praises of other writers, I always knew he hated me in spite of his coaxing epithets.

Not understand Mrs Cobb's compliment in comparing you to a bank-bill! Fy! what a buzzard does this same mock-modesty make of our celebrated M. Knowles; or rather what a jesuit, winking and catching, with infinite adroitness, at false interpretation. In calling Mrs Knowles a bank-bill, is it not saying that everybody is ready to accept her?

Observing that you see me, in your mind's eye, surrounded with the luxury of ingenious society, surely you forget where it is my fate to reside-how few there are here, except Giovanni, who seem awakened to mental intelligence, unless it passes through the lips of celebrated strangers; for if an uncelebrated Shakespeare were to descend amongst us, the generality of them would not know him from a Quarles or a Bunyan ; while even, from the most celebrated, were they to live here, our ladies and gentlemen would soon turn away their strained and aching eyes.

Giovanni has of late years been so absorbed in his attention to Flora, not the Flora Anglica, but the Flora Mundi, that, except at dinner, he is no more to be seen within these walls during daylight hours, than a certain bird, who has not the honour of resembling him much in any other parti

cular, could be met with on an open plain smote

by the summer's sun.

Ingenious strangers, however, are frequently introducing themselves, as they pass our thoroughfare city. Last summer gave me the pleasure of your friend, the young philosopher's company, an whole evening. I mean Mr Christie. I did not then know that he had the honour of your acquaintance; but I learned it from a very charming letter since received from him. The manner of his mentioning this acquisition, is pretty good acquittal for me of partiality in classing you intellectually with the Aspasia of our late overgrown Pericles.

What you tell me of's apparently different opinion of magnetism in town, from that which he professed here, surprises me not.

While totally stupid and uninformed people, blind to reason, and callous to demonstration, refuse to recede an inch from opinions which they have once maintained, the half-ingenious, ambitious of ranking in the scientific class, and secretly conscious of standing on quick-sands, cling to every one's elbow whom they know to be on terrafirma.

Christie's mind is stronger and better furnished at nineteen, than R-'s could be were he to pass a Methusalem length of existence in talking and

writing about the powers and properties of nature, and the discoveries of science.

So the brilliant Sophia is commenced Babylonian. You and she will, I hope, often meet, now that you are in each others sphere of attraction. There is powerful magnetism on both sides.

I am glad to hear your George is well, and has scientific ambition; it is the best terrene aspiration in the mind of a wealthy youth.

Oratory is sporting nice fire-works in Westminster-hall; heating her furnace of philippics pure hot-but Hastings will walk through it safe as old Shadrach, and his cousins of the Meshech and Abednego family, Clive, Sykes, and Rumbold.

Those at the helm, that, from time to time, invest frail mortals with the power of wading to gold and gems through human blood, take care against the hour of their being called over the coals, to provide them with a jerkin of the asbestos material. Adieu. Your's faithfully.

LETTER XIX.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, April 25, 1788.

Look at the date of the inclosed letter. It will shew you, that no friend of later years has a right to reproach my silence, since that letter replies to one which I received from Mrs Knowles, last Christmas-day, with whom I have maintained the most intimate connection from my earliest youth. No shade of chagrin ever passed over our amity; yet are we each of high and independent spirit, and by no means see every object of genius, literature, and conduct, in the same light. But then, we hold our minds open to conviction; and neither of us fancy that greater and wiser people than ourselves must necessarily have violated that greatness and that wisdom, when, ever they acted, or spoke, or wrote contrary to our ideas of" the first good, first perfect, and first fair."

. When Catiline said, that to like the same things constituted friendship, he could not mean that perfect coincidence which never really ex

isted between two human beings; and which if, through pusillanimous affectation, it appears to exist, must give to the social intercourse, whether by the fire-side, or on paper, the tediousness of solitude. Meaning no more, by his observation, than a general congeniality of tastes and sentiments, I am inclined to be of his opinion, presupposing that there is honesty of heart on both sides; without which, the characters of friendship are written in sand, amidst every possible congeniality of pursuits.

If certain flattering declarations in your last had any ground of probability, and chance and inclination had inmeshed you and me in the inextricable net, we must have been better humoured than dear Old Sublimity and wife, in the days of Cromwell and Charles, if we had not soon scrambled as far asunder as that same net would permit; for, it must be confessed, we do see a few things in strangely differing lights. Politics, however, could not have been a source of dispute, if, indeed, you are a staunch whig, for I love not toryism of any species. Pray, recollect, friend of mine, who art so given to use the word insist, that toryism may pervade verbal opinions as well as political ones; and that all our con

* Milton.