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the years of youth, health, and hilarity, and, with a tender interest almost equal to my own, the ideal presence of the beloved and long-vanished individuals, whose society crowned those years with happiness. O! of how many dear and excellent friends have I lived to mourn the loss! Next Thursday is the dismal anniversary of the last departed. Strange countenances shall not look upon me that day.

This world, as you and the worthy partner of your destiny have agonizingly experienced*, is full of privation, till nothing of heart-felt joy remains to us but the hope of a better, in which mortal semblance shall glow with immortal life; remember and hold blissful converse with all it loved on earth, shall experience no evil, and shall dread no change. Adieu.

* Mr and Mrs Granville lost their only son, without ever having had any other child. He died a few years since in the prime of his youth, which was adorned by every gentle vir tue.-S.

LETTER XXXIII.

MISS V

Matlock, Aug. 2, 1804, 2 o'clock.

My dear friend, the fatal, fatal day is come!yet five hours of life, and health, and hope, remained in all the cunning flattery of nature, promising duration! I have been pouring forth the anguish of this day's sensations to her who sprung from him, whose extinction at evening, spread over the sun, to these eyes, the impervious veil of desolation. After short and interrupted slumbers, unblessed by any distinct idea of my soul's chosen friend, on that the anniversary of his last human sleep, I waked at day-dawn.-Alas! with what sensations, my dear friend's congenial imagination will but too faithfully conceive! It will truly tell her that I count the hours, the minutes, with all the woe, if not the horror, with which the condemned criminal enumerates them on the day of execution. This hour twelvemonth, how little did I think that, ere the evening closed, that voice, which was speaking to me in the sweetest and most sprightly tones, would be mute for ever in

this world!-those graceful features, beaming with intellect and affection, marked for ever, by dreary ghastly inanity, for the dark and narrow house. O miserable, miserable consciousness, how it frowns away peace and comfort from my heart! The sublime and curtained rocks, on which I this moment gaze, have echoed his harmonious voice in Dr Arne's beautiful hunting song-" With hounds and with horn I'll waken the day." That happy period was this time nineteen years, when he and I, with a party of eight from Lichfield and Derbyshire, made an excursion to this romantic scene, and its environs. With what spirit, what gaiety, did he pour that strain amid the echoing mountains! My impatient irrational soul yet, at moments, refuses to believe that never human ear shall listen to those tones again!

O! this swarm, not only of strangers, but of people to whom individually our attention is due! How that necessity corrodes the melancholy and aching heart!--but the seclusion of this dreaded day has been, and shall be inviolate;-only to those will I speak, who can understand the language of my woes-who will imagine it ere it rises to their eye on this paper. Ere long it may meet my dear friend's eyes, if I receive a letter that shall bid it seek her-and teach it whither to travel.

I sent you a long epistle yesterday, and hope it will reach you safely. It is near three!-my kind friend's thoughts, I know, travel with mine the dreary journey of this day's hours. Adieu! Adieu!-to silent and every minute augmenting anguish, be the remaining portion consigned!

Some few words added,—it is now near four! -and these eyes had looked their last!-but all unconsciously to him or myself; for yet, yet he lived in health and hope! O could I have divined!-but it is a mercy that I did not; that my terror and anguish disturbed not his few departing moments!

It has struck eight-all was over!-and my last gleam of comfort from the reflection I mentioned to you, and on which my spirit clung, is passed away! Farewell till I hear from you again, my sweet friend, who would so fain console me, the forlorn of heart-but that fate forbids!

LETTER XXXIV.

CHARLES SIMPSON, ESQ.

Winterbourn, Gloucestershire, Sept. 19, 1804. THRICE kind indeed are the contents of your letter, though it has given me great uneasiness on poor Miss F's account. Recollecting how fatal a fever, brought on by the same means, proved to her brother John, my fears on this subject are much awakened. She is one of the few. Native strength of understanding and play of fancy; wise and vigorous exertion in situations of teasing trial; sweetness of temper, rectitude of principle, a liberal spirit, and ingenuous goodness of heart, combined, early in life, to form her character. Intimately acquainted with her during a long series of years, I never, with much to esteem, met with the slightest circumstance to disapprove in her conduct or manners.

Upon the mind and conduct of men and women in every rank and station, I have habitually turned an observing eye; and it appears to me that men in general are governed by only two motives in their wedding engagements;-by the pur

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