declares his power to requite the clemency; to spread the name of him who showed it over seas and lands;

"In every clime the sun's bright circle warms."

'Dr. Parr is a warm whig, loves our constitution, and ardently wishes its preservation; but he says malignant and able spirits are at work to overthrow it, and that with their efforts a fatal train of causes cooperate.

I saw him depart, with much regret, though his morning, noon, and evening pipe involved us in clouds of tobacco while he staid, but they were gilded by perpetual vollies of genius and wit.'

A mere fine lady would not have been so civil to Dr. Parr's pipe of tobacco: but that Miss S., in spite of these vulgar fumes, could be enraptured with her guest's wit and genius, enjoying his "feast of reason and his flow of soul," must prove her to have been a woman of mind ;-a woman who soared above ordinary femalities. As a farther proof how discursive her mind was, and with what freedom she wrote to her correspondents, we transcribe a part of a long letter to Mrs. Knowles, dated Feb. 23, 1790.

'Genius and eloquence shed all their lustre over your professions of benevolent faith, concerning the progressive state of virtue and true piety, upon this little speck in the universe-our earth; but I, a colder sceptic concerning such progress, am afraid there never was so little of either to be found upon its surface. With the weeds of religion, her persecuting cruelties, the flowers, alas, have been rooted up. Numbers assure me, who have had opportunities of seeing and knowing, that France is almost wholly a nation of Deists; that her people at large have been laughed by Voltaire, out of persecution, on one hand, and on the other, out of the fancy, that there was merit in turning the other cheek to the blows of oppression.

Their minds tempered by the leaven of witty ridicule, it remained only to rise and exert themselves. The narrow policy, and shortsighted selfishness of the French court, sent them to pilfer forfeited English gingerbread, to the very school in which the vital principles of freedom are taught, both by precept and example.

From the inspiration of freedom, we may turn our thoughts to the inspirations of the muses, without very violent transition. The herbal intrigues, as you humourously call them, in Darwin's illustrious poem, however interesting to botanists, from the notes at the bottom, seem, to the poetic eye, the least material part. It will be apt to view them but as vehicles, which introduces those Claude and Salvatorial landscapes; those splendid similies; those happy allusions to interesting parts of history, and to ingenious fables; those wonderfully picturesque descriptions of ancient and modern arts, gracefully impersomised, and, with all their complicated machinery, distinctly brought to the eye.

It is astonishing, that so fine a work could have been produced, that does not interest the human passions, nor contain any precepts of moral rectitude. However, the sins of this beautiful sport of fancy against them, are merely those of omission; surely it has no tendency to inflame the first, or to undermine the second.

'Is it possible you have not read the Piozzian travels? You, who profess to interest yourself in the female right to literature and science, ought not to turn such a cold incurious eye towards any thing which advances the progress of that claim. With all its unaccountable oddness, and perpetual vulgarism of style, it is highly worth the attention of kindred genius. If you would like to know the soil of the clime, the scenery, the disposition, the manners, the habits of the cities of Rome, Naples, Genoa, Venice, Bologna, &c. just as familiarly as you know all these things at Rugely, Birmingham, and Lichfield, you must shut yourself up for a few days with those volumes. No other travels I ever read possess their discriminating powers.

'I am charmed with your portraits of our Princess at Brighthelmstone, and their train of supple courtiers. If I had not so often seen ordinary phizes resemble beautiful ones, I should be flattered that you think me so like the buxom widow, who tows our plump heir-apparent about by the heart-strings. Several others have told me of the resem blance between us.

'My dear father yet exists. During three weeks of this flowersoft winter, he suffered so much from a violent cough and difficulty of breathing, that, if the disorder had continued, I hope I should not have been so selfish as to wish his life prolonged; but, returning to his former quiescent state, my ardent desire to detain yet longer this dim resemblance of a beloved parent repossesses my heart.

'Last week arrived news that thrilled my heart with tender melancholly; the cutting off, by hereditary consumption, of that fair blossom, the daughter of my lost Honora. I have been assured she possessed her mother's beauty, and all those native intellectual graces, whose influence shone long upon my happiness, like a vernal morning. -Honora Edgworth was just fifteen. And grievous is the consciousness, that all remains, all traces of my soul's idol vanish thus from the earth. Her boy, ever feeble and delicate, will, I suppose, follow his lovely sister to an early grave.

'Lady G. of Lichfield, long invalid, and far advanced in life, sunk from us some few months since. A civil, social being, as you know, "whose care was never to offend;" who had the spirit of a gentlewoman, in never doing a mean thing; whose mite was never withheld from the poor; and whose inferiority of understanding and knowledge found sanctuary at the card-table, that universal leveller of intellectual distinctions. Her loss will make a considerable chasm in the plea, sures of many, who like to be often engaged in card-parties, without the trouble of forming them at home.

'Soon after followed the very aged Mrs. F., who had lived ninetytwo years in the world, without conciliating the esteem of a single being. A creature of selfish avarice, she died unlamented.

