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munity, but with other antiquities is to be only reserved for the cabinets of the curious; there, as we view it clothed in venerable rust, to excite our astonishment at the difference between the clumsy accoutrements of our ancestors, and the convenient accommodations of our own time.

I am interrupted by Mr. Otway, who sends his love, and bids me say, that he has a letter on the anvil; so I will send mine. But I have been led into the mazes of this brilliant scene, so far remote from domestic subjects, that I find not a word in all my prosing of poor uncle, for whom I feel both tenderness and respect. He suffers much, and, if I am not greatly mistaken, has "that within which passeth shew.” His mind appears to me as if it had gone out of Nature's loom a goodly tissue, but has been pulled bias by untoward circumstances of fortune and ill health. As yet I know very little of him, and he is so reserved with his relations, that were there not certain loop-holes through which I peep into the interior, and

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thence form judgment of his true texture, the first and second words of Cæsar's triplicate would answer every purpose of description in my instance; and in saying veni vidi, I should tell you all that is to be known; but I sometimes see him shake his head, and catch him. now and then, his eyes suffused with tears, and fixed intently on me. The moment of observation is that of change, and, as a person who has dropped asleep in Church, coughs, hems, and kicks his heels, to prove how much awake he is, so my uncle throws a tartness, an abruptness, into his manner after one of these little affectionate lapses, to assure us of the sternness of his character. My next shall be to Emily.

Adieu, beloved! My heart is with you all, though the casket be far from you. I shall have much to tell the three, Graces I will not call them, Furies I cannot call them : what then shall I call them? They shall be the Destinies, because my fate is in their hands, and as they love and value me through life, I shall be happy or the contrary.

Remember me affectionately, if you please, to dear Mr. Oliphant, and do not drive your little car from the door without telling Law

rence that I enquire for him. Farewell!

Your own

FREDERICK.

LETTER XXVI.

MR. OTWAY TO MRS. DOUGLAS.

Dearest Friend,

My former letters have been faithful transcripts from the book of our lives, and Frederick has filled up all interstices, but before I proceed to the main purpose which induces me to write to-day, I must indulge myself, and not displease you, by saying a few words of this dear youth, whom I have hitherto only mentioned incidentally, because I wished to see how he would bear the whirl of a London scene, and comport himself in some situations as trying as they were novel to him, ere I trumpeted his praise. You know how I abhor flattery, and will therefore give me credit for believing what I express of admiration for your son, who

really astonishes me. Though introduced for the first time to what is called, certainly not par excellence, the Great World, he is neither awkward nor confused. The easy polish of true refinement which he learned at home, in the bosom of that loved retreat where all the best affections of his noble and manly heart are centered, frank him into a metropolitan drawingroom, as fearlessly as into your's at Glenalta; and his manners exhibit the happiest combination of boldness, in which there is no mixture of presumption, and modesty without mauvaise honte. With all the freshness of curiosity, and the candour of one who disdains subterfuge, he flies about collecting information-gratifying his good taste, and honestly confessing his previous ignorance of a thousand objects which have ceased to stimulate, if they ever did so, the vapid group by which we are environed. The courage with which Frederick dares to express his own thoughts, instead of borrowing the hacknied reverberation of opinions often adopted without discrimination, and rendered

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