nothing to do with her 'Tis very well, you are welcome to have nothing to do with her; but in the meantime her verse is the only French verse I ever read that I found agreeable: there is a neatness in it equal to that which we applaud with so much reason in the compositions of Prior. I have translated several of them, and shall proceed in my translations, till I have filled a Lilliputian paper book I happen to have by me, which when filled I shall present to Mr Bull. He is her passionate admirer, rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely insisted on his acceptance of it, and it now hangs over his chimney. It is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be a strong resemblance, and, were it encompassed with a glory, instead of being dressed in a nun's hood, might pass for the face of an angel. Yours, W. C.

A BILLET AND VERSES.

To watch the storms, and hear the sky
Give all our almanacks the lie;

To shake with cold, and see the plains
In autumn drown'd with wintry rains;
'Tis thus I spend my moments here,
And wish myself a Dutch mynheer;
I then should have no need of wit;
For lumpish Hollander unfit!
Nor should I then repine at mud,
Or meadows deluged with a flood;
But in a bog live well content,
And find it just my element :
Should be a clod, and not a man,
Nor wish in vain for Sister Ann,
With charitable aid to drag
My mind out of its proper quag;
Should have the genius of a boor,
And no ambition to have more.

MY DEAR SISter,

You see my beginning-I do not know but in time I may proceed even to the printing of half

whom she had been tenderly attached, she gave up the world at the age of twenty-eight, turning all her thoughts to religion. She suffered various imprisonments for her opinions, which she propagated, during five years, by constant itinerant preaching, and in various works, amounting to thirty-nine volumes. She is considered, though improperly, the founder of the Quietists, a sect whose tenets originated with Molionos, a Spanish friar of the seventeenth century, who held that the proper worship of the Supreme Being is an inward contemplation of the Divine attributes. Madame Guyon revived this doctrine, and had the good fortune to have her opinions supported by Fenelon, and her poems translated by Cowper.

penny ballads-Excuse the coarseness of my paper-I wasted such a quantity before I could accomplish anything legible, that I could not afford finer. I intend to employ an ingenious mechanic of the town to make me a longer case; for you may observe that my lines turn up their tails like Dutch mastiffs, so difficult do I find it to make the two halves exactly coincide with each other.

We wait with impatience for the departure of this unseasonable flood. We think of you, and talk of you, but we can do no more, till the waters shall subside. I do not think our correspondence should drop, because we are within a mile of each other. It is but an imaginary approximation, the flood having in reality as effectually parted us as if the British Channel rolled between us.

Yours, my dear sister, with Mrs Unwin's best love,

MON AIMABLE AND TRES CHER AMI,-It is not in the power of chaises or chariots to carry you where my affections will not follow you; if I heard that you were gone to finish your days in the Moon, I should not love you the less; but should contemplate the place of your abode as often as it appeared in the heavens, and say-Farewell, my friend, for ever! Lost, but not forgotten! Live happy in thy lantern, and smoke the remainder of thy pipes in peace! Thou art rid of Earth, at least of all its cares, and so far can I rejoice in thy removal; and as to the cares that are to be found in the Moon, I am resolved to suppose them lighter than those below-heavier they can hardly be.

Madame Guyon is finished, but not quite transcribed.

11. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

STORY OF JOHN GILPIN-RECEPTION OF THE POEMS AT COURT-BENEVOLENCE

FRUSTRATED.

November 4, 1782.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-You are too modest; though your last consisted of three sides only, I am certainly a letter in your debt. It is possible that this present writing may prove

as short. Yet, short as it may be, it will be a letter, and make me creditor, and you my debtor. A letter, indeed, ought not to be estimated by the length of it, but by the contents, and how can the contents of any letter be more agreeable than your last?

You tell me that John Gilpin made you laugh tears, and that the ladies at court are delighted with my Poems. Much good may they do them! May they become as wise as the writer wishes them, and they will be much happier than he! I know there is in the book that wisdom which cometh from above, because it was from above that I received it. May they receive it too! For whether they drink it out of the cistern, or whether it falls upon them immediately from the clouds, as it did on me, it is all one: It is the water of life, which whosoever drinketh shall thirst no more. As to the famous horseman above mentioned, he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of merriment. At least, we find him so, and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them. You are perfectly at liberty to deal with them as you please. Auctore tantum anonymo imprimantur ; and when printed, send me a copy.

