among half a hundred words; to fill up four | than you, and shall give you my ideas of the quarto pages, while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information, or remark worth putting pen to paper for.

conjugal state-(en passant, you know I am no Latinist, is not conjugal derived from jugum, a yoke?) Well, then, the scale of good-wifeship I divide into ten parts.-Good-nature, four; Good Sense, two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage, (I would add a fine waist too. but that is so soon spoilt, you know) all these, one; as for the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune, Connexions, Education, (I mean education ex

remaining degrees among them as you please; only, remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by fractions, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the dignity of an integer.

I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! circled in the embrace of my elbowchair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on her three-footed stool, and like her too, labours with Nonsense.-Nonsense, auspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post in the mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic; and particularly in the sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY, who, leaving Com-traordinary) Family Blood, &c. divide the two mon Sense confounded at his strength of pinion, Reason delirious with eyeing his giddy flight, and Truth creeping back into the bot. tom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic Vision-raves abroad on all the As for the rest of my fancies and reverieswinds. "On earth Discord! a gloomy Hea- how I lately met with Miss L- Bven above, opening her jealous gates to the the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world nineteen thousandth part of the tithe of man---how I accompanied her and her father's kind! and below, an inescapable and inexorable hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of mortals!!!"-O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the weary, wounded soul of a man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye pauvres miserables, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest, be comforted! "Tis but one to nineteen hundred thousand that your situation will mend in this world;" so, alas! the experience of the poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by the dogmas of, that you will be damned eternally in the world to come!

But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a nostril snuffing putrescence, and a foot spurning filth, in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled.

or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the manyaproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave.-How ignorant are plough-boys!-Nay, I have since discoverd that a godly woman may be a!-But hold -Here's t'ye again this rum is generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal.

Apropos, how do you like, I mean really like the married life! Ah, my friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of his institutions. I am a husband of older standing

family fifteen miles on their journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God, in such an unequalled display of them-how, in galloping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part

Thou, bonnie L, art a queen,

Thy subjects we before thee;
Thou, bonnie L-, art divine,
The hearts o' men adore thee.

The very Deil he could na scaith
Whatever wad belang thee!
He'd look into thy bonnie face

And say, "I canna wrang thee." behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my imagination, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season.

Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed bosom-companion, be given the precious things brought forth by the sun, and the precious things brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influence of the stars, and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by the tree of life, for ever and ever! Amen!

No. CXXXIV.
TO MRS DUNLOP.

Dumfries, 24th September, 1792.
I HAVE this moment, my dear madam, yours
of the twenty-third. All your other kind re-
proaches, your news, &c. are out of my head
when I read and think on Mrs H's situ-
ation. Good God! a heart-wounded helpless
young woman-in a strange, foreign land, and
that land convulsed with every horror, that can

family, they have matters among them which they hear, see, and feel in a serious, all-important manner, of which the world has not, nor cares to have, any idea. The world looks indifferently on, makes the passing remark, and proceeds to the next novel occurrence.

Alas, madam! who would wish for many I wish the farmer great joy of his new ac- years! What is it but to drag existence until quisition to his family.. our joys gradually expire and leave us in a I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as night of misery; like the gloom which blots a farmer. Tis, as a farmer paying a dear, un-out the stars one by one, from the face of conscionable rent, a cursed life! As to a laird night, and leaves us, without a ray of comfort, farming his own property; sowing his own in the howling waste! corn in hope; and reaping it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say unto him, "what dost thou ?"-fattening his herds; shearing his flocks; rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe-'tis a heavenly life! but Devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another

must eat.

Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make my Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs B, until her nine months' race is run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too, seems determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However, if Heaven will be so obliging as let me have them on the proportion of three boys to one girl, I shall be so much the more pleased. I hope, if I am spared with them, to show a set of boys that will do honour to my cares and name; but I am not equal to the task of rearing girls. Besides, I am too poor; a girl should always have a fortune. Apropos, your little god-son is thriving charmingly, but is a very devil. He, though two years younger, has completely mastered his brother. Robert is indeed the mildest, gentlest creature I ever saw. He has a most surprising memory, and is quite the pride of his schoolmaster.

You know how readily we get into prattle upon a subject dear to our heart: you can excuse it. God bless you and yours!

No. CXXXV.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ON THE
DEATH OF MRS H, HER DAUGHTER.

I HAD been from home, and did not receive your letter until my return the other day. What shall I say to comfort you, my much valued, much-afflicted friend! I can but grieve with you; consolation I have none to offer, except that which religion holds out to the children of affliction-children of affliction !how just the expression! and like every other

This much-lamented lady was gone to the south of France with her infant son, where she died soon after.

