ture, and prevent the fair display of its antique glory.

I did not write to you at York, uncertain how long you meant to stay there. If your tour should not yet be completed, my letter will patiently wait for you at Mendip-Lodge*, whose superior no tour can show you in the singular graces of situation, art, and taste.

You would feel local enthusiasm on the lawns of Harewood, consecrated and made classical by Mason's muse.

The travellers have been much inquired after by all here who had the pleasure of their society on their late visit to this mansion; short, alas! as it was welcome. To have once conversed with Mr Whalley, and to be interested for him, are circumstances which follow in course wherever sensibility is not an utter desideratum. They will all, and none more than the captives, be gratified to live in his remembrances.

All are in statu quo except M. Destrosses, whose passport has been obtained by the Russian ambassador, to whom he had the good fortune to be known; and, for he expects it every day,

* Mr Whalley's seat, twelve miles beyond Bristol, on the Devonshire road.-S.

11

"His bosom's lord sits lightly on its throne."

I never witnessed more perfect happiness. A sight rare as it is delightful. He dined with me on Sunday, and ate little. I observed it-" Ah, Madam, I am too happy to eat; and sleep no more me. I go to bed, and fall asleep one hour; dream see my wife, my children-wake, find so much better than dream-am so glad cannot drowsy." How eloquent to me appeared this broken English, in which, from my ignorance of French, he was obliged to express himself!

The joy of this truly good creature is proportioned to his sorrow, borne with such sweet patience through three long years, yet leaving its pale characters on his countenance. My other French friend, Captain Gisholme, is a very different being. Gay, lively, ardent, yet very ingenuous, he is impatient that his youth should stagnate in long years of captivity; but the nuptial and paternal ties have not pulled at his heartstrings.

If you are returned home you found beauteous Mendip glowing in the gorgeous blaze of a former-days summer. Quiet, and my spacious and cool mansion have prevented its ardor from oppressing my invalid frame, from which, thank Heaparoxysms of my disease have been avert

ven,

the

VOL. VI.

ed these past several weeks, though I have had some threatening feelings since the dawn of yesterday, when I was awakened by a pealing horizon, and saw, with all my wonted dismay,

"The angry shafts of Heaven gleam round my bed."

You have witnessed the irrational extreme of my terror on these occasions; the miserable result of early impression; when, in my fifth year, our nursery-maid was screaming, and in fainting fits, amid a fiery tempest; and the poets, the familiar friends, not only of my youth, but of my very infancy, increased this extreme apprehension. How did the following lines fasten themselves on my childhood-memory:

"Fear no more the lightning's flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone!"

and once when my father was trying to reason me out of my fears, I said, "Why, papa, did Shakespeare tell a dead person that he need not fear what was so terrible to the living, if lightning and thunder were not dangerous to any one?"-My imagination was on Shakespeare's side, and where that is very strong, it is always too hard for reaProvidentially Thursday morning's storm

son.

did not last more than an hour, and cooler breezes have since attempered the noon-day heats and the night's sultriness.

Have you, since you left me, heard of dear, dear Clarissa, formed of every creature's best. Her country residence will soon commence, and I may perhaps be indulged with a few hours of her so prized society. I can say of its delights, as of impeded love,

"Seldom the joy, and fleeting is its date,

But that which makes it anxious, makes it great."

I hope you found those monuments of your ancestors which you sought in Derbyshire. The veneration with which they are surveyed is a sweet, a solemn, a sacred feeling. It is amongst those, of which Johnson finely says, whatever withdraws us from the power of the senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, and the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Adieu!

LETTER XLIX.

WALTER SCOTT, Esq.

Lichfield, June 20, 1806.

WHAT an insurmountable bar is a frame impaired by time, and locally fettered by malady, to such longing as your cordial invitation excites! I should esteem it happiness, of no common species, to be the guest of Mr Scott; to become conscious of his form and accents, whose imagination has so often exerted its gentle witchery over my spirit, and to share with him the "feast of reason, and the flow of soul," in the wide range and freedom of colloquial intercourse.

From my earliest youth, Scotland has been to me classic ground, which I could at no time have trodden without the liveliest enthusiasm. You have extremely increased all that inspires it. Sacred to my love and veneration is the Caledonian scenery, Lowland and Highland. From Ramsay to Walter Scott, the sublime and the tender emanations of genius have consecrated the former, while, as the poet Gray observed, imagination, in all her pomp, resided many centuries ago on the