general and almost inevitable fate of all evil actions, they will continue to do, what they have done through the whole course of this disastrous war, lay the consequences of ministerial guilt and folly upon the over-ruling power of Providence, and bring forth some obscure texts in the Revelations about calves and candlesticks, as shadowing forth the fate of France and England. O! it is ill for states, as for individuals, when they choose to incur certain and atrocious guilt, rather than distant and contingent danger.

The Reverend Henry White of Lichfield is a collector of ancient books and tracts. His friend, George Parker, Esq. of Cheshire, lately sent him Wharton's Almanack, published in 1662, the third year after Charles the Second's restoration.

This curious old chronicle contains a list of the Welch kings, from the departure of the Romans to the period in which Wales ceased to be a monarchy. They are forty-one in number, beginning with Constantine, of little Britain, or Armorica, and from him nominally travelling down, with the dates of each beginning reign, to

"1078, Gruffyth ap Conan. He (says this chrono

logist) reformed the Welch poets and

minstrels, and brought others out of Ireland to instruct the Welch.

1137. Owen Gwineth ap Gruffyth ap Conan.

1159. David ap Owen Gwineth. In his time, (saith this record,) Madoc, his brother, discovered part of the West Indies.

1194. Llwelin ap Jerwerth ap Owen Gwineth. 1240. David ap Llwelin ap Jerwerth.

1246. Llwelin ap Gruffyth ap Llwelin ap Jerwerth, the last prince of Wales of the

British blood."

This venerable and veritable tract does not, you see, give its information, which stamps your poem with reality of basis, as a tradition, but as a known fact; and we also learn from it, that Llwelin, the brave young hero of your epic song, obtained, at length, the throne which his uncle had usurped; a fact which your readers must be solicitous to know.

Strange that an event of so much national interest as the first discovery of the western world by a native, after having been known in Great Britain through so many centuries, should have receded from general consciousness. The reason must be, that the circumstance, however interesting, did not produce here any important political consequences, of which it became so pregnant in Spain and Portugal. After all, it was unpatriotic in her sons not to preserve for their country the universal memory of a circumstance which transfers the glory of that great adventure from

the Genoese to the Briton. Recompensing is it now to find an event, thus unaccountably obscured by time, recovered and ascertained; to see it form the basis of the noblest epic work since Milton.

"For the beams of truth

More grateful touch the understanding's eye,
Than all the blandishment of sound his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue."

I was pleased to find Espriella's letters explaining the individuality of each criticism, in the reviews; that in all the various departments of literature, history, or physic, divinity, politics, law, or philosophy, we have only one man's opinion of another man's work. More than once, in print, I have stript the veil of plurality from the single solitary Wight, who, in every one of these periodical olios, possesses his separate and unpartaken department; but the public still remains haunted by the vision of a co-adjunctive council-board. Adieu!

LETTER LXIX.

MRS STOKES.

Lichfield, Oct. 25, 1807.

ALAS yes, it was my friend whom you saw on the list of the wounded.-Hastings is wounded irreparably, though not mortally; mutilated in the prime of youthful manhood, for he is not yet thirty-three; the firmest, and yet the gentlest spirit that ever animated a pleasing and graceful form. You were charmed by the intelligence of his countenance, the unaffected grace of his manners, and the music of his voice in speaking, during the transient period in which you conversed with him here.

You ask me now of his story, and I shall give it you briefly as I may.-Captain Hastings, of the S2d regiment of foot, is a distant branch of Lord Moira's family; his only inheritance a gentleman's education, and his sword. When scarcely more than twenty-one he married a young Scotch lady, of gentle birth, but without fortune. Her sweetness of temper, energy of conduct, and the cheerful fortitude with which she sustained a lin

gering and painful disease, which she knew to be mortal, rendered her eminently worthy of that gallant and noble heart which she so devotedly possessed.

It is three years and a half since Mrs Hastings came to Lichfield with her husband, in a deep and hopeless decline. He attended General Pigot as his aide-de-camp, who is here for the district. Their three infant girls were left at school near Edinburgh. To their mother's hapless situation the General remitted Captain Hastings's official duties. Through a whole year he watched, a ministrant angel, by the couch of the sweet sufferer, not leaving her for a single hour, till, from all its painful struggles, the beatified spirit soared

away.

Before time brings its healing aid, no consideration can assuage the anguish of everlasting separation from a being exquisitely dear. Poor Hastings's sorrows bore witness to that truth; yet he paid the last duties, following the mournful procession with a step of assumed firmness, though it trembled amid the struggle, and with a pale face of tearless agony. When, bending over the dropt coffin, his eyes looked their last, the tears, that would no longer be restrained, fell in floods on the plates.

Lost to every surrounding object, (and many