To Dr. Aiken.

To my sister and yourself, Mr. Barbauld and I have
a request to make, in which, though perhaps it may
be rather singular, we are very seriously in earnest;
and therefore, whether you grant or deny, we hope
you will neither laugh at us nor take it amiss. Without
further preface, it is this. You enjoy a blessing
Providence has hitherto denied to us,—that of children:
you have already several, and seem very likely
to have a numerous family. As to ourselves, having
been thus long without prospect of any, it is, to say
the least, very uncertain whether that hope, which
most I believe form when they marry, will ever be
fulfilled. Some, indeed, say to us, that considering
how large a family we have of others children, ’t is
rather fortunate we have none of our own. And true
it is, that employed as we are in the business of
education, we have many of the cares and some of
the pleasures of a parent; but the latter very imperfectly.
We have them not early enough to contract
the fondness of affection which early care alone can
give; we have them not long enough to see the fruit
of our culture; and we have not enough the disposal 1(2)v 4
of them to follow our own plans and schemes in their
education. We wish for one who might be wholly
ours: and we think that if a child was made ours by
being given young into our hands, we could love it,
and make it love us so well, as to supply in a great
measure the want of the real relationship. We know
there are many instances of people, who have taken
the greatest satisfaction in, and felt the highest fondness
for, children who by some accident have been
thrown upon their arms. Why then should not we
seek out and choose some object of such an affection?
and where can we better seek it than in a brother’s
family?

Our request then, in short, is this: that you will
permit us to adopt one of your children; which of
them, we leave to you;—that you will make it ours
in every sense in which it is possible to make it,—
that you will transfer to us all the care and all the
authority of a parent; that we should provide for it,
educate it, and have the entire direction of it, as far
into life as the parental power itself extends. Now
I know not what to say, to induce you to make us
such a gift. Perhaps you will entirely deny it; and
then we must acquiesce: for I am sensible it is not a
small thing we ask; nor can it be easy for a parent
to part with a child. This I would say, from a
number, one may may more easily be spared. Though
it makes a very material difference in happiness
whether a person has children or no children, it makes,
I apprehend, little or none whether he has three,
or four; five, or six; because four or five are enow
to exercise all his whole stock of care and affection.
We should gain, but you would not lose. I would
likewise put you in mind that you would not part with
it to strangers; the connexion between you and it
would not be broken off: you would see it (I hope,) 1(3)r 5
hear of it often; and it should be taught to love you,
if it had not learnt that lesson before. Our child must
love our brother and sister. Its relation to you is
likewise a presumption that we shall not be wanting in
that love for it, which will be necessary to make it
happy. believe both Mr. Barbauld and myself
are much disposed to love children, and that we
could soon grow fond of any one who was amiable
and entirely under our care. How then can we
fail to love a child, for whom at setting out we shall
have such a stock of affection as we must have for
yours? I hope, too, we should have too right a sense
of things to spoil it; and we see too much of children,
to indulge an over-anxious care. But you know us
well enough to be able to judge in general how we
should educate it, and whether to your satisfaction.
Conscience and affection, I hope, would unite in inciting
us to fulfil an engagement we should thus
voluntarily take upon ourselves, to the best of our
abilities.

Our situation is not a certain one, nor have we long
tried it; but we have all the reason in the world to
hope that if things go on as they have hitherto done,
we should be able to provide for a child in a decent
and comfortable manner.

Now, my dear brother and sister, if you consent,
give us which of your boys you please: if you had
girls, perhaps we should ask a girl rather; and if we
might choose amongst your boys, we could make
perhaps a choice;—but that we do not expect you
will let us. Give us, then, which you will; only let
him be healthy, inoculated, and as young as you can
possibly venture him to undertake the journey. This
last circumstance is indispensable: for if he were not
quite young, we should not gain over him the influence,
we could not feel for him the affection, which would 1* 1(3)v 6
be necessary; besides, if at all able to play with our
pupils, he would immediately mix with them, and
would be little more to us than one of the schoolboys.
Do not, therefore, put us off by saying that
one of yours, when he is old enough, shall pay us a
visit. To see any of yours at any time, would no
doubt give us the highest pleasure; but that does not by
any means come up to what we now ask. We now
leave the matter before you; consider maturely, and
give us your answer.

O no! I never promised to fill this second sheet.
Good bye to you.

To Dr. Aikin.

You have given us too much pleasure lately, not
to deserve an earlier acknowledgement. I hope you
will believe we were not so dilatory in reading your
book,Open note na8-rota An Essay on the Application of Natural History to poetry.—
Editor. as we have been in thanking you for it. It is
indeed a most elegant performance; your thought is
very just, and has never, I believe, been pursued before.
Both the defects and beauties which you have
noticed are very striking, and the result of the whole
work, besides the truths it conveys, is a most pleasing
impression left upon the mind from the various and
picturesque images brought into view. I hope your
Essay will bring down our poets from their garrets
to wander about the fields and hunt squirrels. I am
clearly of your opinion, that the only chance we have
for novelty, is by a more accurate observation of the
works of Nature, though I think I should not have 1(4)r 7
confined the track quite so much as you have done
to the animal creation, because sooner exhausted than
the vegetable; and some of the lines you have quoted
from Thomson, show with how much advantage the
latter may be made the subject of rich description.
I think too, since you put me on criticising, it would
not have been amiss, if you had drawn the line between
the poet and natural historian; and shown how
far, and in what cases, the one may avail himself of
the knowledge of the other,—at what nice period that
knowledge becomes so generally spread, as to authorize
the poetical describer to use it, without shocking
the ear by the introduction of names and properties
not sufficiently familiar, and when at the same time it
retains novelty enough to strike. I have seen some
rich descriptions of West Indian flowers and plants,—
just, I dare say, but unpleasing merely because their
names were uncouth, and forms not known generally
enough to be put into verse. It is not, I own, much
to the credit of poets,—but it is true,—that we do
not seem disposed to take their word for any thing,
and never willingly receive information from them.

We are wondrous busy in preparing our play, The
Tempest; and four or five of our little ones are to
come in as fairies; and I am piecing scraps from the
Midsummer Night’s Dream, &c., to make a little
scene, instead of the mask of Ceres and Juno. We
have read Gibbon lately, who is certainly a very
elegant and learned writer, and a very artful one.
No other new books have we yet seen,—they come
slow to Norfolk,—but the Diaboliad, the author of
which has a pretty sharp pen-knife, and cuts up very
handsomely. Many are the literary matters I want
to talk over with you when we meet, which I now
look forward to as not a far-distant pleasure.

We will come and endeavour to steal away Charles’s 1(4)v 8
heart, before we run away with his person. Adieu!
Heaven bless you and yours.

To Miss Dixon, afterwards Mrs. Beecroft.

I have long been determined to seize the first
moment of leisure to write to my dear Miss Dixon;
but leisure is one of those things of which I enjoy
the least, so I am at length determined to write without
it. By the way, do you know the pedigree and
adventures of Leisure?

She was born somewhere amongst the Chaldean
shepherds, where she became a favourite of Urania;
and having been instructed in her sublime philosophy,
taught men to observe the course of the stars, and to
mark the slow revolution of seasons. The next we
hear of her, is in the rural mountains and valleys of
Arcadia. In this delightful abode her charms made
a conquest of the god Pan, who would often sit whole
days by her side, tuning his pipe of unequal reeds.
By him she had two beautiful children, Love and
Poetry, the darlings of the shepherds, who received
them in their arms, and brought them up amidst the
murmur of bees, the falls of water, the lowing of
cattle, and the various rural and peaceful sounds with
which that region abounded. When the Romans
spread the din of arms over the globe, Leisure was
frightened from her soft retreats, and from the cold
Scythian to the tawny Numidian could scarcely find
a corner of the world to shelter her head in. When
the fierce Goth and Vandal approached, matters were
still worse, and Leisure took refuge in a convent on
the winding banks of the Seine, where she employed 1(5)r 9
herself in making anagrams and cutting paper. Her
retirement, however, did not pass without censure, for
it is said she had an intrigue with the superior of the
convent, and that the offspring of this amour was a
daughter named Ennui.

Mademoiselle Ennui was wafted over to England
in a north-east wind, and settled herself with some of
the best families in the kingdom. Indeed the mother
seldom makes any long residence in a place without
being intruded on by the daughter, who steals in and
seats herself silently by her side.

I hope, however, my amiable friend is now enjoying
the company of the mother, without fear of a visit
from the daughter, whom her taste and liveliness will,
I am sure, ever exclude from her habitation.

To Miss Dixon.

Thanks to my dear Miss Dixon for her frank and
affectionate letter. A thousand good wishes attend
her; but as I hope to breathe them soon from my
lips, I shall spare my pen a task to which it is not
adequate.

You have rejoiced my heart by allowing me to
hope that we shall still see you at Palgrave before
the important event takes place. If you had not
acknowledged that you were going to be married,
I should naturally have concluded it from your saying
you have not time to read Cecilia. Not time to read
a novel!—that is so grave!—Nay, if I had not known
you, I should have supposed you had been actually
married a dozen years at least. But you must read Cecilia, and you must read Hayley’s poem, and you
may read Scott’s poems if you like, and at least you
must look at the plates, &c.

To Dr. Aikin.

It is a real concern to me that I could not write
to you from London…Let me now then begin
with telling you, that we two, Miss B――, and one
of our boys, got safe to Palgrave this afternoon. And
now for the first time, Mr. Barbauld and I experienced
the pleasure of having something to come home for,
and of finding our dear Charles in perfect health and
glad to see us again; though wondering a little, and
rather grave the first half-hour. Well, and what have
you seen, you will say, in London? Why, in the first
place, Miss More’s new play, which fills the house
very well, and is pretty generally liked. Miss More
is, I assure you, now very much the ton, and moreover
has got six or seven hundred pounds by her play:
I wish I could produce one every two winters; we
would not keep school. I cannot say however, that
I cried altogether so much at Percy, as I laughed at
the School for Scandal, which is one of the wittiest
plays I remember to have seen; and I am sorry to
add, one of the most immoral and licentious;—in
principle I mean, for in language it is very decent.
Mrs. Montague, not content with being the queen of
literature and elegant society, sets up for the queen of
fashion and splendour. She is building a very fine
house, has a very fine service of plate, dresses and
visits more than ever; and I am afraid will be full as
much the woman of the world as the philosopher.
Pray, have you read a book to prove Falstaff no
coward? I want to know what you think of it: the
present age deals in paradoxes. A new play of
Cumberland’s, and another of Home’s, are soon to
come out. Charles’s little book is very well, but my
idea is not executed in it: I must therefore beg you 1(6)r 11
will print one as soon as you can, on fine paper, on
one side only, and more space and a clearer line for
the chapters. Prefix, if you please, to that you are
going to print, the following “Advertisement. This little publication was made for a particular
child, but the public is welcome to the use of it. It
was found that amidst the multitude of books professedly
written for children, there is not one adapted to
the comprehension of a child from two to three years
old. A grave remark, or a connected story, however
simple, is above his capacity, and nonsense is always
below it; for folly is worse than ignorance. Another
great defect is the want of good paper, a clear and
large type, and large spaces. Those only who have
actually taught young children, can be sensible how
necessary these assistances are. The eye of a child
and of a learner cannot catch, as ours can, a small,
obscure, ill-formed word, amidst a number of others
all equally unknown to him. To supply these deficiencies
is the object of this book. The task is humble,
but not mean; for to lay the first stone of a noble
building, and to plant the first idea in a human mind,
can be no dishonour to any hand.”

To Dr. Aikin.

You are a pretty fellow to grumble, as my mother
says you do, at my not writing! Do not you remember
when you sent a sheet of Charles’s book, you
said you did not mean the line you sent with it for a
letter, but would write soon; so that by your own
confession, you are in debt to me. Charles bore a 1(6)v 12
part in our examination, by repeating a copy of verses
on the boy who would not say A, lest he should be
made to say B: and we, let me tell you, deserve great
praise for our modesty and self-denial, in not making
a parade with his Greek, for he could have repeated
an ode of Anacreon. But notwithstanding this erudition,
a few English books will still be very acceptable.

We are just returned from Norwich, where we
have been so much engaged in dinners and suppers,
that though I fully intended to write from thence, and
began a letter, I really could not finish it. The heads
of all the Norwich people are in a whirl, occasioned
by the routs which have been introduced amongst
them this winter; and such a bustle with writing cards
a month beforehand, throwing down partitions, moving
beds, &c. Do you know the different terms?
There is a squeeze, a fuss, a drum, a rout; and lastly,
a hurricane, when the whole house is full from top to
bottom. It is a matter of great triumph to me, that
we enjoy the latter for ten months in the year.

To Dr. Aikin.

Well, my dear brother, here we are in this busy
town, nothing in which (the sight of friends excepted)
has given us so much pleasure as the balloon which is
now exhibited in the Pantheon. It is sixteen feet one
way, and seventeen another; and when full (which
it is not at present) will carry eighty-six pounds.
When set loose from the weight which keeps it to the
ground, it mounts to the top of that magnificent dome
with such an easy motion as put me in mind of Milton’s
line, “rose like an exhalation.” We hope to see
it rise in the open air before we leave town. Next to 2(1)r 13
the balloon, Miss B. is the object of public curiosity;
I had the pleasure of meeting her yesterday. She
is a very unaffected, modest, sweet and pleasing
young lady:—but you, now I think of it, are a Goth,
and have not read Cecilia. Read, read it, for shame!
I begin to be giddy with the whirl of London, and to
feel my spirits flag. There are so many drawbacks,
from hair-dressers, bad weather, and fatigue, that it
requires strong health greatly to enjoy being abroad.
The enthusiasm for Mrs. Siddons seems something
abated this winter. As the last season was spent in
unbounded admiration, this, I suppose, will be employed
in canvassing her faults, and the third settle her in
her proper degree of reputation.

To Dr. Aikin.

