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Were I to write a poem on this popular subject, it would be on somewhat of the above plan; but the want of time, spirits, and faith, are in the opposite scale, and my sooty muses and graces kick the beam. How should the solemn mourners march through the gates of my versifying region, since neither leisure, vivacity, or hope, are at hand to open them?

Adieu !—May you never experience the absence of those gentlewomen-ushers to wit-making, verse-making, or love-making!

LETTER XX.

MRS STOKES.

Lichfield, April 30, 1788.

I TRUST We shall not be less sincere friends for the inevitable seldomness of our epistolary intercourse; that, if we complain, it will be of the complication of our employments; and if we reproach, that we shall reproach only the shortness of the day.

Much am I gratified by the wish you express

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that we may sometimes meet, as we journey

down the vale of life. ever delightful to me.

Such meetings must be
My wanderings through

the pleasant paths which led to my friends, have, through life, as you know, been much restrained by the filial bands; and now those bands are become stronger than ever, by his weakness to whom they bind me.

The circumstance of your having once conversed with Mr Butt, beneath this roof, had indeed escaped me; but my conviction was perfect that you would all four be delightful acquisitions to each other. I might travel far ere I should find so interesting a parté quarré.

Miss has lately favoured me with long and very amusing letters. She is a good deal in public, and much in literary parties, to which she has been introduced by her former acquaintance with Mrs Piozzi, Mrs Siddons, and the Greatheads, and by my efforts to draw her and Miss Williams together. Though her reading has not been very deep, or very general, and though I do not think she discriminates accurately in works of genius, yet her vivacity, her wit, and the graceful flow of an eloquence so natural to her, will enable her to support her part in such conversations with considerable eclat; unless, finding her own taste pall, as I have often seen it do, for li

terary conversation, she should, after a while, lose part of her desire to please, and with it a yet greater degree of the power of pleasing.

I tremble for the temptations to elegant dress and expensive amusements, which must assail her on every hand. God forgive the sin, if a sin it is, of wishing cross and stupid Madam V in a world, where she must acquire, or soon be expelled, better sense and better temper. I do believe the thus emancipated would put on the brilliant fetters of our friend, though I could not engage that they would not pinch him now and then, as did the old ones; however, if a man must be galled, the smart is less painful, and the wound sooner heals, that is given by polished steel than by rusty iron.

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I was happy to hear news from Mrs Rthe health and welfare of you and yours, more recent than that which came to me in your last letter; but I had hoped from Mr Butt ere now, in his purposed visit to Lichfield, accounts of them more circumstantial. But yet he comes not,Why tarry his chariot wheels? Not yet rolling towards us; but soon I hope to roll. Cannot you and the Doctor follow their track closely ?— Would not the little suppers of such a party in our dining-room be animated, where you and I have so often supt pleasantly?

The mildness of last winter has, I imagine, been favourable to the extent of my poor father's life, that sits wavering upon his weak frame,

"Like the light down upon the thistle's beard,
Which every breeze may part."

Yet, how many people, in whose veins the tide of health ran with strong and flattering current, have sunk beneath its stagnation, since they, even they, bid me not flatter myself on the subject of his life.

When you present my affectionate regards to Dr Stokes, present them also to Mr and Mrs Butt; nor neglect observing to the latter, that I would write to him, but for the hope of conversing with him orally, perhaps even before this letter arrives at Kidderminster-by the way, that is a noble bull; but let it pass, since it passes quietly, and does not roar. But the sight of its very tail is enough to sicken one of employing a pen, which seems at present disposed to make bulls as readily as Neptune's trident made horses. Adieu!

LETTER XXI.

WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Lichfield, May 10, 1788.

You have made my poor old father very happy, by kindly exerting yourself with our beloved Romney, to procure us the possession of that highly valuable present, which the paternal eye longs to behold, ere its light grows too dim to discern the excellence of art.

Earlier had I acknowledged the receipt of your kind letter, but, within this past fortnight, I have been so unwell with a violent cough, and inflammation upon my lungs, that all the time in which I was able to write, has been given to letters on indispensable business, and to the composition of a sermon, requested by an ingenious young clergyman of our neighbourhood, who has just taken orders, and who wishes to make his first essay in the pulpit with something of my writing.

If I know any thing of my talents, sermonizing is their fort. I have written several, and I think nothing of mine so good of its kind. Wherever I meet with oratorical prose, from the pen of

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