Seldom have I seen a young man more qualified to pass innocently, laudably, and happily, a life of leisure, than your George. If he likes the sports of the fields, moderately taken, they would advantage his health; and when there is such a love of books and the pencil, as dwells with him, no danger would surely-arise, that he should take field sports immoderately. His dependance upon you, his attachment to your person, your abilities, your virtues, form a bulwark about him against the vices of youth. The fortune which he will inherit fron you, as the reward of his good conduct, is more than competent to the elegant comforts of life. Ah! why then endeavour to inspire him with the desire of accumulating so affluent a property? Is there a passion nay, is there a vice, which the New Testament declares more fatal to Christian peace, and Christian virtue, than the thirst of riches? Never has experience shown that happiness was the result of wealth, beyond the pale of affluence. Finely does that master of the human heart, that-Shakspeare of prose, Richardson, express himself upon this subject "You are, all of you, too rich to be happy, child; for must not each of you, by the constitutions of your family, be put upon making yourselves-still richer; and so every individual of it, except yourself, will go on accumulating; and, wondering that they have not happiness, since they have riches, continue to heap up, till death; as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner

It seems strange to me, that any person of an exalted nind, untainted with the vices of profusion, and undazzled by the splendour: of ostentation, can wish a beloved child to imbibe the desire of increasing an affluent property; stranger still, that a pious character should so wish, since the Scripture's declare it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The expression, rich man, certainly means a miser; and how great-a temptation to this exclusive vice, is the habit of living daily in contemplation, and constant attention, to heaps of sordid Mammon !i Forgive-my ingenuousness; the sincerity of an almost life-long friendship...

That Miss S. possessed a feeling heart, and sympathised with her friends in their sorrows, these volumes exhibit abundant testimony; and if it were possible for affliction to receive relief from reflections adapted to the house of mourning, her letters must have been prized..by her grief-stricken correspondents, as a balm to the heart. She never flatters riches: but, conscious of the superiority of intellectual endowments, she despised that money-vanity which is so very characteristic of this Mammonworshipping age. Our readers shall see how her thoughts flow when she takes a glance at mortality and the world. Writing to Mr. Cotton, she says:

Alas! poor Mrs. Style! I hoped to have felt my heart expand again and again in the warm benevolence which shone out in her countenance, and in her manners. I should yet more regret that you have lost her, had you not told me that clouds of causeless dejection were

apt to involve, and, during long intervals, darken its light. The idea of a friends sufferings, so painful to us while they are endured, becomes lenient and consolatory when it hovers over their sepulchre; yet must you long feel a dreary vacuity in Lady Fane's circle. Local circumstances are great nourishers of regret.

"When to the old elm's wonted shade. return mourn d.

Then, then I miss my vanished friend and mourned

friend-and

It is peculiarly proper that I should condole with you on the loss of your friend this day-for it is the 17th of March; the birth-day of my lovely long-deceased sister, who died in ber nineteenth year "a fair flower soon cut down on our fields. The spring returned with its showers, but no leaf of her's arose :"-yet does not my heart forget this day, which gave to life an amiable creature, who shed the light of joy over many of my youthful years. Many are fled since she vanished from earth. Time balms sorrow, and there is a joy in grief when the soul is at peace. But I am conscious there are deprivations, the wound of which no time can balm. Then it is that anguish wastes the mournful, and their days are few. Heaven preserve my heart, and the hearts of all I love, from the corrosive impression of such a wo!

Here is nothing to be called news which can interest you. Some of us are grown very fine. The -'s and 's, whom you remember contentedly moving in general equality with their neighbours, have, amidst their, of late years, improving fortunes, taken great state upon themselves; affect to live in what they call style; to associate chiefly with Lords and Esquires of high degree in the environs. They think, no doubt, that thus externally elevating themselves, they shall excite the envy of their neighbours, that darling triumph of contracted minds. They certainly do excite it amongst the many who would act the same part if they had the same golden means. But there are two classes of people who look down upon such low-souled ambition, and all its silly. ostentations-the religious and the literary. Earthly parade can draw no jealous glances from eyes that are often lifted up to Heaven; and the votaries of intellectual and lettered pleasures, look upon their lacquies and lords, their strutting and their style, with as undazzled and untroubled eyes, as eagles can be supposed to cast on glow-worms, when they have been recently gazing on the

sun.'

Miss Seward was not rich; having, as she informs us in one of her letters on the death of her father, scarcely 400 a year: but she appears to have been a good economist, and, with a proper spirit of independence, to have discharged the duties of friendship and hospitality, and to have taken those excursions which were necessary for her health. Her mode of life is displayed in these letters; and therefore, for the period which they include, they may be considered as her memoirs. We purpose, in a subsequent number, to display other features of her mind, and to prepare farther entertainment for our readers.....

SPIRIT OF MAGAZINES.

FROM THE MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY.

EXTRACTS

From the Journal of a gentleman on a visit to Lisbon.

THE principal object of our jaunt, was to visit the celebrated convent of Arrabida, on the mountain of that name. We sat out on this expedition at an early hour, while dewy drops hung trembling on the tree. We embarked on board a boat in the river, down which we proceeded. About a league below the town we passed Atun Castle, which commands the entrance of the Sado. Our boatmen rowed through a narrow pass between the shore and two huge insulated rocks, whose overhanging craggy cliffs seemed every instant ready to precipitate themselves upon us. Their summits were covered with shrubs. On one of them was erected a monumental cross, in memory of a man who was dashed to pieces as he was climbing in pursuit of birds. In the other, we

saw the mouth of a vast and hideous cavern. We landed not far from this, and began to ascend the mountain. As we drew near the summit, the extraordinary and singular beauties of this romantic spot increased at every step. Nothing could surpass in sublimity and wildness the scenery around. Below was the Atlantic ocean. At the foot of the mountain lay St. Ubes, with its harbour and fertile plain. Before us rose a high, naked and stony ridge of mountains, apparently inaccessible to human footsteps. To the right, the prospect stretched across the black desert waste of Alemtejo, beyond which we distinguished in the distance the spires of Lisbon, and the crowd of shipping at anchor in the Tagus. Close to the sea, in a hollow surrounded by steep and naked rocks, appeared the small town of Cezimbra. About six miles from St. Ubes, the range terminates in the promontory of Espichel. We saw lapwings, storks, and wild ducks in great numbers, and many eagles planing over head. Our guides led us down a