, in yon low shrine,
"Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!"
VOL. VI.

Н

The last line is Dr Johnson's. My imagina tion refused to supply me with one equally applicable, therefore was it adopted.

I hope Miss Childers is free from that disease which hung about her in the spring, and also that the fair convalescent and her young olives are well.

Adieu, dear friend, adieu!

LETTER XIX.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Sept. 28, 1803.

My dear friend,-A gentleman told me, a few days since, that he had read an account, in a newspaper, of the death of your excellent mother, together with a character of her, and a mention of ninety-nine years announced to be her age. No such event has had a place in the paper I take in, -the English Chronicle, or Whitehall Evening Post; neither had your marriage. Thence my long ignorance of that event.

Conscious of Mrs Whalley senior's very ripe existence, I did not think it had reached the verge

of a century, but believed ninety-three or four had been the utmost. Be that as it may-neither the far-lengthened flight of days or years, nor yet those infirmities from which your beloved mother was exempt-nothing but the sight of hopeless and great bodily sufferings, can prevent our thinking it too soon to lose a dear friend, even after the most protracted longevity.

I am glad this second deprivation was withheld till you had found an object of affection equally dear with the two you have lost within the short space of a couple of years. You grieve, but you do not sicken at the sun :

"The world is still an interesting scene,
And full of joy for you."

As you lament, so did I lament the loss even of my dear "child-changed father," though after the deep eclipse of his shining intellects; since balmy sleep, relished food, exemption from pain, and the never-extinguished delight he took in my attentions to him, rendered his dim existence a cherished blessing to me, nor could I resign it without much of that tender regret and sorrow, which I know you feel; but, as to you, so to me one dear friend remained on earth to sooth and console me; one with whom I could hold daily

and precious converse.

Beneath that graciously continued boon of Heaven, my soul revived, as yours will revive, to its sensibility of the charms of nature, the exhilaration of society, and the delights of literature. So fared it with me through the course of thirteen peaceful, cheerful, happy years, after my filial tears were exhaled: Now, on all those sources of gladness, the pall of the last-left friend of my youth is fallen; and it is dark and impervious.

Alas! what an egotist is woe! I meant to have dwelt on your loss and consolations, and behold me sliding back into my own anguish !

Except these words-" the bell rings, and I must go to church," the following were the last I heard my dear friend speak: "Look at this beautiful engraving of a design for a monument to Handel. I know you dislike writing epitaphs after having written so many; but you must write one more for me, to occupy the blank space here left for an inscription."

I replied, "We will talk of that hereafter-but now play a concerto with me." He did so till the evening prayer bell rang, and he went cheerfully away to return no more!

Alas! I have written one more epitaph-obeyed the injunction of those almost latest words, though their meaning applied to his adored

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