We arrived at Palgrave yesterday. I much wished
to have written again from London; but I could not
get further than half a letter, which was therefore
committed to the flames. Bating the circumstance of
being greatly hurried, we spent our time very pleasantly
in London, and had a great deal of most agreeable
society. Our evenings, particularly at Johnson’s,
were so truly social and lively, that we protracted
them sometimes till…But I am not telling tales.
Ask ―― at what time we used to separate. Our
time, indeed, in London was chiefly spent in seeing
people: for as to seeing sights, constant visiting and
the very bad weather left us little opportunity for any
thing of that kind. There is a curious automaton
which plays at chess. His countenance, they say,
is very grave and full of thought, and you can hardly Vol. II. 2 2(1)v 14
help imagining he meditates upon every move. He
is wound up, however, at every two or three moves.
The same man has made another figure, which speaks:
but as his native tongue is French, he stays at home
at present to learn English. The voice is like that of
a young child.

We spent two very agreeable days at Mr. ――’s.
We saw there many Americans, members of the
congress, and plenipos. We were often amused with
the different sentiments of the several parties in which
we passed the day. At Mr. Brand Hollis’s, the
nation was ruined; notwithstanding which, we ate
our turkey and drank our wine as if nothing had happened.
In the evening party there was nobody to be
pitied but the poor king: and we criticised none but
Mrs. Siddons. It is impossible, however, not to be
kept awake by curiosity, at learning the extraordinary
manœuvres and rapid changes that have happened
lately. Do you know that at two o’clock on the day
the Parliament met, Mr. Pitt had not received his
return; so that Mr. Fox had almost begun the debates,
before Pitt knew he was even a member!

To Dr. Aikin.

Let me begin with telling you, what you have
some reason to complain of me for not having told
you before, that we are very well. Mr. B. has begun
to eat his dinners; and we smile upon the year,
as the year begins to smile upon his. We propose
going to Birmingham this vacation, and we understand
Oxford and Daventry are in the way; so that we
hope a great deal lies before us, to please the eye and 2(2)r 15
touch the soul of friendship: but busy must we be
before we have earned our vacation.

What do you think of the behaviour of our great
ladies on the present election? I thought the newspapers
had exaggerated: but Mr. ―― says, he himself
saw the two Lady ――’s and Miss ――’s go
into a low alehouse to canvass, where they staid half
an hour; and then, with the mob at their heels offering
them a thousand indignities, proceed to another.
These he mentioned as unmarried ladies, and therefore
less privileged. The Duchess of ――, Mrs. ――,
and many others, equally expose their charms for the
good of the public.

Have you got Hoole’s Ariosto? We are reading
it; but think the translation, except in a few passages, wonderfully flat and prosaic: the adventures are entertaining,
however.

To Dr. Aikin.

It is not very fair neither, for there is scarcely
wind enough; but what there is, is in our favour.
We are just got here, and a packet sails to-night, so I
suppose we shall go in a few hours; for the night is
the most beautiful, the most brilliant, that ever rivalled
day. The moon, which is nearly full, illuminates the
majestic chalky cliffs, the stately Castle, and the
element we are going to trust ourselves to. The
views about Dover are very bold and very beautiful.—
But let me give a regular account of ourselves. From 2(2)v 16 London we had the good fortune to take part of a
chaise to Dover with Dr. Osborn. He is a most entertaining,
agreeable companion; and we never had
a more agreeable journey, especially to-day, for yesterday
it was rainy, and we did not get into Rochester
till nine at night; consequently lost in a great measure
the windings of the silver Medway. But to-day
was uniformly fine; and greatly delighted we were
with the view of Chatham, Stroud, and Rochester,
from a hill just above the town, which we walked up.
The Medway makes a fine bend here. The hoppickers
were at work as we went along, but not with
their usual alacrity; for the late storm has blasted
them to such a degree, that twenty thousand pounds
worth of damage, they say, is done. The country is
beautifully variegated all the way, and has many fine
seats; among which Sir Horace Man’s was pointed
out. From this rich inclosed country you come to
the open downs, more grand and striking. The first
view of Dover castle is noble; and still more finished
that of the town, which we saw from Dr. O.’sOsborn’s house
where we dined. It has the castle on one side, hills
on the other, a valley between (in which is the town,)
and the sea beyond. I think we shall hardly see more
beautiful scenes in France. We here took leave of
our last English friends.—I forgot to say we took a
hasty peep at the venerable cathedral of Canterbury,
to which I would at any time willingly go a pilgrimage
—though not barefoot.

To Dr. Aikin.

I wrote letters from Calais and from Troyes, the
contents of which have, I hope, been communicated 2(3)r 17
to you. From Troyes we proceeded to Dijon by a
road so delightful, that I strongly wished my sister
and you could have been with me,—a wish, which I
cannot help forming, though a vain one, whenever
any object particularly pleasant presents itself. During
the greatest part of this road we had the full view of
the Seine, which we traced upwards to within half a
league of its source, and saw it grow less and less,
untwisting, as it were, to a single thread. The valley
in which it ran was narrow, of a beautiful verdure,
and bounded by hills of the most gentle ascent, covered
with trees or herbage: cattle of all sorts, among
which were several flocks of goats, were feeding in
sight. The road often ran upon the ascent; and we
saw the river, sometimes bordered with trees and
sometimes fringed with grass or rushes, winding beneath
in the most sportive meanders,—for we saw
and lost it nine times from one spot. The scene was
in general solitary; but if we came to a spot particularly
pleasant, it was sure to be marked by a convent,
the neatness of which, (generally white,) added to
the beauty of the scene. After we had lost the
Seine, we came to the Val de Suson, a still more romantic
place, and very like Middleton Dale, only that
the rocks were richly covered with trees. Through
the first part of this valley runs the river Suson; the
rest is still narrower, and between high rocks.

At Dijon we delivered our first letter of recommendation,
which introduced us to M. de Morveau, a
man of great merit, who was avocat-général, but has
quitted his profession for the sake of applying himself
to philosophical studies, and chiefly chemical. He
writes all the chemical articles in the New Encyclopedie.
He esteems Dr. Priestley, Dr. Black, and
Mr. Kirwan, to be the chief men in England in the
philosophical way. M. de Morveau was one of the 2* 2(3)v 18
first who ascended in a balloon. He showed us their
Academy, which is one of the first provincial ones.
The Palais des Etats in Dijon is the finest building
in it; the front of it forms one side of a very handsome
square, and the wings extend much beyond it.
It is adorned with statues and paintings by the pupils
of the drawing-school. From the tower, on which is
an observatory belonging to this building, is a charming
view of the country: the hills of Burgundy covered
with vines; the rivers of Ouche and Suson,
which encircle the town; and the town itself, which
is large though not very populous. In our way from
Dijon to Dole we saw more of the vintage than we
had hitherto done,—and a gay scene it is, though I
must confess my disappointment at the first sight of
the vines,—which are very low, and nothing like so
beautiful as our apple-trees. They say they have
more wine this year than they can possibly find vessels
to put it in; and yet the road was covered with
teams of casks, empty or full, according as they were
going out or returning, and drawn by oxen whose
strong necks seemed to be bowed unwillingly under
the yoke. Men, women, and children were abroad:
some cutting with a short sickle the bunches of grapes;
some breaking them with a wooden instrument; some
carrying them on their backs from the gatherers to
those who pressed the juice; and, as in our harvest,
the gleaners followed. From Dole we should have
gone directly to Besançon, but were induced to strike
out of the road, to visit the grottes stalactites of Auxcelles,
to see which we crossed in a ferry the river
Doux, a fine stream with banks beautifully wooded,
and got into a place most wild and solitary, through
such terrible bad roads, that what we thought would
have been the affair of a few hours, detained us there
the whole night: the grotto, however, repaid our 2(4)r 19
trouble. Had you been there, you would have seen
it with a more philosophical eye, and have told us
how the continual dropping of waters through those
rocks, forms those beautiful petrifications, which when
polished, as they sometimes are, have the lustre and
transparency of crystal. But it required only eyes,
to be struck with the view of a vast subterranean
running through a whole rock, which had the appearance
of a most magnificent Gothic church;—tombs,
images, drapery, pillars, shrines, all formed without
much aid from fancy, by nature working alone for
ages in these long and lofty caverns. We walked in
it, I believe, about two furlongs, and it might be another
to the end. Besançon is by far the best town
we have seen; the streets are long and regular, the
hotels of the chief inhabitants, palaces for princes, and
the public buildings noble. But you would have been
most struck with the hospital, managed in all the internal
part by those good nuns Les Hospitalieres, with
such perfect neatness, that in a long chamber containing
thirty-five beds, most of them full, there was not
any closeness or smell to be perceived. The beds
were of white cotton, and by each bed a table and
chair. Some of the nuns were attending here; others
in the dispensary making up medicines; others in
the kitchen making broths, &c.: and all this they do
without salary, and many of them are of good families.

Noyon, --10-13Oct.October 13th.—I could not finish my letter
time enough to send it from Besançon, which gives
me an opportunity to tell you in brief that we are got
to within a stage of Geneva, and are now sitting in a
room which overlooks the delightful lake. We were
too late last night for Geneva, as they shut the gates
at half-after-six, and open them for no one. We
hope to get there this morning, and to receive letters 2(4)v 20
from you, which my heart longs for. I have only to
tell you further, that I have seen the Alps,—a sight
so majestic, so totally different from any thing I had
seen before, that I am ready to sing Nunc dimittis.

Tell me in your next how long you have been sitting
by a coal fire. We have had no fire, but twice
or three times a little in the evening, since we set
out; and in the middle of the day the heat has been
very strong. I suppose, however, we shall find it
colder at Geneva.

And so much in French; which, though it begins
to be easier for me, is still to me, either in writing or
speaking, like using the left hand; and I now want the
language the most familiar to me, the most expressive,
that with less injustice to my feelings, I may thank you
for your charming letter. It is not necessary for you to
travel in order to write good verses; and indeed to say
truth, in the actual journey many things occur not altogether
so consonant with the fine ideas, one would wish
to keep upon one’s mind. The dirt and bustle of inns,
and the various circumstances, odd or disgusting, of a
French diligence, are not made to shine in poetry.
I shall, however, keep your exhortation in mind; and
when, to complete the inspiration, I have drunk of the
fountain of Vaucluse, which we are going to do, if the
Muse is not favourable, you may fairly conclude I no
longer possess her good graces. From Lyons we
took the diligence d’eau down the Rhone to this place,
a voyage which in summer, and in a vehicle more
neat and convenient, would have been delightful. But
we had incessant rain for two of the days; and the
third, though bright, was very cold, with a great deal
of wind; so that we did not reach Avignon till the 2(5)r 21
morning of the fourth day. The Rhone is rapid all
the way; but at Pont St. Esprit particularly so, insomuch
that many passengers get out there: we did
not. The Rhone has high banks all the way, or
rather is inclosed between hills, covered in many
places with vines and pasturage, in others pretty barren.
Near St. Esprit begins the olive country. This
was the first time we had been in a public voiture; it
is a very reputable one, and yet you cannot conceive
the shabbiness and mal propreté of the boat.

We are now in a land of vermicelli, soup, and macaroni,
—a land of onions and garlic,—a land flowing
with oil and wine. Avignon is delightfully situated;
the Rhone forms two branches here, and incloses a
large fertile island. The Durance (another fine river,
at present so overflowed that it is not passable,) joins
the Rhone some way below the town. The churches
here are numerous, highly adorned, and have several
good paintings. The streets are darkened with cowls
and filled with beggars; drawn here, they say, by the
strangers,—for the people are no ways oppressed by
the government, the revenue to the pope hardly
paying the expenses. We are not yet, however, in
the climate of perpetual spring;—like an enchanted
island, it seems to fly from us. All along the course
of the Rhone there are cold winds. Lyons is disagreeable
in winter, both with fogs and cold. At Geneva,
every body had fires and winter dresses before
we left it; and Avignon, though much warmer, is not
enough so to invite us much abroad, or permit us to
dispense with fires. To-morrow we set off for Orange,
and from thence shall go to Lisle, perhaps to Marseilles;
but where we shall spend these next two
months, we have not yet determined. May you and
my dear sister spend them with health and pleasure
in that dear society, where our hearts perpetually 2(5)v 22
carry us, and to which we hope to return with inincreased
affection!

I forgot to tell you that all the people speak patois
to one another, though they speak French too; and
when we landed, the people who came about us to
carry our things, had absolutely the air of demoniacs,
with their violent gestures and eager looks, and their
coarsest exclamations at every second word.

To Miss E. Belsham, afterwards Mrs. Kenrick.

My dear Eliza has desired me to write to her during
our tour. She could not have put me upon an
employment more agreeable to myself, for I am continually
wishing those I love in England could share
the pleasure we receive, by the new scenes and objects
which are continually passing before our eyes;
and though I can give you but a very inadequate idea
of them, it will be without any drawback from fatigue,
bad inns, dirt, and various other &c.’s which may be
put on the opposite side when the travelling account is
balanced. We landed at Calais, --09-18Sept.September 18th, and you
may wonder that we have as yet only reached Geneva;
but Mr. B.Barbauld from kind regard to my health, and
indeed the convenience of us both, thought it best to
make short stages; besides which, we have stopped
wherever there were churches or fine things to be
seen. One very agreeable ornament of the towns
abroad, which in England we are strangers to, is their
fountains, the more pleasing as they connect public
utility with a degree of magnificence. They excel
us likewise in public walks, and in every fortified town
the ramparts alone afford very fine ones.

