sciousness of that darkness to which no earthly morning can come, thrilled my heart with blended sensations of pain and pleasure. Pull-Court has no gentleman's seat nearer than about five or six miles. Mr Dowdeswell's mother and sister were there; and, excepting the Bishop of Ely and his lady, who called one morning, we saw no other company while I staid. It is the custom of the neighbourhood to make no dining-visits when the nights are moonless. I was glad to be excused the form of such intercourse with strangers. Mrs Dowdeswell senior is a sprightly well-informed woman of seventy-five, very much the woman of fashion. and The kitchen gardens to this seat are very extensive. Mrs Dowdeswell takes great delight in her poultry; has the pied as well as common peacocks, and her aviaries, for she has one for large and one for small birds, are stored with all of curious plume, foreign and native. Mr Dowdeswell remembers you to your advantage, and desires his compliments. You have sent me welcome news of the Palace concerning its approach to a habitable state, and I thank you extremely for your kind attention to it. Since you so pressingly renew your kind request that, on returning to Lichfield, I would repeat my visit to your pleasant and hospitable mansion, and make it my bead-quarters till the ecclesiastic roof may once more shelter me, I cannot resist the temptation; but, unless illness frightens me into an abrupt seeking of my long dear, though now, alas, to me changed city, it may be several weeks ere I again behold it. From Mr Dowdeswell's I came to visit my relation by marriage, Mrs Martin, who, after having lived at Bath since she became a widow, some two years past purchased a habitation in this large and pleasant village, where she has several social neighbours in our rank of life. She lost one of the best of husbands and of men in the year 1795, by a sudden death. Apoplexy seized him, immediately after having made an eloquent speech in the county-hall at Nottingham, in favour of the necessitous poor that hard win ter. Mrs Martin's purchase here was of incredible cheapness. The house is very ancient, and somewhat dilapidated; has seen prouder days; once, I conclude, the residence of squiral opulence. It has three good apartments of more modern date, though of very awkward approach as to the lower one, a dining-room, thirty feet by eighteen, well proportioned and lofty, with white wainscoat, and three large sashes, into which the south-west sun shines cheerily. They look upon a little lawn the width of the house in front. It has a shrubbery on each side, and is separated from her fields by a ha-ha. Two good sashed bedchambers are over this dining-room. The rest of the mansion consists of two little parlours, at least two centuries date, Gothic and gloomy; old passages; an old laundry, and plenty of old hidingplaces; a sort of rat-castle, we must confess; "Dim windows that exclude the light, To this venerable mansion a large and productive kitchen-garden, spacious farm-yard, coach-house and stable, a fish-pond, and twenty acres of rich land are annexed; and the whole cost her only nine hundred pounds. The little smart widow, moving in the fashionable circles at Bath, is become a notable farmeress, with all about her of oldfashioned comfort and frugal hospitality. This village is six miles from Bristol. If I can escape a return of the dangerous paroxysm I endured at Park-hall, I shall pass my time as agreeably here as I could wish, at least as time can pass with me, but my head is not steady. I prefer this sort of life to magnificent scenery and liveried boards covered with dainties. In deed there was no period of my life in which I did not make that humble preference. I might, if I had chosen it, have lived more with the rich and great than do my neighbours thes', but it was ever as little my taste to do so, as it was and is exclusively their ambition. Without parity. of rank and of station, something to me always appears wanting to the perfect freedom and comfort of society on the part of the inferior. Even superior talents must be content to find themselves cast into the back-ground, respecting the attention of their high-stiled receivers, when people of rank are present. How then must it be with those of our middle class, when, without any powers above the common level of understanding, they are suffered in the circles of splendid life. More than suffered such folk never are, or ever can be. There, let them sit in the unenviable class of self-condemned automatons; the silent spectres of their departed freedom, with no other recompense but the silly boast of keeping, as it is called, the best company; as if genius, learning, and knowledge of human character, were not equally to be found in the middle as in the higher classes of society. It is to the circle where such powers of mind diffuse themselves, that the title of best company genuinely belongs. Such, dear Simpson, is your proper sphere; where you can at once imbibe and augment the rays of intellectual intelligence. Remember me kindly to cara sposa, and believe me always your ever obliged, &c. LETTER XXXV. MRS MARY POWYS. Winterbourn, Oct. 18, 1804. ON my road hither, the 14th of last month, I dispatched a long letter to you from Newport. An apprehension haunts me that it may possibly be lost through the carelessness of the mailcoachman, who promised to put it into the postoffice at Bristol; but I will not, till I know its fate, recapitulate the contents. Pleased with the rural comforts and active exertions of my little friend, in her habitation of ancient days, I have passed my time much to my satisfaction. A potent spell, however, drew me from her during a fortnight of the elapsed five weeks. I was surprised, on arriving here, to find myself only eighteen miles distant from my long |