the honour to charge his aide-de-camp to assure me, that no circumstance of his life had given him so much pain as the necessary sacrifice of André's life, and that next to that deplored event, the censure passed upon himself in a poem which he admired, and for which he loved the author; also to express his hope, that, whenever I reprinted the Monody, a note might be added, which should tend to acquit him of that imputed inexorable and cruel severity which had doomed to ignominious death a gallant and amiable prisoner of war.

With that just request I immediately complied, by a paper sewed to the copy of my poem, from which I mean the future edition should be printed, if I should live to collect my works and publish them in a miscellany. So many years has the design been deferred, through a dread of the fatigue and solicitude that must attend its execution, as to induce me to believe I shall never have resolution for the task.

From the hour I conversed with General Washington's officer, and perused these papers, I have regretted the injustice of which I had been guilty, without any consciousness that I was injurious.

Were I to take the fall of the tree, or, I should rather say, its destruction, for the subject of another ode, how must I speak of the fall of

André, convinced, as I now am, that it was the inevitable consequence of those rash hazards to which he put his safety in the zeal of being useful to the English cause? Must I consider that tree as supernaturally destroyed in token of the anger of Heaven against those who doomed the ever-dear victim who was first seized beneath its boughs? That would be to persist in sentiments which I have long known were erroneous, and unjust to the character of one of the wisest and best of men; the father and preserver of his country; her rescuer from oppression, the source of her independence, and rising prosperity.

On the 1st of last December Mr Saville had a dangerous seizure, which he believes was of a paralytic nature. I hope he is mistaken; but the small portion of strength which he previously enjoyed, has not yet returned, nor has he been able to venture out of doors, except one day, since. He and Mrs Smith desire to join me in compliments, and best wishes to yourself and Mrs SimWhen I began this letter I had no thought of intruding upon your attention so long. I remain, dear Sir, your obliged friend.

mons.

LETTER II.

MRS M. Powys.

Lichfield, Feb. 5, 1802.

My heart has often responded to the interesting contents of the letter before me, and vexatious to me proved the perpetual occurrence of restraining circumstances, that wasted, in fruitless purpose, the duty of an earlier acknowledgment.

Some part of the intervening time I had neither wish nor power to write, even to the dearest of my absent friends. That you are that dearest I can, without flattery, avow. Your kind bosom is a mirror which reflects my happiest years, and on your memory their sweetest delights are written. Friends of later date may be admired, esteemed, beloved, but, unconscious of Honora, cannot be dear to me as yourself.

I have excited your attention, the friendly wish to learn what was that circumstance which wrapt my spirits in so drear a stagnation; but you guess it, and you guess truly, that it was fears for his life, who, as well as yourself, is blessedly spared to me

from the wrecks of time, of change, of mortality; and who is not, as you, alas! are, divided from me widely, but with whom I can every day talk of past days, and of all whose for ever lost society contributed to make them happy; and who now, though slumbering in the dark and narrow house, render pleasant the tales of other times, by the power of those indelible images of their persons, their talents, and their kindness, which they have left in our hearts.

You know that Mr Saville's health has been long precarious. On the first of December I received an alarming summons to his house at day-dawn. In the severe cold of the preceding day he had, against earnest remonstrance, been twice at church, where he read the first lessons, and joined in the services and anthems. At six in the morning he found himself suddenly, and as he believed, fatally seized. He seemed to have lost the use of his limbs; could not bear the light, nor lift up his eyelids. I found him in his daughter's arms, perfectly sensible, but shivering and trembling violently, and avowing his belief that his dissolution was near. Mrs Smith had sent for our skilful and humane physician, Dr Jones. He did not arrive till nine, and before his arrival our poor friend grew better; his trem

blings abated, and he could open his eyes. The Doctor comforted us that the present danger was subsiding.

At that juncture Mr Saville was preparing to quit the little habitation which had sheltered him twenty-eight years. The old woman who slept in his house and waited upon him, was become nearly superannuated, and incapable of giving proper attendance in severe sickness. There was no third apartment in which his daughter, Mrs Smith, could sleep. The neat little dwelling, which I had been fortunate enough to purchase for him, two doors below where he then lived, was unaired, and wholly unfit for his reception. Dr Jones seconded my proposal, that he should be brought here in a sedan, where his daughter could be constantly with him, and sleep in a tentbed in his apartment, and where he could have every necessary comfort and attendance.

Thank God, he continued to amend surprisingly, considering the violence of the seizure; but remained so weak and lethargic during some days, as to leave a sense of sad dismay upon my heart. The long and bitter frost perhaps retarded his partial recovery; partial, for he had many drawbacks, and has not yet, by any means, recovered that little portion of renovated strength which he gained on his summer excursion to the coast, and