We find ourselves very happy at Geneva; and if 2(6)r 23
the season was not so far advanced, should like to
spend a month or two here: indeed we have been
singularly fortunate, for Mr. B.Barbauld has found out a family
of relations here, of the name of Rochemont, very
amiable and respectable people; and the society here
in general seems easy, sprightly, and literary. English
is much understood, and very tolerably spoken by
many. The town is still divided into parties, and one
side will tell you that Geneva is no longer what it
was, that it has lost its liberty, and every thing worth
living for; and thus far is true, that the government
is become entirely aristocratical, and is at present so
strict, that half a dozen people cannot have a weekly
meeting at each other’s houses, unless they choose to
declare they keep an open tavern. The situation of
Geneva, as you well know, is delightful. I am just
returned from an excursion to the mountain of Saléve,
within a league of the town; from whence on one
side you have a view of Geneva, with its lake of the
purest blue, a large plain between the chain of Mount
Jura and that of the Alps, cultivated like a parterre,
and full of villages, country houses and farms, watered
by the Arve, which meanders through it in the
most sportive manner, making several islands, and
beyond Geneva falls into the Rhone. The vintage is
not here got in, so that the vineyards are still in their
beauty. On the other side Saléve, the mountains
open upon you in all their grandeur. Mr. B.Barbauld is gone
to the Glaciers, to feast his eyes with a nearer view
of these stupendous mountains; but I thought the expedition
beyond my strength, and I am during his
absence in a family of Genevois, who are very good
kind of people.

Will you hear how they pass the Sunday at Geneva?
They have service at seven in the morning, at
nine, and at two; after that they assemble in parties 2(6)v 24
for conversation, cards, and dancing, and finish the
day at the theatre. Did not you think they had been
stricter at Geneva, than to have plays on the Sunday,
especially as it is but two or three years since they
were allowed at all? The service at their churches
is seldom much more than an hour, and I believe few
people go more than once a day. As soon as the
text is named, the minister puts on his hat, in which
he is followed by all the congregation, except those
whose hats and heads have never had any connexion;
for you well know that to put his hat upon his head,
is the last use a well-dressed Frenchman would think
of putting it to. At proper periods of the discourse,
the minister stops short, and turns his back to you, in
order to blow his nose, which is a signal for all the
congregation to do the same; and a glorious concert
it is, for the weather is already severe, and people
have got colds. I am told, too, that he takes this
time to refresh his memory by peeping at his sermon,
which lies behind him in the pulpit.

Nobody ought to be too old to improve: I should
be sorry if I was; and I flatter myself I have already
improved considerably by my travels. First, I can
swallow gruel soup, egg soup, and all manner of soups,
without making faces much. Secondly, I can pretty
well live without tea; they give it, however, at Geneva.
Thirdly, I am less and less shocked, and hope
in time I shall be quite easy at seeing gentlemen, perhaps
perfect strangers, enter my room without ceremony
when I am in my bedgown. I would not have
you think, however, I am in danger of losing my
modesty; for if I am no longer affected at some
things, I have learned to blush at others; and I will
tell you, as a friend, that I believe there is but one
indecency in France, which is, for a man and his wife
to have the same sleeping-room. “Est ce votre chambre, 3(1)r 25
madame, ou celle de M. votre époux?” said a
lady to me the other day. I protest I felt quite out of
countenance to think we had but one.

It is time to leave Geneva, for I see from my window
the tops of Mount Jura, which are already covered
with snow; and we have had a vent de bise so
severe, that I have been confined to my chamber, it
is now the sixth day, with a very painful swelled
face.

To Dr. Aikin.

Health to you all—poor mortals as you are,
crowding round your coal fires, shivering in your
nicely closed apartments, and listening with shivering
hearts to the wind and snow which beats dark
December! The months here have indeed the same
names, but far different are their aspects; for here I
am sitting without a fire, the windows open, and
breathing an air as perfectly soft and balmy as in our
warmest days of May; yet the sun does not shine.
On the day we arrived here, the --12-055th of December, it
did; and with as much splendour and warmth, and
the sky was as clear and of as bright a blue, as in our
finest summer days. The fields are full of lavender,
thyme, mint, rosemary, &c.; the young corn is above
half a foot high: they have not much indeed in this
neighbourhood, but from Orange to Lisle we saw a
good deal. The trees which are not evergreens have
mostly lost their leaves; but one sees every where
the pale verdure of the olives, mixed with here and
there a grove, or perhaps a single tree, of cypress,
shooting up its graceful spire of a deeper and more
lively green, far above the heads of its humbler but
more profitable neighbours. The markets abound Vol. II. 3 3(1)v 26
with fresh and dried grapes, pomegranates, oranges
with the green leaves, apples, pears, dried figs, and
almonds. They reap the corn here the latter end of
May or the beginning of June. The gathering of the
olives is not yet finished: it yields to this country its
richest harvest. There are likewise a vast number of
mulberry-trees, and the road in many places is bordered
with them; but they are perfectly naked at
present. Marseilles is, however, not without bad
weather. The vent de bise, they say, is penetrating;
and for this last fortnight they have had prodigious
rains, with the interruption of only a few days; so
that the streets are very dirty and the roads broken up.
But they say this is very extraordinary, and that if
they pass two days without seeing a bright sun they
think Nature is dealing very hardly with them. I
will not, however, boast too much over you from
these advantages; for I am ready to confess the
account may be balanced by many inconveniences,
little and great, which attend this favoured country.
And thus I state my account.

• Advantages of Travelling.
  • A July sun and a southern breeze.
  
  
  • Figs, almonds, &c. &c.
  
  
  • Sweet scents in the fields.
  • Grapes and raisins.
  • Coffee as cheap as milk.
  • Wine a demi-sous the bottle.
  
  
  • Provençal songs and laughter.
  
  
  • Soup, salad and oil.
  • Arcs of triumph, fine churches,
    stately palaces.
  • A pleasant and varied country.


• Per Contra.
  • Flies, fleas, and all Pharaoh’s
    plague of vermin.
  • No tea, and the very name of
    a tea-kettle unknown.
  • Bad scents within doors.
  • No plum-pudding.
  • Milk as dear as coffee.
  • Bread three sous the half-penny
    roll.
  • Provençal roughness and scolding.
    
  • No beef, no butter.
  • Dirty inns, heavy roads, uneasy
    carriages.
  • But many, many a league from
    those we love.

From Avignon (whence I wrote to you last) we
went to Orange, where we were gratified with the
sight of an arc of triumph entire, of rich architecture;
and though the delicacy of the sculpture is
much defaced by time, it is easy to see what it must
have been when fresh. There is likewise a noble
ruin of an amphitheatre built against a rock, of which
you may trace the whole extent, though the area is
filled with cottages. These were the first remains of
antiquity of any consequence I had seen, and they
impressed me with an idea of Roman grandeur.
Orange is a poor town, but the country is green and
pleasant, and they have all country houses. When
the principality came under French government, it
was promised that they should have no fresh taxes
imposed; but peu à peu, say they, taxes are come.
They had salt springs which more than supplied them
with that article;—they are forbidden to work them.
They grew tobacco;—now, if any one has more than
three plants in his garden, he is punished. From
Orange we went to Lisle. In the way we stopped
at Carpentras, where we were shown another arc
of triumph, over which a cardinal, the bishop of
Carpentras, built his kitchen; very wisely judging
that nothing was more worthy to enter through an
arc of triumph, than a noble haunch of venison or
an exquisite ragoo. Lisle is a small town, very
pleasant in summer, because it is surrounded with
water; and still more noted for its neighbourhood
to the source of that water, the celebrated fountain
of Vaucluse.

During the few fair days we have had, the warmth
and power of the sun has been equal to our summer
days: it is truly delightful to feel such a sun in
December; to be able to saunter by the shore of the
Mediterranean, or sit on the bank and enjoy the prospect 3(2)v 28
of an extensive open sea, smooth and calm as a
large lake. It is likewise very pleasant to gain an
hour more of daylight upon these short days. However,
though the middle of the day is so warm, in the
mornings and evenings a fire is acceptable, I must
confess.

The Marseillians value themselves upon being a
kind of republic, and their port is free: the lower
rank are bold and rude; the upper, by what I hear,
very corrupt in their manners. There are 30,000
Protestants: their place of worship is a country house,
which they have hired of the commandant himself.
They meet with no molestation, and hope from the
temper of the times that they shall ere long have
leave to build a church. The minister is an agreeable
and literary man, and is very obliging towards us;
his wife has been six years in England, and speaks
English well. Her family fled there from persecution;
for her grandfather, (who was a minister) was
seized as he came out from a church where he had
been officiating, by the soldiers. His son, who had
fled along with the crowd and gained an eminence at
some distance, seeing they had laid hold on his father,
came and offered himself in his stead; and in his
stead was sent to the galleys, where he continued
seven years. L’honnête Criminal is founded on this
fact. Besides this family we have hardly any acquaintance
here, nor are like to have. We have,
however, been two or three times with the Chanoines
de St. Victor, who are all of the best families of
France, as they must prove their nobility for 150
years. They are very polite and hospitable, and far
enough from bigots; for we were surprised to find
how freely to us they censured auricular confession,
the celibacy of the clergy, and laughed at some of
their legendary miracles. I forgot to say that the 3(3)r 29
country about Marseilles is covered with countryhouses;
they reckon 10,000. They were first begun
to be built on account of the plague: every body has
one. There is a fine picture of the terrible plague
here at the Consigne, and another at the Town-house.
They are very exact at present in their precautions.
I am sure the plague cannot be occasioned merely by
want of cleanliness, for then Marseilles could not
escape.

Remember that we are longing for letters, and that
news from you will be more grateful to us, than groves
of oranges or Provençal skies.

With regard to ourselves, we have at length quitted
Marseilles; where, to confess the truth, we stayed
long enough to be pretty well tired of it; for we
had scarce any acquaintance, and no amusements
(the Play excepted), but what we could procure to
ourselves by reading or walking. Some delightful
walks we did take under a bright sun and a clear blue
sky, which would have done honour to the fairest
months in the English calendar. We sailed one fine
day to the little chateau d’If, a league from the port.
It is used as a prison for extravagant or disorderly
young men, whom their parents get shut up here—
sometimes to avoid the disgrace of a more public
punishment. We had a great pleasure at Marseilles
in seeing your friend Mr. Howard: he was well, and
in good spirits. He went by the name of the English
Doctor, and as such has prescribed, he told us, with
tolerable success. If you have a mind to strike a
good stroke in London, introduce magnetism; ’t is in 3* 3(3)v 30 France the folly of the day. There is a society at
Marseilles for that purpose composed of gentlemen.
They boast they can lay asleep, when they please,
and for as long as they please; and that during this
sleep or trance, the mind can see the operations going
forward in the corporeal machine, and predict future
events. One of them offered to try his skill on Mr.
Barbauld; but after a long and unpleasant operation
of rubbing the temples and forhead, he was obliged
to desist without success. Mr. Howard will tell you,
however, they operate better at Lyons, as he saw
several women at the hospital put to sleep in a minute
by only passing the hand over their forehead.

At Marseilles we again bought a carriage (an English
chaise), in which we hope to perform the rest of
our journey, at least to Paris. The road from Marseilles
to Toulon is over mountains which, though not
very high, are the beginning of the Alps. They are,
in many parts, quite naked and craggy; in others, covered with forests of pines! and in many, they have
had the industry to make terraces one over another
to the very top, on which they have planted vines,
though the culture must demand prodigious labour,
for they must bring all the earth. The almond trees,
which are now in full flower, scattered here and there,
embellish the scene. At Toulon we saw the arsenal,
which contains the corderie, the salle d’armes, the
naval stores, &c. There is something horrible in the
clanking of the chains of the galley-slaves, who are
chained two-and-two, and employed in various works
within the place. Three or four galleys lie in the
harbour, but they are not used except for lodging the
forçats. From Toulon we went to Hieres;—and
how, think you, did we go? On foot every step of the
way, and it is nine miles at least. We went on foot
because the roads are still so bad we dared not venture 3(4)r 31
in a carriage. Hieres is a specimen of the Italian
climate and Italian productions: to the south it is
open to the sea; every other quarter is fenced with
hills. The town lies on the descent of a hill, and is
surrounded with groves of orange and lemon trees,
glowing in the brightest beauty, and with all the
variety of colour, from the palest lemon to the deep
and almost blood-red species of orange. The leaves,
of a vivid green, give a relief to the fruit, which is in
so great an abundance that I have hardly seen apple-
trees so full. It is a delicious spot, quite the gardens
of the Hesperides, and enjoys a constant verdure.
The hedges are composed of myrtle, holm-oak, and
lentisk, of the ashes of which latter they make a lye,
with which they preserve their raisins. They gather
green peas soon after Christmas: every month brings
its peculiar harvest. Besides the corn, wine, and oil,
which they share in common with their neighbours,
they have vast quantities of strawberries, peaches,
kidney-beans, all kinds of fruit and garden stuff.
Sweet waters and essences are distilled from the
orange flowers, and the peel of the bergamot, the
cedrat, and some other kinds valuable for their fragrance.
Some of the orange gardens are worth from
twenty to twenty-six thousand livres a year. From
an opposite hill there is a view of the town; above it,
a convent of Bernardines, and higher still, the ruined
walls and castle of the old town; the whole surrounded
with a bright circle of green and gold, and houses
of a shining white in the midst of the orange gardens;
further, the paler green of the olives; to the south,
the sea, and the fishery salt-works; and opposite,
the islands of Hieres, where is plenty of game.
Winter is seen peeping at this little paradise from
the top of a distant mountain covered with snow; and
sometimes, indeed, he sends a hoar frost—after which,
the oranges drop by hundreds from the trees.

To complete our expedition and vary the mode of
travelling, we returned as follows: I upon the bourique
of a paisanne, between two loaded panniers, Mr. B.Barbauld
walking before; and the woman, a stout, sunburnt,
cheerful Provençal, by the side of the ass, driving,
guiding, and hallooing it onward. Bread and figs,
which we put in the pannier and ate as we went along,
were our breakfast. I rode thus two leagues, and
walked with Mr. B.Barbauld the third. And now, having
touched the utmost limit of our long tour, it is with
inexpressible pleasure we reflect, that every step we
shall for the future take will bring us nearer again to
those dear friends, in whose society we hope to spend
the rest of our life. We propose returning by Nismes,
Montpelier, and Bourdeaux. Aix is a clean, pretty
town: the baths and the fountains of hot water are
worth seeing. It is full of clergy and men of the
law. We got acquainted with two gentlemen (an
officer and an ecclesiastic), who were very civil to us;
but we could not help being diverted with the eagerness
with which they recited their own verses (for
they were both versifiers), their gestures, their compliments
to each other, and their total freedom from
that awkward bashfulness which hangs on us English,
when we have written something clever that we long
to bring to notice, and do not know how to bring it
about.