I congratulate you on the discharge of your duty and your conscience, by the pains you have taken for the relief of the prisoners. You proceeded wisely, yet courageously, and deserved better success. Your labours, however, will be remembered elsewhere, when you shall be forgotten here; and if the poor folks at Chelmsford should never receive the benefit of them, you will yourself receive it in heaven. It is pity that men of fortune should be determined to acts of beneficence, sometimes by popular whim or prejudice, and sometimes by motives still more unworthy. The liberal subscription raised in behalf of the widows of the seamen lost in the Royal George, was an instance of the former. At least a plain, short, and sensible letter in the newspaper, convinced me at the time, that it was an unnecessary and injudicious collection; and the difficulty you found in effectuating your benevolent intentions on this occasion, constrains me to think, that had it been an affair of more notoriety than merely to furnish a few poor fellows with a little fuel to preserve their extremities from the frost, you would have succeeded better. Men really pious, delight in doing good by stealth. But nothing less than an ostentatious display of bounty will satisfy mankind in general. I feel myself disposed to furnish you with an opportunity to shine in secret. We do what we

can. But that can is little. You have rich friends, are eloquent on all occasions, and know how to be pathetic on a proper one. The winter will be severely felt at Olney by many, whose sobriety, industry, and honesty, recommend them to charitable notice; and we think we could tell such persons as Mr or Mr half-a-dozen tales of distress, that would find their way into hearts as feeling as theirs. You will do as you see good; and we in the meantime shall remain convinced, that you will do your best. Lady Austen will no doubt do something; for she has great sensibility and compassion. Yours, my dear Unwin,

W. C.

112.TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

BENEFACTION TO THE POOR AT OLNEY — GILPIN'S SUCCESS.

November 18, 1782.

MY DEAR WILLIAM,-On the part of the poor, and on our part, be pleased to make acknowledgments, such as the occasion calls for, to our beneficient friend Mr

I

call him ours, because having experienced his kindness to myself in a former instance, and in the present his disinterested readiness to succour the distressed, my ambition will be satisfied with nothing less. He may depend upon the strictest secrecy; no creature shall hear him mentioned, either now or hereafter, as the person from whom we have received this bounty. But when I speak of him, or hear him spoken of by others, which sometimes happens, I shall not forget what is due to so rare a character. I wish, and your mother wishes it too, that he could sometimes take us in his way to he will find us happy to receive a person whom we must needs account it an honour to know. We shall exercise our best discretion in the disposal of the money; but in this town, where the gospel has been preached so many years, where the people have been favoured so long with laborious and conscientious ministers, it is not an easy thing to find those who make no profession of religion at all, and are yet proper objects of charity. The profane are so profane, so drunken, dissolute, and in every respect worthless, that to make them partakers of his bounty, would be to abuse it. We promise, however, that none shall touch it but such as are miserably poor, yet at the same time industrious and honest, -two characters frequently united here, where the most watchful

and unremitting labour will hardly procure them bread. We make none but the cheapest laces, and the price of them is falling almost to nothing. Thanks are due to yourself likewise, and are hereby accordingly rendered, for waving your claim in behalf of your own parishioners. You are always with them, and they are always, at least some of them, the better for your residence among them. Olney is a populous place, inhabited chiefly by the half-starved and the ragged of the earth, and it is not possible for our small party and small ability to extend their operations so far as to be much felt among such numbers. Accept, therefore, your share of their gratitude, and be convinced, that when they pray for a blessing upon those who relieved their wants, He that answers that prayer, and when he answers it, will remember his servant at Stock.

I little thought when I was writing the history of John Gilpin, that he would appear in print - I intended to laugh, and to make two or three others laugh, of whom you were one. But now all the world laughs, at least if they have the same relish for a tale ridiculous in itself, and quaintly told, as we have-Well-they do not always laugh so innocently, and at so small an expense; for in a world like this, abounding with subjects for satire, and with satirical wits to mark them, a laugh that hurts nobody has at least the grace of novelty to recommend it. Swift's darling motto was Vive la bagatelle a good wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. La bagatelle has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend, nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle, it is because I am reduced to it by necessity-a melancholy that nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me sometimes in the arduous task of being merry by force. And, strange as

it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood; and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never been written at all.

I hear from Mrs Newton, that some great persons have spoken with great approbation of a certain book-Who they are, and what they have said, I am to be told in a future letter. The Monthly Reviewers, in the meantime, have satisfied me well enough. - Yours, my dear William,

W. C.