men:" and while the anxious hope was often felt, and the earnest wish was sometimes whispered, that the mother's watchful eye might long be upon them, and her sheltering protection be extended over them, they were directed to one "whose years fail not," "with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," and were induced to offer up the earnest petition "our Father, wilt thou not from this time be the guide of our youth?"

With the most earnest prayers that we may all be the children of such a parent, and under the directions of such a guide,

believe me, my very dear Madam,

to be, yours very sincerely.

LETTER VIII.

To Miss Charlotte G.

MY DEAR CHARLOTTE,

DID you think that my promise was quite forgotten, or like many others that have been made on similar occasions, suffered to expire with the momentary impulse that led to it? If so, I have the pleasure of telling you that you were mistaken : that I am too selfish a being to allow myself by breaking my own engagement, to be deprived of the satisfaction which I shall derive from your keeping yours. When you asked as a favour, that our acquaintance should not terminate with our personal intimacy, I felt a much greater inclination to grant your request, than you could have done to make it. And now that we can no longer sit together, and read our favourite authors, amuse ourselves with our darling poets, or, rambling through your frequented

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walks, peruse the book of nature, and mark, with equal admiration, some of its most pleasing characters, I often think in my solitary musings, of the converse which used to cheat the distance of our strolls; and paint with vivid colours, though softened by a mellower tint, the lovely scenes which surround your interesting dwelling.

You have sometimes asked me, when an unexpected opening has afforded a command of distant landscape scenery, and extorted from me a sudden expression of agreeable surprize bordering upon rapture, how such feelings were consistent with my advancing years, and I think you added— with my sex? You have told me you had imagined that the beauties of nature had very little charm for us; and however the ardent feelings of youth might impel us to admire them, you thought that the cares of business and our necessary intercourse with the world, extinguished those early sensibilities, and led us to look back with contempt on what we were inclined to call the dreams of fancy. But I believe you were

partly convinced of your mistake, when I reminded you of several of your favourite authors, who retained, till the close of their lives, the same attachment for the beauties of nature as they had felt in their younger years. I am sure we should both of us little envy the man, who has never yet enjoyed that pure satisfaction which arises from the meditations of a leisure hour, spent amid the tranquillity of rural scenery; who has never yet read the lesson which every opening bud and leaf present, and felt the moral in his heart; who has never gazed upon the varied beauties which are displayed around him, and feasting on the grandeur of the scene till his senses asked no more, ascended above these sublunary objects, and cried, "my Father made them all;" who has never seen in the shades of the landscape, or heard in the songs of the grove, something more than a subject for the painter's canvas or the poet's lyre; who has never discovered that from the stately oak which stretches across the glade, to the minutest bud that is just bursting into being,

there is a wisdom of design, and an omnipotence in execution, that mark the hand of the Deity; that every leaf is a candidate for his wonder, and every fibre a subject for his astonishment; whose passions have never subsided in the stillness of a summer's eve, whose sterner thoughts have never been relaxed by the softening influence of the stealing twilight; whose " strife of working intellect," whose stir of "hopes ambitious," and whose conflict of contending wishes, have never yielded to the uninterrupted silence which seemed to upbraid his folly, and to endeavour to allay the tumult of his breast; who has never inhaled the balmy breath of morning;

But, I believe, I am going too far. I fear I shall be venturing where you will not join in the censure through fear of its reverting upon yourself. I have reminded you of your inquiry with regard to our deficiency, and your suspicion of our insensibility even when placed amid some of the most pleasing combinations of the beauties of nature; and permit me to remind you