To Dr. Aikin.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

If at any time, and in any place, a letter from my
dear Mrs. Beecroft has always given me a sensible
pleasure, she will judge how grateful it must have
been to my heart to be remembered by her with so
much kindness and affection, and to be informed of
her welfare, when the long absence, when the tracts 4(2)r 39
of land and seas between us and those most dear to
our hearts, render accounts from England doubly
interesting. And indeed when I reflect that I am
transported from the banks of the Waveney to the
shores of the Mediterranean, I am ready to cry out
with Simkin, “Methinks we’re a wonderful distance from home.”
The scenes we have passed through, gratify curiosity
and fill the imagination; but you, my dear friend, in
the mean time have found yourself in situations which
awaken feelings the most tender and interesting
…May you experience, may you feel, all
the sympathies, all the tender charities of every relation,
all of which you are so fitted to adorn!

The ladies of this country, if I may trust what
their own countrymen say of them, are not fond of
these domestic ties; they wish not to be mothers of
a numerous offspring: and their husbands, whose
claim to the honour is somewhat more dubious, are
still less flattered with being fathers to them. But
let me give you some account of our route. From
Calais we coasted, as I may say, the rich plains of
Flanders and Artois, which however had lost their
peculiar beauty, as the harvest was got in. We passed
through a part of Haute Picardie, and leaving
Paris on our right, advanced into Champagne, where
we first saw the production that most distinguishes
the climate of France from ours,— the boasted vineyards.
Having visited the venerable cathedral of
Rheims, we crossed several pleasant streams, and
from Troyes traced the delightful windings of the
Seine to its very source. We next visited Dijon in
the midst of the vine-clad hills of Burgundy, and from
thence, crossing the Saone, struck into Franchecomté;
and from Dole to Besançon travelled along the banks 4(2)v 40
of the Doux, a fine, full stream, through a country
more varied and rich with prospects than we had yet
seen. From varied, the country became romantic,
and from hilly, mountainous; Nature preparing, as it
were, for her more majestic scenes, till at length she
swells into full grandeur; and from the heights of
Mount Jura the Alps are discovered to the astonished
traveller.

At Geneva we were greatly delighted with the
society and the situation; but the winter advanced
so fast upon us, that we were obliged to abandon our
design of visiting Switzerland. From Geneva to
Lyons we were still in the midst of les belles horreurs,
steep mountains, cascades, and lakes. At Lyons the
winter was still at our heels, so down the rapid Rhone
we sailed in search of the climate of perpetual spring,
but like some enchanted island it seemed to fly from
our pursuit. At Lyons it was the vent du Rhone, at
Avignon la bise, at Marseilles the mistral—which
opposed our wishes; till at length, in the orange
groves of Hieres, we found the most delicious temperature
of air and a verdure perpetually flourishing.
But long before we reached Hieres, between Lyons
and Avignon, we got amongst the olive-grounds, the
figs, the almonds, and pomegranates, which spread
over all Provence and Languedoc. But they have
not here the green pasture, the lowing herd, the hawthorn
hedge, the haunt of birds, nor the various family
of lofty trees which give us shade in summer and
shelter in winter. As we have been chiefly at inns
hitherto, I cannot say a great deal of the inhabitants
in general: that they are more lively and eager in
their gestures and manner than the English is evident;
but as to that great air of gaiety you mention, and
which one naturally expects to find in France, it has
not struck us; perhaps it might if we were more intimately 4(3)r 41
admitted into their families, and saw the
young and the gay; but this I can assure you, they
are not to be found, even in Provence, singing and
dancing under every green tree. We have lately
visited Nismes, a place interesting by its antiquities.
La Maison Carrée is the most delicate and finished
piece of architecture that can be conceived; and the
amphitheatre gives the most striking idea of Roman
greatness. It is calculated to hold 18,000 people;
its vast cirque cannot be beheld from a distance
without astonishment,—all the other buildings sink into
nothing before it. An antiquity perhaps more
beautiful still than either of them is the Pont du Gard,
some leagues from Nismes, constructed to convey
water to the town. It looks great as if made by the
hands of the giants, and light as if wrought by fairies.
Nismes has likewise a more modern work, of which
they boast much,—the fountain and walks belonging
to it. This, as well as the Place de Perou at Montpelier,
is laid out in a style which a Brown or a Shenstone
would but little approve; long strait walks, trees
cut into form, water stagnating in stone basons and
exactly symmetrized. All this suits but ill with what
we have been taught to call taste; yet there is an
air of magnificence, and even of gaiety, that in its
kind gives pleasure. The very exhibition of art and
expense gives an air of grandeur. Its being a work
made by men, suggests the cheerful idea that it was
made for men; whereas our more rustic scenes seem
made, if not for melancholy, at least for solitary musing:
and in the last place, the exact proportion contrasts
it with the surrounding country.

You know, probably, that Montpelier is famous
for perfumes. One man, who has got a large fortune
by them, has planted a garden with rosetrees, several 4* 4(3)v 42
thousands in number, which in summer perfume the
air to a considerable distance.

I hoped to have finished this letter where I began
it, at Montpelier; but not having been able to do it,
gives me an opportunity to tell you, that we have
seen at Pesenas an echantillon of the diversions of the
Carnival. The young men of the town, with the
young ladies, masked, followed by the paysans and
paysannes, danced by torch-light in the streets, upon
the esplanade, and all round the town, to the music of
the drum and fife, followed by a number of spectators
of all ranks, all enjoying the cheerful scene. Pesenas
is a delightful place; the peach and apricot already
are in blossom there, so is the bean; numbers of
almond-trees are in full bloom; various shrubs are
green with spring, and some trees begin to put out.
To crown all, we found there a lovely Englishwoman,
with whom and her husband we spent two
pleasant days. We are now going to Bourdeaux, and
so to Orleans and Paris; after which I am sure we
shall long to return home.

To Dr. Aikin.

…The affair of Cardinal Rohan, which has
so much engrossed the talk at Paris, is at length decided:
but we have not been able to see, without indignation,
the decisions of the Parliament altered in
almost every instance by the pleasure of the king; so
that judicial proceedings are mere child’s play in this
country. A grocer has got himself into the Bastille
by writing a pamphlet on this occasion; in which he
insinuates that the queen herself was in the plot, and
that Madame Oliva was the cloud by means of which 4(4)r 43
she played the fable of Ixion on the poor Cardinal.
In short, people’s conjectures are as much afloat since
the decision as before. The king of Prussia is reported
to have said, “Qu’il falloit que le Cardinal
montrat beaucoup d’esprit pour prouver qu’il n’avoit
été que bête.” Among the long list of titles which
figure at the head of his Memoire, that of Academicien
is not found: the reason, they say, is, that his
avocat, at the request of the Academy, (who feared
they might be disgraced by the fellow-ship of such an
associate,) persuaded him to leave it out, by telling
him that, for the other titles, they implied no parts;
but that of Academicien— supposing a man of superior
genius and knowledge—might hurt him in his trial,
as his only defence must rest on his proving himself
un imbecille.—And so much for the Cardinal.

We were the other day at the Museum, a place
lately set up, intended as a repository for works of
art; likewise as a centre of communication with the
learned in any part of Europe, who, by corresponding
with M. de la Blancherie, may have their discoveries
published or their questions answered, if possible to
answer them: nay, I believe I need not have put in
that restriction, for a Frenchman is never at a loss to
answer any question. The plan seems good: but I
was greatly diverted with the following question, published
in one of their weekly papers; “Whether the
societies called Clubs in England, and now imitated
in Paris, might not tend to render their members
morose and taciturnes; since by the laws of such
meetings only one person must speak at a time, and
that only for a certain number of minutes?” An
author may read his piece at this Museum; but as
the doors are not locked, it may chance that the company
may slip away one by one and leave him alone, as I
suspect might be the case with a young novel-writer, 4(4)v 44
whom we in like manner escaped from there the other
day. By the way, I have found out the reason why
the French have so little poetry: it is because every
body makes verses.

We have been at Versailles and St. Cloud: the
latter is now fitting up for the queen. The situation
is far more delightful than Versailles; but that, by
force of expense, has a magnificence which no palace
I have seen can compare with. We saw it on Whitsunday,
when the waters play. The environs of Paris
are now very pleasant; and they are very animated,
without being, I think, quite so crowded as those of
London. They do not make hay here till St. John’s
day, (--06-24the 24th of June), which I think is later than
near London; yet the weather has been very hot.

I was recommended to an English nun; and after
going to see her twice, she had the goodness to send
a parcel of books to convert me: so you see there is
some zeal left in the female convents at least: as to
the priests and monks, I believe they have very little
indeed.

To Mrs. J. Taylor.

Though we expect now very soon to finish our
long pilgrimage, I cannot quit this country without
giving you a little testimonial that in it we think of
those beloved English friends from whom the sea now
divides us: they are often recalled to my mind by
different and opposite trains of thinking—for contrast,
you know, is one source of association; and when I
see the Parisian ladies covered with rouge and enslaved
by fashion, cold to the claims of maternal
tenderness, and covering licentiousness with the thin
veil of a certain factitious decency of manners, my 4(5)r 45
thoughts turn away from the scene, and delight to
contemplate the charming union formed by deep
affection and lasting esteem,—the mother endowed
with talents and graces to draw the attention of polite
circles, yet devoting her time and cares to her family
and children—English delicacy, unspoiled beauty,
and unaffected sentiment,—when I think of these,
(and your friends will not be at a loss to guess where
I look for them,) it gives the same relief to my mind
as it would to my eye when wearied and dazzled by
their sand-walks and terraces, if it could repose upon
the cheerful and soft green of our lawny turf. I would
not, however, have you imagine that I am out of humour
with Paris, where we have enjoyed much pleasure;
only it is the result of our tour, that taking in all
things, manners and government as well as climate,
we like our own country best: and this is an opinion
certainly favourable to our happiness, who shall probably
never leave England again. The weather with
us is, and has been, extremely hot. The trees are
in their freshest green; but one sees that the grass
will soon be burnt if we have not rain. Indeed they
are obliged every day to water the turf in all their
gardens where they are solicitous about verdure. The
environs of Paris are charming, yet I think evidently
inferior to those of London. Yesterday (Whitsunday)
we were gratified with a view of all the magnificence
of Versailles. In compliment to the day
the water-works played, and there was the brilliant
procession of the cordon bleu; in consequence of
which all Paris in a manner was poured into Versailles;
and I was ready to forgive the enormous expense and
ostentation of this palace, when I saw a numerous
people of all sorts and degrees filling the rooms and
wandering in the gardens, full of admiration, and
deriving both pleasure and pride from their national 4(5)v 46
magnificence; and many a one, I dare say, exulted
in the thought that the grand monarque’s horses are
better lodged than is the king of England himself.
The grand gallery filled with Le Brun’s paintings is
of a striking beauty; the gardens are full of water
thrown up in artificial fountains, and glittering through
artificial bosquets; the walks are adorned with whole
quarries of marble wrought into statues. In short,
art and symmetry reign entirely; and I hope they
will never attempt to modernize these gardens, because
they are a model of magnificence in their kind,
and Art appears with so much imposing grandeur,
that she seems to have a right to reign. The petit
Trianon belonging to the queen is in another style;
with cottages and green lawns and winding walks of
flowering shrubs in the English mode, which indeed
prevails very much at present.

There is a person here, the Abbé d’Hauy, who
teaches the blind to read by means of books printed
expressly for them in a relief of white. The undertaking
is curious; but they are at present somewhat
in the state of the blind men brought up for painters
in the island of Laputa, who were not so perfect in
the mixing of their colours but that they sometimes
mistook blue for red.

The French stage is not, I think, at present very
brilliant; three of their best actors have lately left it.
But at the Italian theatre they have a delightful little
piece, which under the name of a comic opera draws
tears from all the world. It is called Nina, or La
Folle d’Amour, and Mademoiselle du Gazon acts
the part of Nina; and does it with such enchanting
grace, such sweet and delicate touches of sensibility
and passion, as I never saw upon any theatre. It is the
sweet bells jangled out of tune, but not harsh: no raving,
no disorder of dress; but every look and gesture 4(6)r 47
showed an unsettled mind, and a tenderness inimitable.
At the Opera they have likewise an actress full of
grace, Mademoiselle St. Huberti; but there it is a
grace beyond mere nature. Everybody (that is everybody
who follows the fashion) leaves Paris in the
summer, which was not the case some years ago.
We stay now for a fine show,—the procession on
the Fête Dieu, in which all the tapestry of the Gobelins
is exposed in the streets. We shall return by
Calais and proceed immediately to London, where
we shall take lodgings for some time.

Will you do me the favour to remember us with
grateful affection to all our friends at Norwich? There
are so many that claim our esteem, I do not attempt
to enumerate them; but do not forget to give a kiss
for us to each of your dear boys, and to assure Mr.
Taylor of Mr. Barbauld’s and my affectionate esteem.

To Dr. Aikin.

