Handel. O Heaven, that they should prove an unconscious prophecy of his own impending fate!-so nearly impending! You, I know, will write, if you have not already written, an epitaph on your first beloved wife, and on your mother. I hope you will send them to me. I always love your compositions, but poignant sympathy will give triple dearness to these. Adieu! Adieu ! LETTER XX. MRS STOKES. Lichfield, Nov. 5, 1803. I AM truly sorry for what you must have suffered from your darling son's dangerous illness, the scarlet-fever. Its contagion and its fatality, make it a petty plague. I congratulate you on his recovery. To his father's skilful, bold, and decisive measures, he probably owed his life. Fortunate in being at home when the disease seized him, you were equally fortunate that it did not spread through your family. Very pathetic, and very just are your reflections on the subject; so are they on that of my sorrows; on my indolent sense of a surrounding desolation, from which I cannot pleasurably be roused. Often, indeed, within these two months, have I been painfully roused from it by the unfeeling conduct of a certain person towards the distressed family of my lost friend. I remain still a voluntary prisoner within my own gates. To pass them is unavoidably to rush into that " flux of company, from which the deprived spirit longs to keep, apart." Dissonant to all its feelings are the lively tones of unpartaken hilarity. Repose is all I wish for; quietly to wait the probably near approaching period of my advanced life. Within these yet loved, though desolated walls, to set up my earthly rest, "And shake the yoke of inauspicious claims There is But I fear it will not be granted me. an impending necessity that I should make one visit to dear Mrs Martha Vernon, and Miss Vernon, who, once in four or five years, visit Mrs Greaves. In infancy I was their play-fellow, and in youth their companion, on their frequent visits to the Dean and Mrs Addenbroke. They have always treated me with condescend ing kindness, and are so good to speak of my society as an added inducement to this their visit. Seeking them, I must also seek many neighbours of this town, who have been so good to come to me in my attempted solitude; else they will say that rank has attractions for me which equality has not. "The cry is still they come !"-these threatening invaders! Mr Pitt has brought his "indemnity for the past, and security for the future," to a precious conclusion truly! Perhaps the time is on near approach, whose miseries may teach me to say, with somewhat like resignation, Saville's in his grave! After life's fitful fever he sleeps well. Mischance has done its worst ; nor steel, nor fire, Nothing can touch him farther." But, ere I can say that without anguish, public safety must reel from its foundations with palpable struggle. Adieu! Adieu ! LETTER XXI. MR TODD. Lichfield, Dec. 15, 1803. Ан, Sir, I fear you have thought me remiss and unmindful of my many obligations to you, by suffering your kind letter of July the 12th to remain so long unacknowledged. It had not been so, but that deep anxiety, terminating in irreparable loss, threw my mind iuto a state incompatible with the discharge of its serene and pleasing duties. A short time before I received your last, the dearest of all my friends returned from a month's excursion into Cambridgeshire, a feeble convalescent, after three dangerous attacks sustained in that absence, and generously concealed from his family and myself. We received cheerful letters from him, which bore no note of the dread symptoms by which he had been assailed The alarming state in which we received him back, put to flight every thought of my purposed journey to Buxton; yet the medical assistance he received here, seemed to have subdued his disease, and he recovered to more than his preceding level of health, strength, and vivacity. Ah! cunning flattery of art and nature! amidst their exhilarating promises, and the congratulating smiles of his many friends, he remained near three weeks, yes, till within twenty minutes of his death. With him the records of my youthful life are passed away; with him they were mutual and poignant remembrances; with my friends of later connection they are but cold hearsays. When I speak of them, I do but think they listen indulgently to what they deem the uninteresting descriptions of advanced life, fond to tell the tale of other times. So will it be with all who survive those dear contemporaries who had ran with them the sprightly race of youth and sensibility: "Those best of days that crown life's year; And melting joys upon the heart." Time, which had silvered the locks of my departed friend, had not, in the slightest degree, chilled his native and fervent enthusiasm ; his generous credulity towards all apparent worth. O! he was one of the very few, "Who uniformly bear to life's mild eve, |