throw a kind of mild splendour round his natural and original character. But I will neither anticipate your judgment, nor do what I have so much blamed others for. Examine him by his own light; and pray observe, in this illustrious instance, how necessary every man of genius, who is at the sametime a man of virtue, finds the charm of female society. The graces, the sprightliness, the softness, and the innocence, let me add, of female conversation, the tenderness of female sympathy, and the fidelity and warmth of female friendship, are cordials to a mind too delicately toned for the rough tumults of the corrupt world. What a constellation of female worth shed its sweet influence round this inspired sufferer! It is worth consideration, how many of the great and gay, who have made a noise and bustle on the stage of life, have sunk into quick and deep oblivion; while we follow with eager interest every step this obscure, unobtrusive mortal makes among his flowers or shrubberies, and are more interested in his very hares and robins, because he loved and tended them, than in all that ever dazzled and amused us among the children of art and vanity. Tell me how your Book Society relish the nosegay of heather, birch, and cannach, which I have sent them. -Are you deep in Scriptural studies? Does not your heart burn within you, when you throw the world at a distance, and drink deep at the true fountains of Inspiration? It is a fatal fashion that prevails of late, of calling every one a Methodist who goes a little out of the beaten track of mechanical forms. I dare say this illiberal cant drives many into sects, merely as a sanctuary from ridicule; for it does not require so much courage to share ridicule with a numerous body, as to face it alone. "O bless'd retirement, friend to life's decline, What sacrifice can be too great to make for peace and retreat. This should not be said. satisfied with your Farewell tenderly, A. G. LETTER LXXX. TO MRS. FURZER, PLYMPTON, DEVONSHIRE. My dear Friend, 66 Woodend, near Stirling. It is a sure proof that I was very little capable of writing that your kind letter is thus long unanswered. I cannot easily make you understand what a cordial it was to me, when I was so weary worn wi' care," that nothing less that the soothings of friendship, and the dim, distant views of peace beyond this world, could allay the fever of my mind. But before I say one word of the ordeal through which I have passed, I will answer your letter. I am glad, that others doing what they ought, relieves you in some measure from the dilemma you were in about your protegé.* To send him fluttering away, thus early and unformed, from the nest where he has been so tenderly cherished, must have been a * An adopted son of Mrs. Furzer, before alluded to. severe alternative, after all the pains you have taken. When one does a generous action merely from the pure delight it gives the heart, it is very mortifying to be obliged to stop short before the plan of beneficence is completed. I am greatly pleased matters continue on the old footing. It would be a dismal blank to your warm, active mind, to have no object near you to exercise its affections. Now, at the distance at which you keep him, he excites interest, without teasing and wearing you out; and then your holidays are so joyful to him. Now, how shall I briefly, and at the sametime clearly show you the track I have trodden since I left you.. Alas! for my beloved cottage! But I will not distress you with the retrospect. You will be pleased to hear that nothing could exceed the general kindness and considerate and friendly attention of my neighbours that were. As it is, I see much beauty and many comforts about my new abode. When the mists that overcloud my mind are a little dispelled, I hope to taste what I now merely look on with cold critical approbation. You, who live so much in the fair creation of your fancy, need not be told what a pang it awakens to part with a home, where everything, as it were, owes its existence to you; where one has suffered and enjoyed what selflovers can form no idea of, and which is endeared by being, in a manner, rendered sacred to the memory of those we love. The letters with the accounts of my poor father's death, came before I left Laggan, but were concealed from me till the bitterness of parting with my late home was over. What an asylum, what a comfort has that dwelling been to many others besides the family that inhabited it! There, indeed, social life, and social love seemed the warmer for being compressed within narrow bounds. There I lived, and moved, and had a being in some degree useful and interesting to others. Hereafter I shall indeed exist; but my highest hope must be to spend Quiet, tho' sad, the remnant of my days," 66 far, far from my old haunts, my old habits, and my old associates. I will not balance the account, for you will do that for me, and reproach my croaking to boot. I am all penitence and submission, so pray be moderate in your reproof of yours tenderly, A. G. LETTER LXXXI. TO MRS. FURZER, PLYMPTON, DEVONSHIRE. My dear Friend, Woodend, July 12, 1803. The cheerful tenor of your last letter was a great cordial to my spirits. I rejoice exceedingly at the prospect of your removal to Richmond; not that I expect, or would have you expect, that everything and everybody will be quite to your wish where you are going. In vain would we encircle the globe by successive removals, in search of an accumulation of comforts ;-those comforts, which the frugal, though bountiful hand of Providence has scattered in VOL. II. proportions, to alleviate the sorrows and sufferings of a state only meant as the pathway to felicity. Yet of those ingredients of happiness, on which an elegant and sensible mind is most dependent, I am confident many await you; and, amidst all the wealth of Flora, which your industrious ingenuity had lavished around you, and all the softness of a genial climate, I always thought of you with an anxious and desponding tenderness, well knowing your heart was not at home, could not be at home, among people who so little comprehended you. Your warmth of heart and energy of character were quite beyond them, and you would have continued a stranger after fifty years' residence. I would carefully banish from my mind the absurd and silly fastidiousness of working myself up to relish no conversation but that of wits and savans; it would be a regimen of pickles and marmalades, without bread or water. Common sense, and common integrity, with some degree of heart, I insist on in my companions. Knaves and fools I will positively have nothing to do with. Some one mind that thinks and feels as I do myself, is indispensable. It is like my morning tea, the only luxury I care for, which habit has made necessary, morally necessary, because this favourite indulgence, this mental banquet meliorates my temper and expands my heart. I do not pity any person merely for being deprived of pleasure, however innocent, or however elegant. The time of trial is hourly shortening, and the hopes of futurity proportionally strengthening, to those who look forward to another state of existence. But, I think, where one finds the kindly affections continually chilled and repelled, and |