I am happy to write to you again from English
ground. We set out from Paris on the 1786-06-1717th, but
went no further than Chantilly, as we meant to devote
the whole of the next day to seeing that noble seat of
the prince of Condé, which, both for the house and
grounds, is the finest we have seen in France. The
stables, which hold three hundred horses, are a most
beautiful piece of architecture. There is a noble
museum and armory in the palace; a fine piece of
artificial water in the gardens, which are laid out partly
in the English, partly in the French style, and in the
best taste of both; a dairy floored and lined with
marble, and in which all the utensils are of marble
or fine porcelain; a menagerie; an orangerie, all the 4(6)v 48
plants of which (some hundreds) being set out and in
full blossom, diffused the richest perfume I ever was
regaled with. L’isle d’Amour is one of the prettiest
parts of the garden, abounding with alleys and walks,
some close, others gay and airy, formed by light
lattice-work covered with privet and adorned with the
greatest profusion of honeysuckles and roses. In the
centre of the island is a statue of a Cupid without
wings or quiver, holding a heart with these lines:
“N’offrant qu’un coeur à la beauté, Aussi nud que la vérité, Sans armes comme l’innocence, Sans ailes comme la constance, Tel fut l’Amour au siècle d’or; On ne le trouve plus, mais on le cherche encore.”

The temple of Venus is a large saloon, in which
are fountains continually throwing up water, which
falls again in agate vases; leaning over which are
Cupids of marble. The whole room is painted,
and breathes a coolness and gaiety quite enchanting.
As we were walking in these gardens we had the
pleasure of seeing a balloon fly over our heads: it
was in full sail for England with M. Tetu, who had
set off from Paris that morning. However, with our
humbler mode of travelling we got to Dover first; for
the lightning caught the car; and though the aërial
traveller received no damage from it, he was obliged
to lie by to refit his balloon, which descended not far
from Boulogne. From Boulogne we took our passage.
We had intended to have gone on to Calais,
but it was four posts more; and besides, we were
told that the passage from Boulogne, though longer,
was generally performed in less time, and was now
preferred; which we found to be true. We were
obliged indeed to wait a day for a vessel, but we got
over in less than four hours. And not without a pleasing 5(1)r 49
emotion did we view again the green swelling hills
covered with large sheep, and the winding road bordered
with the hawthorn hedge, and the English vine
twisted round the tall poles, and the broad Medway
covered with vessels, and at last the gentle, yet majestic
Thames. Nor did we find these home scenes had
lost of their power to strike or charm us, by all we had
seen abroad.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

I feel an impatience at being again on English
ground, and yet not being able to hear news of you.
My imagination pictures you with a lovely burden in
your arms,—whether boy or girl she is not able to
determine, but a charming infant however, that exercises
your sweet sprightliness in entertaining it, and
delights your sensibility by its early notice. But of
this delightful circumstance I want to be certain…
In the mean time let me give you some account of ourselves.
After having spent so much time at Paris, that
we were obliged to give up our original design of visiting
Flanders, we returned by way of Chantilly......

I could not help being struck with the neatness
and civility of all the inns on the road from Dover
to London. In neatness the English are acknowledged
to excel; and though the upper rank in
France may practise politeness with more ease and
grace than we do, yet it is certain that the lower order
are much less respectful and more grossier than
ours of the same class.

I do not know how it is, I think verily London is a
finer town than Paris; and yet it does not appear to
me since my return so magnificent as it used to do: Vol. II. 5 5(1)v 50
I believe the reason is, that Paris has so much the
advantage in being built of stone. Another advantage
to the environs derived from that is, that they are not
fumigated by the abominable brick-kilns which are so
numerous near our metropolis.

There is not much new at present in French polite
literature. M. Florian has published a didactic romance,
Numa Pompilius, an imitation of Telemachus,
but it is heavy.

To Dr. Aikin.

I do not owe you a letter ’t is true; but what of
that? I take it for granted you will like to hear from
me; and to hear from or write to you gives me more
pleasure than most things in this great city. The
hive is now full; almost every body that intends to
come to town is come, and the streets rattle with carriages
at all hours. Do not you remember reading
in the Spectator of a great black tower, from which
were cast nets that catched up every body that came
within a certain distance? This black tower I interpret
to be this great smoky city; and I begin to
be afraid we are got too much within its attraction, for
the nets seem to be winding round about us; nay,
we had some serious thoughts last week of setting up
our tent here…

We are got into the visiting way here, which I
do not consider quite as idle employment, because it
leads to connexions; but the hours are intolerably
late. The other day at Mrs. Chapone’s, none of the
party but ourselves was come at a quarter before eight;
and the first lady that arrived, said she hurried away
from dinner without waiting for the coffee. There
goes a story of the Duchess of D――, that she said 5(2)r 51
to a tradesman, “Call on me to-morrow morning at
four o’clock;” and that the honest man, not being
aware of the extent of the term morning, knocked the
family up some hours before daybreak. Last week
we met the American bishops at Mr. V.’s, —if bishops
they may be called, without title, without revenue,
without diocess, and without lawn sleeves. I wonder
our bishops will consecrate them, for they have made
very free with the Common Prayer, and have left out
two creeds out of three. Indeed, as to the Athanasian
creed, the king has forbidden it in his chapel, so
that will soon fall.

I have been much pleased with the poems of the
Scottish ploughman, of which you have had specimens
in the Review. His Cotter’s Saturday Night
has much of the same kind of merit as the Schoolmistress;
and the Daisy, and the Mouse, which I believe
you have had in the papers, I think are charming.
The endearing diminutives, and the Doric
rusticity of the dialect, suit such subjects extremely.
This is the age for self-taught genius: a subscription
has been raised for a pipe-maker of Bristol, who has
been discovered to have a poetic turn; and they have
transplanted him to London, where they have taken
him a little shop, which probably will be frequented
at first, and then deserted. A more extraordinary instance
is that of a common carpenter at Aberdeen,
who applied to the professors to be received in the
lowest mathematical class: they examined him, and
found he was much beyond it; then for the next, and
so on, till they found he had taught himself all they
could teach him; and instead of receiving him as a
student, they gave him a degree.

Miss Bowdler’s Essays are read here by the graver
sort with much approbation. She is the lady who
betook herself to writing upon having lost her voice; 5(2)v 52
but above all, the Political State for 17871787 is read by
every body. The Eaton boys have published a periodical
paper among themselves, which they say is
clever. Dr. Price has a letter from Mr. Howard,
dated Amsterdam; he says the Emperor gave him a
long audience. A pasquinade was fixed upon the
gate of the lunatic hospital at Vienna. “Josephus,
ubicunque secundus, hic primus.”

To Dr. Aikin.

I am very glad to be informed what is the proper
method to engage you to write verses, and should inclose
herewith an order for a score or two of lines, if
I thought the command were certain to be as efficacious
as the lovely Anna’s.

Come va l’Italiano? I have read a volume of
Goldoni’s Plays; which are not all worked up to
superior excellence, as you may suppose, since he
wrote sixteen in a season. Two are taken from
Pamela; but he has spoiled the story by making
Pamela turn out to be the daughter of an attainted
Scotch peer, without which salvo for family pride, he
did not dare to make her lover marry her. Goldoni’s
great aim seems to have been to introduce what
he calls comedies of character, instead of the pantomime,
and the continual exhibition of harlequin and
his cortége, which was supported by the extempore
wit of the actors. There is in his Teatro Comico 5(3)r 53
a critique which puts me much in mind of Shakspeare’s
instructions to the players. It abounds with
good sense,—which, and a desire to promote good
manners, seem in what I have read to be his characteristics.
I find by him that the prompter repeats the
whole play before the actors.

Our plot begins to thicken; as—says. We
have taken into our family for six months, and perhaps
longer, a young Spaniard who comes solely to
learn English. We dined with the young man, his
uncle, and another Spaniard, who is secretary to the
ambassador, at Mr. W――’s, where there was a
great mixture of languages. The secretary, as well
as French and Spanish, spoke English very well;
the young man, Spanish and French; and the uncle,
though he had been several years in England, only
Spanish. As Mr. W. had told us they were strict
Catholics, we expressed a fear lest we should not be
able to provide for the youth agreeably on fast days:
but he said, “Tout jour est jour gras pour moi:” to
which the uncle learnedly added,—that it was not
what went into the mouth, but what came out of it,
that defileth. As far as we have yet seen, (but he
has been with us only two days), we find him very
well behaved and easy in the family; but the great
difficulty is to entertain him: he is quite a man, of
one or two-and-twenty, and rather looks like a Dutchman
than a Spaniard. Did you ever see seguars—
leaf-tobacco rolled up of the length of one’s finger,
which they light and smoke without a pipe?—he uses
them. “And how does Mr. B. bear that?” say you:
O, he keeps it snug in his room. I would not advise
the boys to imitate his accent in French, for he pronounces
it with a deep guttural: I fancy he would
speak Welsh well.

It gave very great pleasure the other day to see
my father’s old friend, Dr. Pulteney, whom Dr. Garthshore
brought to us. It is a strange and mixt emotion,
however, which one feels at sight of a person one has
not seen for twenty years or more. The alteration
such a space of time makes in both parties, at first
gives a kind of shock;—it is your friend, but your
friend disguised.

We are making a catalogue of our books; and I
have left a great deal of space under the letters A.
and B. for our future publications.

To Dr. Aikin.

We are waiting with great impatience for two
things, your book and my sister,—your child and your
wife, that is to say…

I have been reading an old book, which has given
me a vast deal of entertainment,—Father Herodotus,
the father of history; and the father of lies too, his
enemies might say. I take it for granted the original
has many more beauties than Littlebury’s humble
translation, which I have been perusing: but at any
rate, a translation of an original author gives you an
idea of the times totally different from what one gains
by a modern compilation. I am much entertained in
observing the traces of truth in many of his wildest
fables; as where he says it was impossible to proceed
far in Scythia on account of vast quantities of feathers,
which fell from heaven and covered all the the country.

We are reading too Sir. T. More’s Utopia. He
says many good things; but it wants a certain salt,
which Swift and others have put into their works
of the same nature. One is surprised to see how 5(4)r 55
old certain complaints are. Of the frequent executions,
for instance: twenty men, he says, being hung
upon one gibbet at a time: of arable land turned to
pasture, and deserted villages in consequence.

I hope the exertions which are now making for the
abolition of the slave-trade will not prove all in vain.
They will not, if the pleadings of eloquence or the
cry of duty can be heard. Many of the most respectable
and truly distinguished characters are really busy
about it, and the press and the pulpit are both employed;
so I hope something must be done. I expect to
be highly gratified in hearing Mr. Hastings’s trial, for
which we are to have tickets some day. This impeachment
has been the occasion of much pomp,
much eloquence, and much expense; and there I
suppose it will end. As somebody said, it must be
put off for the judges to go their circuit, resumed late,
and so it will fall into the summer amusements.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

I often please my mind with the sweet scenes of
domestic happiness which you must enjoy; yourself
in the arms of Mr. and Mrs Dixon, and your children
in yours. Apropos of the sweet children,—I should
not be at all alarmed at their speaking Norfolk; depend
upon it, it will be only temporary where the
parent does not speak it: and after all, they should
know the language of the country. I remember
when I was in Lancashire, being reproved for my
affectation in not speaking as the country folks did,
when in truth it was beyond my abilities.

London is extremely full now: the trial, the parliamentary
business, and fêtes and illuminations, and 5(4)v 56
the Shakspeare Gallery, have all contributed to fill
the great hive. But among these various objects,
none is surely so interesting as the noble effort making
for the abolition of the slave-trade. Nothing, I think,
for centuries past, has done the nation so much honour;
because it must have proceeded from the most
liberal motives,—the purest love of humanity and
justice. The voice of the Negroes could not have
made itself heard but by the ear of pity; they might
have been oppressed for ages more with impunity, if
we had so pleased.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

…I do not doubt but your attention, as well as
that of every one else, has been engaged lately by
the affairs in France. We were much gratified a
fortnight ago by seeing Lord Daer, who had been at
Paris at the beginning of the commotions, and had
seen the demolition of the Bastille, and with hundreds
more ranged through that till now impregnable castle
of Giant Despair. He told us, that after all the prisoners
in the common apartments had been liberated,
they heard for a long time the groans of a man in one
of the dungeons, to which they could not get access,
and were at length obliged to take him out by making a
breach in the wall, through which they drew him out
after he had been forty-eight hours without food;
and they could not at last find the aperture by which
he was put into the dungeon.

It is but lately that I heard you were returned
from your delightful expedition, or I should have 5(5)r 57
written sooner; for I am sure so kind and charming
a letter as yours demanded an early acknowledgement.
I do not say I envy you your party and your
tour, because I have in some measure enjoyed it
along with you. I have tracked you to the top of Skiddaw;
seen you impress the mountains with your
light and nymph-like step, and skim over the lakes
with a rapid and smooth motion, like a bird that just
touches them with her wing without dipping it. I
have contemplated the effect such scenes must produce
on minds so turned to admire the beauties of
nature as yours and your poetical companions; and I
have watched till imagination has kindled, and beauty
has swelled into sublimity. Indeed, independently
of scenes so wildly picturesque, a journey is the most
favourable thing in the world for the imagination;
which, like a wheel, kindles with the motion: I shall
therefore certainly expect it to produce some fruit.

I suppose you are now returned to your course of
instructive reading, and your sweet employment of
instructing your little charge. Pray have you seen
Sacontala, an Indian drama translated by Sir William
Jones? You will be much pleased with it. There is
much fancy and much sentiment in it,—much poetry
too, and mythology: but these, though full of beauties,
are often uncouth and harsh to the European ear.
The language of nature and the passions is of all
countries. The hero of the piece is as delicate and
tender a lover as any that can be met with in the
pages of a modern romance; for I hope you can
pardon him a little circumstance relative to the costume
of the country, which is just hinted at in the poem: I
mean the having a hundred wives besides the mistress
of his heart.—So much for works of entertainment!
There is a publication of higher merit set on foot in
France by Rabaut St. Etienne and some others,— 5(5)v 58 La Feuille Villageoise, of which I have seen the first
number. The respectable object of it is to instruct
the country people (who are there remarkably ignorant)
in morals, in the new laws and constitution of
their country, in the state of the arts and new discoveries,
as far as can be of practical use to them; and
in short, to open their minds and make them love
their duties. M. Berquin is engaged in something
similar; but this is more extensive. There is room
for all true patriots to exert themselves in every way
in France, for their situation seems still but too precarious.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

…You ought, I think, to come to London
every spring, to peep into the Exhibition and Shakspeare
Gallery, and to see our proud metropolis when
she adorns her head with wreaths of early roses, and
perfumes her crowded streets with all the first scents
of the spring. So uncommonly fine has the weather
been this year, that in March, if you were in a flowershop,
you might have imagined it the glowing month
of June.

