able company, where only they could be free and cheerful.

Connexions formed at school, are said to be lasting, and often beneficial. There are two or three stories of this kind upon record, which would not be so constantly cited as they are, whenever this subjet happens to be mentioned, if the chronicle that preserves their remembrance, had many besides to boast of. For my own part, I found such friendships, though warm enough in their commencement, surprisingly liable to extinction; and of seven or eight, whom I had selected for intimates, out of about threehundred, in ten years time not one was left me. The truth is, that there may be, and often is, an attachment of one boy to another, that looks very like a friendship, and while they are in circumstances, that enable them mutually to oblige, and to assist each other, promises well, and bids fair to be lasting. But they are no sooner separated from each other, by entering into the world at large, than other connexions, and new employments, in which they no longer share together, efface the remembrance of what passed in earlier days, and they become strangers to each other for ever. Add to this, the man frequently differs so much from the boy; his principles, manners, temper,

and conduct, undergo so great an alteration, that we no longer recognize in him our old playfellow, but find him utterly unworthy, and unfit for the place he once held in our affections.

To close this article, as I did the last, by applying myself immediately to the present concernlittle John is happily placed above all occasion for dependence on all such precarious hopes, and need not be sent to school in quest of some great men in embryo, who may possibly make his fortune.

-I re

civil to make her wait a week for an answerceived your Letter within this hour, and foreseeing that the garden will engross much of my time for some days to come, have seized the present opportunity to acknowledge it. I congratulate you on Mr. Newton's safe arrival at Ramsgate, making no doubt

but that he reached that place without difficulty or danger, the road thither from Canterbury, being so good as to afford room for neither. He has now a view of the element, with which he was once so familiar, but which, I think, he has not seen for many years. The sight of his old acquaintance, will revive in his mind, a pleasing recollection of past deliverances, and when he looks at him from the beach, he may say "You have formerly given me trou"ble enough, but I have cast anchor now, where your billows can never reach me."It is happy for him that he can say so.

Mrs. Unwin returns you many thanks for your anxiety on her account. Her health is considerably mended upon the whole, so as to afford us a hope that it will be established.

Our love attends you.

Yours,

Dear Madam,

W. C.

LETTER LXIX.

summer.

To the Revd. WILLIAM UNWIN.

Nov 9, 1780.

I wrote the following last

The tragical occasion of it really happen

ed at the next house to ours. I am glad when I can find a subject to work upon; a lapidary, I suppose, accounts it a laborious part of his business to rub away the roughness of the stone; but it is my amusement, and if, after all the polishing I can give it, it discovers some little lustre, I think myself well rewarded for my pains.*

I shall charge you a half-penny a piece for every copy I send you, the short as well as the long. This is a sort of after-clap you little expected, but I cannot possibly afford them at a cheaper rate. If this method of raising money had occurred to me sooner, I should have made the bargain sooner; but am glad I have hit upon it at last. It will be a considerable encouragement to my muse, and act as a powerful stimulus to my industry. If the American

Verses on a Goldfinch, starved to death in a cage,

war should last much longer, I may be obliged to raise my price, but this I shall not do without a real occasion for it-it depends much upon Lord North's conduct in the article of supplies-if he imposes an additional tax on any thing that I deal in, the neces→

sity of this measure, on my part, will be so apparent, that I dare say you will not dispute it.

W. C.

The following Letter to Mr. Hill contains a poem already printed in the Works of Cowper; but the reader will probably be gratified in finding a little favourite piece of pleasantry introduced to him, as it was originally dispatched by the author for the amusement of a friend.

LETTER LXX.

To JOSEPH HILL, Esqr.

MY DEAR FRIEND.

December 25, 1780.

Weary with rather a long

walk in the snow, I am not likely to write a very sprightly Letter, or to produce any thing that may cheer this gloomy season, unless I have recourse to