I am interrupted, and must leave off. You shall soon hear from me again.

No. CXXXVI.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

Dumfries, 6th December, 1792. I SHALL be in Ayrshire, I think, next week; and if at all possible, I shall certainly, my much-esteemed friend, have the pleasure of visiting at Dunlop-house.

Alas, madam! how seldom do we meet in this world, that we have reason to congratulate ourselves on accessions of happiness! I have not passed half the ordinary term of an old man's life, and yet I scarcely look over the obituary of a newspaper, that I do not see some names that I have known, and which I, and other acquaintances, little thought to meet with there so soon. Every other instance of the mortality of our kind, makes us cast an anxious look into the dreadful abyss of uncertainty, and shudder with apprehensions for our own fate. But of how different an importance are the lives of different individuals? Nay, of what importance is one period of the same life, more than another? A few years ago, I could have lain down in the dust," careless of the voice of the morning;" and now not a few, and these most helpless individuals, would, on losing me and my exertions, lose both their "staff and shield." By the way, these helpless ones have lately got an addition, Mrs B. having given me a fine girl since I wrote you. There is a charming passage in Thomson's Edward and Eleanora.

"The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer-Or what need he regard his single woes?" &c.

As I am got in the way of quotations, I shall give you another from the same piece, peculiarly, alas! too peculiarly apposite, my dear madam, to your present frame of mind: "Who so unworthy but may proudly deck him, With his fair-weather virtue, that exults Glad o'er the summer main? the tempest comes, The rough winds rage aloud; when from the helm

This virtue shrinks, and in a corner lies,

Lamenting-Heavens! if privileged from trial,
How cheap a thing were virtue!"

I do not remember to have heard you mention Thomson's dramas. I pick up favourite quotations, and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive, or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence. Of these is one, a very favourite one, from his Alfred,

"Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose."

Probably I have quoted some of these to you formerly, as indeed when I write from the heart, I am apt to be guilty of such repetitions. The compass of the heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more bounded than that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are extremely apt to run into one another; but in return for the paucity of its compass, its few notes are much more sweet. I must still give you another quotation, which I am almost sure I have given you before, but I cannot resist the temptation. The subject is religion speaking of its importance to mankind, the author says,

First, in the sexes' intermix'd connexion,
One sacred Right of Woman is protection.
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Sunk to the earth, defaced its lovely form,
Helpless, must fall before the blast of fate,
Unless your shelter ward th' impending storm.—

Our second Right's but needless here is cau-
tion,

To keep that right inviolate's the fashion,
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He'd die before he'd wrong it-'tis decorum.-
There was, indeed, in far less polish'd days,
A time, when rough rude men had naughty ways:
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are
Nay, even thus invade a lady's quiet.-

fled:

Now, well-bred men-and you are all well-bred-
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

For Right the third, our last, our best, our
dearest,

tion

That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest,
which even the Rights of Kings in low prostra
Most humbly own-'tis dear, dear admiration
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life-immortal love
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears. fits, flirtations, airs,
'Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares-
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?

"Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning When awful Beauty joins with all her charms bright," &c. as in p. 49.

I see you are in for double postage, so I shall e'en scribble out t'other sheet. We in this country here have many alarms of the reforming, or rather the republican spirit of your part of the kingdom. Indeed we are a good deal in commotion ourselves. For me, I am a placeman, you know; a very humble one indeed, Heaven knows, but still so much so as to gag me. What my private sentiments are, you will find out without an interpreter.

I have taken up the subject in another view; and the other day, for a pretty actress's benefitnight, I wrote an address, which I will give you on the other page, called The Rights of Woman.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.

But truce with kings, and truce with constitu-
tions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions,
Let majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ca ira! THE MAJESTY OF WOMAN!

I shall have the honour of receiving your criticisms in person at Dunlop.

No. CXXXVII.

AMONG many things for which I envy those hale, long-lived old fellows before the flood, is this in particular, that when they met with any body after their own heart, they had a charming long prospect of many, many happy meetings with them in after-life.

Now, in this short, stormy winter day of our fleeting existence, when you now and then, in the Chapter of Accidents, meet an individual

An Occasional Address spoken by MISS FONTE- whose acquaintance is a real acquisition, there

NELLE on her benefit-night.

WHILE Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings,
While Quacks of state must each produce his
plan,

And even children lisp the Rights of Man:
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

are all the probabilities against you, that you shall never meet with that valued character more. On the other hand, brief as the miserable being is, it is none of the least of the miseries belonging to it, that if there is any miscreant whom you hate, or creature whom

*Ironical allusion to the saturnalia of the Caledonian Hunt.