I last Sunday attended with melancholy satisfaction
the funeral sermon of good Dr. Price, preached by
Dr. Priestley, who, as he told us, had been thirty
years his acquaintance, and twenty years his intimate
friend. He well delineated the character he so well
knew. I had just been reading an eloge of Mirabeau,
and I could not help in my own mind comparing both
the men and the tribute paid to their memories. The
one died when a reputation raised suddenly, by extraordinary
emergencies, was at its height, and very 5(6)r 59
possibly might have ebbed again, had he lived longer:
the other enjoyed an esteem, the fruit of a course
of labours uniformly directed through a long life
to the advancement of knowledge and virtue, a reputation
slowly raised, without and independent of popular
talents. The panegyrist of the one was obliged
to sink his private life, and to cover with the splendid
mantle of public merit, the crimes and failings of the
man:—the private character of the other was able
to bear the severest scrutiny; neither slander, nor
envy, nor party prejudice, ever pretended to find a
spot in it. The one was followed even by those who
did not trust him: the other was confided in and
trusted even by those who reprobated his principles.
In pronouncing the eloge on Mirabeau, the author
scarcely dares to insinuate a vague and uncertain
hope that his spirit may hover somewhere in the void
space of immensity, be rejoined to the first principles
of nature; and attempts to soothe his shade with a
cold and barren immortality in the remembrance of
posterity. Dr. Priestley parts with his intimate friend,
with all the cheerfulness which an assured hope of
meeting him soon again could give, and at once dries
the tear he excites.

To Dr. Aikin.

What do you say to Pitt and Fox agreeing so
well about the affair of libels? Is there any thing behind
the curtain? I hope not; for I own I have felt
myself much interested for Fox since his noble and
manly behaviour, mixed with so much sensibility and
tempered with so much forbearance, towards Burke.
It puts one in mind of the quarrel between Brutus and
Cassius.

I am reading with a great deal of interest Ramsay’s
History of the American Revolution; and I do not
wonder that the old story of Greece and Rome grows,
as you say, flat, when we have events of such importance
passing before our eyes, and from thence acquiring
a warmth of colour and authenticity which it
is in vain to seek for in histories that have passed from
hand to hand through a series of ages. How uniformly
great was Congress, and what a spotless character
Washington! All their public acts, &c, are remarkably
well drawn up. We are reading in idle moments,
or rather dipping into, a very different work, Boswell’s
long-expected Life of Johnson. It is like
going to Ranelagh; you meet all your acquaintance:
but it is a base and a mean thing to bring thus every
idle word into judgment—the judgment of the public.
Johnson, I think, was far from a great character;
he was continually sinning against his conscience, and
then afraid of going to hell for it. A Christian and a
man of the town, a philosopher and a bigot, acknowledging
life to be miserable, and making it more miserable
through fear of death; professing great distaste
to the country, and neglecting the urbanity of
towns; a Jacobite, and pensioned; acknowledged to
be a giant in literature, and yet we do not trace him,
as we do Locke, or Rousseau, or Voltaire, in his influence
on the opinions of the times. We cannot say
Johnson first opened this vein of thought, led the way
to this discovery or this turn of thinking. In his style
he is original, and there we can track his imitators.
In short, he seems to me to be one of those who have
shone in the belles lettres, rather than, what he is held
out by many to be, an original and deep genius in
investigation.

To Dr. Aikin.

…I do not know whether I said so before,
but I cannot help thinking that the revolution in France
will introduce there an entire revolution in education;
and particularly be the ruin of classical learning, the
importance of which must be lessening every day;
while other sciences, particularly that of politics and
government, must rise in value, afford an immediate
introduction to active life, and be necessary in some
degree to everybody. All the kindred studies of the
cloister must sink, and we shall live no longer on the
lean relics of antiquity.

Apropos of France, Mrs. Montague, who entertains
all the aristocrats, had invited a marchioness of
Boufflers and her daughter to dinner. After making
her wait till six, the marchioness came, and made an
apology for her daughter, that just as she was going
to dress she was seized with a degout momentanée du
monde, and could not wait on her.

There is a little Frenchman here at Hampstead,
who is learning the language, and he told us he had
been making an attempt at some English verses. “I
have made,” says he, “four couplets in masculine and
feminine rimes.” “O sir,” says I, “you have given
yourself needless trouble, we do not use them.”
“Why, how so,” says he; “have you no rules then
for your verse?” “Yes sir, but we do not use masculine
and feminine rimes.” Well, I could not make
him comprehend there could be any regular poetry
without these rimes.

Mr. Brand Hollis has sent me an American poem,
The Conquest of Canaan, —a regular epic in twelve
books; but I hope I need not read it. Not that the
poetry is bad, if the subject were more interesting. Vol. II. 6 6(1)v 62
What had he to do to make Joshua his hero, when
he had Washington of his own growth?

We are at present reading Anacharsis, and are
much pleased with it. There is nothing of adventure,
nothing like a novel; but the various circumstances
relating to the Greeks are classed and thrown together
in such a manner as to dwell on the mind. It has just
the effect which it would have if in the Museum, instead
of being shown separately the arms and dresses of
different nations, you had figures dressed up and
accoutred in them: the Otaheitan mourner walking
to a morai; the warrior full-armed in the attitude
of attack; and the priest with all the various instruments
of sacrifice before the altar. Thus they become
grouped in the mind.

I want you to propose a metaphysical question to
your Society, which Mr. B.Barbauld and I have had great
debates upon; and I want to know your opinion and
my sister’s. It is this: If you were now told that in
a future state of existence you should be entirely deprived
of your consciousness, so as not to be sensible
you were the same being who existed here,—should
you, or should you not, be now interested in your
future happiness or misery? or, in other words, is
continued consciousness the essence of identity?

Is it permitted me to renew a correspondence
which has been too long interrupted, though our
friendship, I trust, never has?—strange indeed would
it be, if the esteem and affection I owe you could
ever subside, or if I could ever forget the marks of
kindness and attention I have always received from
you. How good it was of you, to invite Mr. Barbauld 6(2)r 63
while I have been rambling! I should have been
more satisfied with being away, if he had accepted
your offer; for I should have known then, that he
would have no occasion to regret any of the beautiful
scenes I have enjoyed without him. I have been
much pleased with Scotland. I do not know whether
you ever extended your tour so far: if you have
not seen it, let me beg that you will; for I do not
think that in any equal part of England so many interesting
objects are to be met with, as occur in
what is called the little tour; from Edinburgh to
Stirling, Perth, and Blair, along the pleasant windings
of the Forth and Tay; then by the lakes, ending
with Loch Lomond, the last and greatest, and so
to Glasgow; then to the Falls of the Clyde, and back
by Dumfries; which last, however, we did not do;
for we returned to Edinburgh. Scotland is a country
strongly marked with character. Its rocks, its woods,
its water, its castles, its towns, are all picturesque,
generally grand. Some of the views are wild and
savage, but none of them insipid, if you except the
bleak, flat, extended moor. The entrance into the
Highlands, by Dunkeld is striking; it is a kind of
gate. I thought it would be a good place for hanging
up an inscription similar to that of Dante, “Per me
si va…”

Edinburgh is so commanding a situation for a
capital, I almost regretted it was not one, and that
the fine rooms at Holyrood-house are falling into
ruins. The Old and New town make the finest contrast
in the world: but beautiful as the New town is,
I was convinced, after being some days in it, that its
perfect regularity tends towards insipidity, and that a
gentle waving line in a street, provided it is without
affectation, and has the advantage of some inequality
of ground, is more agreeable than streets that cut one
another at right angles.

We were much struck with the Falls of the Clyde
and its steep banks richly wooded. Indeed, wherever
the country is wooded, it is beautiful, and it is every
where improving in that respect: millions of trees are
planted every year; but it is some time before planted
trees form a feature of the country. A belt of
wood, dotted clumps, a circlet of firs on a hill, have
not the easy and natural appearance of a wood that fills
the hollow of a valley, and shapes itself to the bendings
and risings of the ground. And now let me
whisper in your ear that I long very much to be at
home again: the limits which I had set myself not to
exceed, are expired; and besides, I do not like this
country, which has all the dreariness, without the
grandeur of scenery, of that which we have left. The
Crescent, however, has a beautiful appearance in a
deep hollow surrounded by hills. It looks like a
jewel at the bottom of an earthen cup.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

…Your emigrants are very interesting people.
I think the English character has never appeared
in a more amiable light, than in the kind and
hospitable attentions which have been pretty generally
shown to these unfortunate people. I was much
amused with Louvet, and interested; though I confess
the interest was somewhat weakened by the reflection,
that he was by profession a bookseller and a
writer of romances; and I think one may discover a
few traits de plume in the high colouring he gives to
the attachment between himself and his wife. What
has still more interested me,—because I have a higher
opinion of her character, and greater confidence in 6(3)r 65
her sincerity,—is L’Appel de Madame Roland.
What talents! what energy of character! what powers
of description! But have you seen the second
part, which has not been printed here, and which
contains memoirs of her life from the earliest period
to the death of her mother, when she was one-and-
twenty? It is surely the most singular book that has
appeared since the Confessions of Rousseau; a book
that none but a Frenchwoman could write, and wonderfully
entertaining. I began it with a certain fear
upon my mind—What is this woman going to tell me?
Will it be any thing, but what will lessen my esteem
for her? If, however, we were to judge of the female
and male mind by contrasting these confessions with
those I just now mentioned, the advantage in purity,
comme de raison, will be greatly on the side of our sex.

To Mrs. Beecroft.

…I do not know the present course of your
reading, but I imagine that two works, at least, have
employed the leisure of both of us; Roscoe’s Lorenzo,
and Mrs. d’Arblay’s Camilla. The former is a very
capital work: I only wish that instead of making
Lorenzo the Magnificent, the centre round which
every thing revolves, he had made the history of
literature itself the professed subject of his work, and
taken the Medici only in connexion with that.—And
how do you like Camilla? Not so well, I am afraid,
as the former publications from the same hand. I
like, however, the story of Eugenia, where the distress
is new; and the character of that amiable imbecille
the uncle: and Mrs. Arlberry’s character is very well
drawn. I was struck on reading the work with the 6* 6(3)v 66
persuasion, that no second work of an author, who
has written the first after being in full possession of his
powers, can help falling off, and for this reason: ――
every one has a manner of his own, a vein of thinking
peculiar to himself; and on the second publication,
though the incidents may be all new, the novelty resulting
from this originality is gone for ever. I think
Gibbon says, in his very entertaining Memoirs, that
nothing can renew the pleasure with which a favourite
author and the public meet one another for the first
time.

I am just now reduced to regret, my dear friend,
that I have taken such small paper. It cuts short
what I was going to tell you of General Paoli, whom
I met the other day. Had it been thirty years ago,
it would have made my heart beat stronger. He told
us a good deal about his god-son and aid-de-camp
Bounaparte, who was going to write Paoli’s annals,
when he was called upon to give ample matter for his
own annals.

To Mrs. Carr.

We are here very comfortably with our friend
Mr. Estlin, who, like some other persons that I know,
has the happy art of making his friends feel entirely
at home with him:—he and Mrs. E.Estlin follow their occupations
in the morning, and we our inclinations.
The walks here on both sides the river are delightful;
and the scenery at St. Vincent’s rocks, whether viewed
from above or below, is far superior, in my opinion,
even to the beautifully dressed scenes that border the
Thames, though these exceed it in fine trees…

I have seen Dr. Beddoes, who is a very pleasant
man: his favourite prescription at present to ladies 6(4)r 67
is, the inhaling the breath of cows; and as he does
not, like the German doctors, send the ladies to the
cow-house, the cows are to be brought into the lady’s
chamber, where they are to stand all night with their
heads within the curtains. Mrs.—, who has a
good deal of humour, says the benefit cannot be mutual;
and she is afraid, if the fashion takes, we shall
eat diseased beef. It is fact, however, that a family
have been turned out of their lodgings, because the
people of the house would not admit the cows: they
said they had not built and furnished their rooms for
the hoofs of cattle.

To Mrs. Kenrick.

Whether or no I received the letter which you
forgot to write, I shall not tell you; I only know that
I am often reproached by my correspondents for negligence;
and for the life of me I cannot think of any
thing that has hindered the arrival of my letters, except
the cause to which you are inclined to attribute
the failure of yours. Be that as it may, I most certainly
have received from you one letter which has
given me a great deal of pleasure, and for which I
will no longer defer my affectionate thanks. And
what shall I tell you first? That we are well, that
we have rubbed tolerably through the winter, and that
we have been enjoying the sudden burst of spring,
which clothed every tree and every hedge in verdure
with a rapidity seldom observed in our climate. The
blossoms were all pushed out at once, but unfortunately
few have remained long enough to give the expectation
of fruit. I fear it may be the same with your beautiful
apple-orchards. We often picture to ourselves 6(4)v 68
the beautiful country, and still oftener the affectionate
friends and interesting family with whom we
spent so happy a fortnight last summer.

If all that has happened had not happened, or the
memory of it could be washed away with Lethe, how
usefully and respectably might Dr. Priestley now be
placed at the head of the Royal Institution, which is
so fashionable just now in London! I went a few
mornings ago to hear Dr. Garnet, who is at present
the only lecturer, and was much pleased to see a
fashionable and very attentive audience, about one
third ladies, assembled for the purposes of science
and improvement. How much is taught now, and
even made a part of education, which, when you and
I were young, was not even discovered! It does
some credit to the taste of the town, that the Institution
and the Bishop of London’s lectures have been the
most fashionable places of resort this winter. I have
received, however, great pleasure lately from the
representation of De Montfort, a tragedy which you
probably read a year and a half ago, in a volume entitled
A Series of Plays on the Passions. I admired it then,
but little dreamed I was indebted for my entertainment
to a young lady of Hampstead whom I visited,
and who came to Mr. Barbauld’s meeting all
the while with as innocent a face as if she had never
written a line. The play is admirably acted by Mrs.
Siddons and Kemble, and is finely written, with great
purity of sentiment, beauty of diction, strength and
originality of character; but it is open to criticism,—
I cannot believe such a hatred natural. The affection
between the brother and sister is most beautifully
touched, and, as far as I know, quite new. The play
is somewhat too good for our present taste.

Though I hope the time approaches when we
shall be within reach of one another again, I feel
the want of our accustomed intercourse too strongly
not to wish to supply it in some manner by a letter.
Besides, I want to wish you joy on the peace,
which came at last so unexpectedly, and almost overwhelmed
us with the good news. We have hardly
done illuminating and bouncing and popping upon the
occasion. The spontaneous joy and mutual congratulations
of all ranks show plainly what were the wishes
of the people, though they dared not to declare
them. And now France lies like a huge loadstone
on the other side of the Channel, and will draw every
mother’s child of us to it. Those who know French,
are refreshing their memories,—those who do not,
are learning it; and every one is planning in some
way or other to get a sight of the promised land.

Our Hampstead neighbours are returning to us from
the lakes, and the sea, and the ends of the earth. I
have been puzzling myself to account for this universal
disposition amongst us to migrate at a certain time
of the year and change our way of life; and I have
been fancying that we English lie under the same
spell which the fairies are said to do,—by which, during
a month every year, they are obliged to be transformed,
and to wander about exposed to adventures.
So some of our nymphs are turned into butterflies for
the season, others into Naiads, and sport about till
the sober months come, when they resume their usual
appearance and occupation of notable housewives,
perhaps in Cheapside or the Borough. As to you,
you carry your cares with you, and therefore must be
pretty much the same, except the dripping locks of 6(5)v 70
the Naiad; but Sarah, I imagine, is at this moment
skimming along the shore like a swallow, or walking
with naked feet like a slender heron in the water, or
nestling among the cliffs. Wherever she is, my love
to her.

Have you ever seen the Isle of Wight? if not, you
have not seen the prettiest place in the king’s dominions.
It is such a charming little island! In this
great island, which we set foot on half an hour ago,
the sea is at such a distance from the greater part of
it, that you have no more acquaintance with it than if
you were in the heart of Germany; and even on the
coast, England appears no more an island to the eye
than France does; but in this little gem of the ocean,
called the Isle of Wight, you see and feel you are in
an island every moment. The great ocean becomes
quite domestic; you see it from every point of view;
you have it on the right hand, you look and you have
it on the left also; you see both sides of the island at
once,—you look into every creek and corner of it,
which produces a new and singular feeling. We have
taken three different rides upon and under high cliffs,
corn-fields, and villages down to the water’s edge, and
a fine West India fleet in view, with the sails all spread,
and her convoy most majestically sailing by her. We
saw Lord Dysart’s seat, and Sir Richard Worsley’s:
at the former, there is a seat in the rock which shuts
out every object but the shoreless ocean,—for it looks
towards France: at the latter, there is an attempt at
an English vineyard; the vines are planted on terraces
one above another. Another day’s excursion was to
the Needles; we walked to the very point, the toe of 6(6)r 71
the island: the seagulls were flying about the rock
like bees from a hive, and little fleets of puffins with
their black heads in the water. Allum bay looks like
a wall of marble veined with different colours. The
freshness of the sea air, and the beauty of the smooth
turf of the downs on which we rode or walked, was
inexpressibly pleasing. The next day we visited the
north side of the island, richly wooded down to the
water’s edge, and rode home over a high down with
the sea on both sides, and a rich country between;
the corn beginning to acquire the tinge of harvest
time. In short, I do believe that if Buonaparte were
to see the Isle of Wight, he would think it a very
pretty appanage for some third or fourth cousin, and
would make him king of it—if he could get it.

To Mrs. Smith.

It would have given me great pleasure to have
been among those friends who crowd about you to
congratulate your arrival again on English ground;
but the distance,—first the severity of the weather, and
then indisposition consequent upon it, prevent my having
that pleasure. I cannot content myself, however,
without writing a line to welcome you all home. We
hear you have been very much pleased with Paris,
which indeed was to be expected. The canvass
people and the marble people must be sufficient to
make a rich voyage of it, even if the French people
had not opened their mouths…

We are apt to accuse some of you travellers of
bringing us over an influenza from Paris, softened
indeed in passing over the Channel, but severe enough 6(6)v 72
to set us all a coughing. We try to amuse ourselves,
however, with reading; and among other things have
been greatly amused and interested with Hayley’s
Life of Cowper, which I would much advise you to
read if it comes in your way. Hayley, indeed, has
very little merit in it, for it is a collection of letters with
a very slender thread of biography; but many of the
letters are charming, particularly to his relation, Lady
Hesketh; and there is one poem to his Mary, absolutely
the most pathetic piece that ever was written.
We have also read, as I suppose you have done,
Madame de Stael’s Delphine. Her pen has more of
Rousseau than any author that has appeared for a
long time. I suppose you have heard it canvassed
and criticised at Paris…

To Mrs. Beecroft.

I am glad to find you have spent the spring so
pleasantly. But when you say you made the excursion
instead of coming to London, you forget that
you might have passed the latter end of a London
winter in town after enjoying the natural spring in the
country. We have been spending a week at Richmond,
in the delightful shades of Ham walks and
Twickenham meadows. I never saw so many flowering
limes and weeping-willows as in that neighbourhood;
they say, you know, that Pope’s famous willow
was the first in the country; and it seems to corroborate
it, that there are so many in the vicinity. Under
the shade of the trees we read Southey’s Amadis,
which I suppose you are also reading. As all Englishmen
are now to turn knights-errant and fight
against the great giant and monster Buonaparte, the 7(1)r 73
publication seems very seasonable. Pray are you
an alarmist? One hardly knows whether to be frightened
or diverted on seeing people assembled at a dinner-table,
appearing to enjoy extremely the fare and
the company, and saying all the while, with a most
smiling and placid countenance, that the French are
to land in a fortnight, and that London is to be sacked
and plundered for three days,—and then they talk of
going to watering-places. I am sure we do not believe
in the danger we pretend to believe in; and I
am sure that none of us can even form an idea how
we should feel, if we were forced to believe it. I
wish I could lose in the quiet walks of literature all
thoughts of the present state of the political horizon.

My brother is going to publish Letters to a young
Lady on English Poetry; he is indefatigable. “I
wish you were half as diligent!” say you. “Amen!”
say I. Love to Eliza and Laura, and thank the former
for her note. I shall always be glad to hear
from either of them. How delightful must be the
soft beatings of a heart entering into the world for the
first time, every surrounding object new, fresh, and
fair,—all smiling within and without! Long may every
sweet illusion continue that promotes happiness, and
ill befall the rough hand that would destroy them!

To Miss Taylor, now Mrs. Reeve.

I may call you dear Susan, may I not? for I can
love you, if not better, yet more familiarly and at my
ease under that appellation than under the more formal
one of Miss Taylor, though you have now a train
to your gown, and are, I suppose, at Norwich invested
with all the rights of womanhood. I have many things Vol. II. 7 7(1)v 74
to thank you for:—in the first place for a charming
letter, which has both amused and delighted us. In
the next place, I have to thank you for a very elegant
veil, which is very beautiful in itself, and receives
great additional value from being the work of your
ingenious fingers. I have brought it here to parade
with upon the Pantiles, being by much the smartest
part of my dress. O that you were here, Susan, to
exhibit upon a donky—I cannot tell whether my
orthography is right, but a donky is the monture in
high fashion here; and I assure you, when covered
with blue housings, and sleek, it makes no bad figure:
—I mean a lady, if an elegant woman, makes no
bad figure upon it, with a little boy or girl behind,
who carries a switch, meant to admonish the animal
from time to time that he is hired to walk on, and
not to stand still. The ass is much better adapted
than the horse to show off a lady; for this reason,
which perhaps may not have occurred to you, that
her beauty is not so likely to be eclipsed: for you
must know that many philosophers, amongst whom is
――, are decidedly of opinion that a fine horse is a
much handsomer animal than a fine woman; but I
have not yet heard such a preference asserted in
favour of the ass,—not our English asses at least,—
a fine Spanish one, or a zebra, perhaps…

It is the way to subscribe for every thing here;—
to the library, &c.; and among other things we were
asked on the Pantiles to subscribe for eating fruit as
we pass backwards and forwards. “How much?”――
“Half-a-crown.” “But for how long a time?” “As
long a you please.” “But I should soon eat a half-a-
crown’s-worth of fruit.”— “O, you are upon honour!”

There are pleasant walks on the hills here, and
picturesque views of the town, which, like Bath, is
seen to advantage by lying in a hollow. It bears the 7(2)r 75
marks of having been long a place of resort, from the
number of good and rather old built houses, all let for
lodgings; and shady walks, and groves of old growth.
The sides of many of the houses are covered with
tiles; but the Pantiles, which you may suppose I saw
with some interest, are now paved with freestone.

We were interested in your account of Cambridge,
and glad you saw not only buildings but men. With
a mind prepared as yours is, how much pleasure have
you to enjoy from seeing! That all your improvements
may produce you pleasure, and all your pleasures
tend to improvement, is the wish of

To Mrs. Beecroft.

…We came hither to take lodgings somewhere
in this beautiful country, but found none vacant;
so we have been some time at Burford-Bridge, a
little quiet sort of an inn in the centre of the pleasant
walks; and a few days with our friends the C――s.
This is very much of a corn country, and we are
in the midst of harvest; the window at which I am
now writing, looks into a corn-field, where a family
have established their menage. The man and his
wife are reaping the corn; a cradle with a young
child in it, is brought into the field by break of day,
and set under a hedge; the mother makes a sort of
tent with her red cloak to shelter it from the weather;
and there she gives it suck, and there they take their
meals: two older children either watch the cradle, or
run about the fields. A young baronet here has incurred
great and deserved odium by forbidding the
poor to glean in his fields; and effectually to prevent 7(2)v 76
them, the plough immediately follows the sickle: yet
probably this man can talk of the wisdom of our forefathers,
and the regard due to ancient observances.
This country is remarkable for great richness of wood,
which Autumn has as yet only touched with his little
finger;—in a month’s time they will be enchanting.
Another agrément here is, that you see no soldiers;
though I confess you are put in mind of them by a
military road lately cut over Box-hill, —I hope a very
needless precaution.

To Mrs. J. Taylor.

I am now reading Mr. Johnes’s Froissart, and I
think I never was more struck with the horrors of
war,—simply because he seems not at all struck with
them; and I feel ashamed at my heart having ever
beat with pleasure at the names of Cressy and Poitiers.
He tells you the English marched into such a district;
the barns were full, and cattle and corn plentiful; they
burned and destroyed all the villages, and laid the
country bare; such an English earl took a town, and
killed men, women and children;—and he never
makes a remark, but shows he looks upon it as the
usual mode of proceeding.

A thousand thanks for your kind letter; still
more for the very kind visit that preceded it—though
short, too short, it has left indelible impressions on
my mind; my heart has truly had communion with
yours,—your sympathy has been balm to it; and I 7(3)r 77
feel that there is no one now on earth, to whom I
could pour out that heart more readily, I may say so
readily, as to yourself. Very good also has my dear
amiable Mrs. Beecroft been to me, whose lively sweetness
and agreeable conversation has at times won me
to forget that my heart is heavy.

I am now alone again, and feel like a person who
has been sitting by a cheerful fire, not sensible at the
time of the temperature of the air, but the fire removed,
he finds the season is still winter. Day after day
passes, and I do not know what I do with my time;
my mind has no energy, nor power of application.
I can tell you, however, what I have done with some
hours of it, which have been agreeably employed in
reading Mrs. Montague’s Letters. I think her
nephew has made a very agreeable present to the
public; and I was greatly edified to see them printed
in modest octavo, with Mrs. Montague’s sweet face
(for it is a very pretty face) at the head. They certainly
show a very extraordinary mind, full of wit,
and also of deep thought and sound judgment. She
seems to have liked not a little to divert herself with
the odd and the ludicrous, and shows herself in the
earlier letters passionately fond of balls and races and
London company; this was natural enough at eighteen.
Perhaps you may not so easily pardon her for having
early settled her mind, as she evidently had, not to
marry except for an establishment. This seems to
show a want of some of those fine feelings that one
expects in youth: but when it is considered that she
was the daughter of a country gentleman with a large
family and no fortune to expect, and her connexions
all in high life, one is disposed to pardon her, especially
as I dare say she would never have married a
fool or a profligate. I heard her say,—what I suppose
very few can say,—that she never was in love 7(3)v 78
in her life. Many of the letters are in fact essays;
and I think had she turned her thoughts to write in
that way, she would have excelled Johnson.

I have also turned over Lamb’s Specimens of Old
Plays, and am much pleased with them. I made a
discovery there, that La Motte’s fable of Genius, Virtue,
and Reputation, which has been so much praised
for its ingenious turn, is borrowed from Webster, an
author of the age of Shakspeare; or they have taken
it from some common source, for a Frenchman was
not very likely to light upon an English poet of that
age; they knew about as much of us then, as we did
fifty years ago of the Germans. It is surprising how
little invention there is in the world; no very good
story was ever invented. It is perhaps originally some
fact a little enlarged; then, by some other hand, embellished
with circumstances; then by somebody else,
a century after, refined, drawn to a point, and furnished
with a moral. When shall we see the moral of
the world’s great story, which astonishes by its events,
interests by the numerous agents it puts in motion,
but of which we cannot understand the bearings, or
predict the catastrophe? It is a tangled web, of which
we have not the clue. I do not know how to rejoice
at this victory, splendid as it is, over Buonaparte,
when I consider the horrible waste of life, the mass of
misery, which such gigantic combats must occasion.
I will think no more of it; let me rather contemplate
your family: there the different threads all wind evenly,
smoothly, and brightly.

I have been thinking what to liken our uncertain
and unfrequent correspondence to. I cannot liken it 7(4)r 79
to the regular blow of flowers that come out and blossom
in their proper season. It is rather like the aloe,
that after having been barren season after season,
shows signs of life all on a sudden, and pushes out
when you least expect it. But take notice, the life
is in the aloe all the while, and sorry indeed should
I be, if the life was not all the while in our friendship,
though it so seldom diffuses itself over a piece of paper.
How much I long to see you again! I wish you would
come and see me this summer, the journey I should
hope would not be too much for you; and in coming
to me, you would be near all your friends. Do think
of it!

…I believe I am writing you an enormous
letter; but I have been in a course of letter-reading.
I am wading through the letters of Madame du Deffand,
in four volumes. Have you read them? Walpole
and she wrote every week, and they were continually
grumbling at one another, yet they went on. Walpole,
poor man, seems to have been terribly afraid that this
old blind lady was in love with him; and he had
much ado to reduce her expressions of friendship to
something of an English standard. This lady appears
to have been very unhappy. She was blind, indeed,
but she had every thing else that could make age
comfortable; fortune, friends, talents, consideration
in the world, the society of all the wits and all the
people of rank in Paris, or who visited Paris, but she
totally wanted the best support of all,—religious feelings
and hopes; and I do not know any thing that is
likely to impress their importance more on the mind,
than the perusal of these letters. You see her tired
of life, almost blaspheming providence for having
given her existence; yet dreading to die, because she
had no hopes beyond death. A lady told me, she
would not on any account let her daughter read the 7(4)v 80
letters. I think, for my part, they give in this view as
good a lesson as you can pick out of Mrs. More’s
Practical Piety, which, if you have not read, I cannot
help it.

Adieu! do let me hear from you soon. I wonder,
say you, the woman has the face to ask it. That’s
true, but I hope you will, notwithstanding. Nothing
will give more pleasure to

To Mrs. Beecroft.

Many happy new years to you, my dear friend,
and may they bring you increasing joy in your children
and your children’s children, and in your circle of
friends, and in the various occupations of all sorts,
which the exercise of your talents or the offices of
kindness engage you in! To you I may wish this,
with cheerful hope of its fulfilment. At my time of
life, to look forward to new years, is to contemplate
the prospect of increasing languor and growing infirmities.
Not, I am sure, that I have any reason to
complain, for Time deals gently with me; and though
I feel that I descend, the slope is easy; and greatly
thankful I am that I have, so accessible and so near
me, the friends and relations that were assembled at
Christmas in order to help me to dispatch your noble
turkey. It was indeed so large, that I had some
difficulty in persuading them that it came to me inclosed
in a letter; but I pleaded your known veracity,
and they submitted. Accept, my dear friend, my
best thanks, and believe me, though my pen (it is a
naughty pen) has been idle, I did not want it to put
me in mind of so dear a friend.

Yes, I have been at Bristol this summer, and spent
there almost the only month that could be called
summer in the last year. I spent some days at Bath,
some at that delightful place Clifton; and I spent a
day with Hannah More and her four sisters at her
charming cottage under the Mendip hills, which she
has named Barley Wood, and which is equally the
seat of taste and hospitality. We have had a meeting
here for an auxiliary Bible Society. Many ladies
went, not indeed to speak, but to hear speaking; and
they tell me they were much entertained and interested.
I honour the zeal of these societies; but it is
become a sort of rage, and I suspect outgoes the occasion.

To Mrs. J. Taylor.

…There is certainly at present a great
deal of zeal in almost every persuasion;—certainly
much more in England, as far as I am able to judge,
than when I was young. I often speculate upon what
it will produce, not uniformity of opinion certainly;
that is a blessing we seem not destined here to enjoy,
if indeed it would be a blessing. But will it tend to
universal toleration and enlarged liberality of thinking?
or, with increase of zeal, will the church spirit of bigotry
revive, and unite with the increasing power of
government to crush the spirit of research and freedom
of opinion? Bible societies, missionary schemes,
lectures, schools for the poor, are set on foot and
spread, not so much from a sense of duty as from
being the real taste of the times; and I am told that
Mrs. Siddons’ readings are much patronized by the
evangelical people, as they are called, of fashion, who
will not enter the doors of a theatre. Would that 7(5)v 82
with all this, there could be seen some little touch of
feeling for the miseries of war, that are desolating the
earth without end or measure! One should be glad
to see some suspicion arise, that it was not consistent
with the spirit of the Gospel; but this you do not see
even in good people.

…Friends at a distance do not want some
medium of sympathy though they do not meet. I
have sometimes looked upon new books in that light.
When I peruse a book of merit to be generally read,
I feel sure, though not informed of it, that precisely
the same stream of ideas which is flowing through
my mind, is flowing through my friend’s also; and
without any communication, either by word or letter,
I know that he has admired and criticized, and laughed
and wept as I have done.

To Dr. and Mrs. Estlin.

…If you ask what I am doing—nothing.
Pope, I think, somewhere says, “The last years of
life, like tickets left in the wheel, rise in value.”. The
thought is beautiful, but false; they are of very little
value,—they are generally past either in struggling
with pains and infirmities, or in a dreamy kind of existence;
no new veins of thought are opened; no
young affections springing up; the ship has taken in
its lading, whatever it may be, whether precious stones
or lumber, and lies idly flapping its sails and waiting
for the wind that must drive it upon the wide ocean.

Have you seen Lord Byron’s new poem.— The
Bride of Abydos? and have you read Madame de
Stael’s Germany? You will find in the latter many 7(6)r 83
fine ideas, beautiful sentiments, and entertaining remarks
on manners and countries: but in her account
of Kant and the other German philosophers, she has
got, I fancy, a little out of her depth. She herself is,
or affects to be, very devotional; but her religion
seems to be almost wholly a matter of imagination,—
the beau ideal impressed upon us at our birth, along
with a taste for beauty, for music, &c. As far as I
understand her account of the German school, there
seems to be in many of them a design to reinstate the
doctrine of innate ideas, which the cold philosophy,
as they would call it, of Locke, discarded. They
would like Beattie and Hutcheson better than Paley
or Priestley. I do not like Lord Byron’s poem quite
so well as his last; and I cannot see any advantage
in calling a nightingale bulbul, or a rose gul, except
to disconcert plain English readers.

There are animals that sleep all winter;—I
am, I believe, become one of them: they creep into
holes during the same season;—I have confined myself
to the fireside of a snug parlour. If, indeed, a
warm sunshiny day occurs, they sometimes creep out
of their holes; so, now and then, have I. They exist
in a state of torpor;—so have I done: the only difference
being, that I have all the while continued the
habit of eating and drinking, which, to their advantage,
they can dispense with. But my mind has certainly
been asleep all the while; and whenever I have attempted
to employ it, I have felt an oppression in my
head which has obliged me to desist. What wonderful
events have passed during the last few months! 7(6)v 84
How new is the very name of peace to us all; and
to those of thirty and under, it is a state that, since
they were able to reflect at all on public affairs, they
have never known. London seems to have nothing
to do now, but to give feasts and pop away all the
spare gun-powder in rockets and feux-de-joie in honour
of its illustrious guests. Everybody has been idle
since these royal personages came amongst us. It is
in vain even to bespeak a pair of shoes,—not a man
will work; and I imagine Alexander must be greatly
puzzled, when the concourse in the streets from morning
till night, shows how many there are that are doing
nothing, and the shops and manufactures how much
has been done.

To Dr. and Mrs. Estlin

My days of travelling are now nearly over; yet I
find a little variety as necessary, perhaps, to relieve
the tedium of life, as once it was to recruit from its
toils and avocations. I do not know how it is with
you at Bristol, but in most places there has been lately
a migration into France of almost all who could
command money and time. I was amused with the
contrast between a lively pleasant-tempered man and
a poco curante. “How do you like France?” said
I to the first. “I have spent,” said he, “seven weeks
of uninterrupted happiness.” “How do you like
France?” to the second. “I have been there, because
one must go, one is ashamed not to have been,
it is a thing over.” “A lively nation?” “Manners
quite spoiled, no agreeable company.” “It is possible
they may not be partial to the English just now,
as we have so lately been with fire and sword into 8(1)r 85
their territory:—but the museums?” “Valuable to
be sure; but they do not properly belong to Paris.”
“The theatres, sir?” “Now and then, when Talma
acts: but to visit all their little paltry theatres, and
every evening, as some do, I had rather sit at home
in my chamber and read.” And so ended my dialogue
with the poco curante. Not with such indifference,
but with the strong feelings which you who
witnessed the destruction of the Bastille can appreciate,
Mr.—says he should abhor going to Paris. As
to the ladies who go, they think of nothing but smuggling
lace and silk shawls.

I have just been reading, as probably you have
also, six close volumes of Miss Seward’s letters, which,
she informs us, was only a twelfth part of her correspondence
in, I think, twenty years. I have also been
reading a letter of the poet M――’s to my brother,
in which, apologizing for his long silence, he says, “I
verily believe, that if I had been an antediluvian, I
could have let a hundred years pass between every
letter, and feel the most violent twinges of conscience
every day of that century for my omission, without
their working any reformation in that respect.” Now
I look upon myself to be between both these characters,
—to which I approximate most, I must leave you
to determine.

Everybody has been abroad this uncommonly fine
summer, but my brother and sister and myself. I
spent one day only at Hampstead, where I met Walter
Scott, the lion of this London season, and one
day at Chigwell. The road to Chigwell is through a
part of Hainault Forest; and we stopped to look at
Fairlop oak, one of the largest in England; a completevol. II. 8 8(1)v 86
ruin, but a noble ruin, which it is impossible to
see without thinking of Cowper’s beautiful lines,
“Who lived, when thou wast such.” The immoveable
rocks and mountains present us rather with an
idea of eternity than of long life. There they are,
and there they have been before the birth of nations.
The tops of the everlasting hills have been seen covered
with snow from the earliest records of time. But
a tree, that has life and growth like ourselves, that,
like ourselves, was once small and feeble, that certainly
some time began to be,—to see it attain a size
so enormous, and in its bulk and its slow decay bear
record of the generations it has outlived,—this brings
our comparative feebleness strongly in view. “Man
passeth away, and where is he?” while “the oak
of our fathers” will be the oak of their children and
their children.

To Mrs. Fletcher.

What do I think of the French!—In the first
place, it requires some time before one can think
at all, events succeed each other with such astonishing
rapidity. The constitution held out to the king’s
acceptance was indeed all one can wish,—the principles
of liberty were carried further than even in
ours,—but you see he has not signed it; and if he
had, it is a jest to talk of a constitution, when three
or four foreign armies are in the kingdom.

France, proud France, gallant France, is a conquered
country. I do not think we yet know her
real inclinations; convulsed by a revolution, tyrannized
over by a despot, and owing her deliverance to her
very enemies, how she is humbled, how much she 8(2)r 87
has suffered; but how much she has inflicted! The
French, however, have a better chance for happiness
with the mild imbecility of the Bourbons, than with
Napoleon.

This was written a week ago: and now Spain ――
Spain has disappointed all our hopes: “Down with
the Cortes,—up with the Inquisition!” and, as at
Naples some years ago, the few fine spirits who would
have rejoiced in a better order of things, will be consigned
to dungeons. I do not know what we can
gather from the contemplation of all these revolutions,
but this; that the concerns and destinies of all the
world are too high for us; that we must wait the
winding up of the drama, and be satisfied in promoting
and enjoying the happiness of our own little circle…

The three persons who have most engaged the
attention of London societies this year, have been women:
—Miss Edgeworth, Madame de Stael, and now
the Duchess of Oldenburg, who shows, they say, a
most rational and unsated curiosity. But kings and
emperors are now appearing on the stage, and the
lesser lights must “pale their ineffectual fires.” Dear
madam, will not you and Miss F. come to London to
see all these sights? You are much mistaken if you
think, as you seem to do, that you shall find us anxiously
speculating about the liberties of Europe. We
shall be squeezing to get a sight of Alexander, and
taking tickets for fêtes, and looking at the prince’s
fireworks, and criticizing the Oldenburg hat, and
picking up anecdotes to shine with in the next party.
Shall I be equally mistaken, or shall I not, when I
suppose that you in Edinburgh are deep in mathematics
and metaphysics with Dugald Stewart? I want to
know how his work is relished. I am glad he has
spoken a good word for final causes, the search for
which, under the guidance of judgment and impartiality, 8(2)v 88
certainly assists investigation, as truly as it is the
reward of it.

To Mrs. Fletcher.

… What an alteration a few weeks has made
in London! If you crossed the street a month ago,
you had a chance of meeting a prince or an emperor;
and now it is empty beyond the usual emptiness of
summer, and everybody you meet has been, or is
planning to go, across the Channel. I am sorry to
say, that among my female acquaintance the joy of
bringing home, cleverly concealed, shawls, lace, &c.,
seems to dwell more upon the fancy than museums of
art or new scenes of nature; and truly, some of the
young men seem better able to criticise French cookery
than French conversation, or the Venus and
Apollo. Is there not something strange and rather
revolting in speaking of the French, as most have
done for these twenty years past, with the utmost
abhorrence and contempt,—and pouring ourselves
over their country the moment it is accessible, to mix
in their parties and bring home their fashions?…
We have been full fed with novels lately, and shall be
with poems. Think of a thick quarto of ―’s, entitled
Fragments, being only a taste of the second part
of a poem, which I suppose he means to give us some
time or other. I should like to supply him with a
motto:—“And of the fragments there were taken up
twelve baskets full.”

To Mrs. Beecroft.

Our tourists are mostly now returned. Such
numbers have resided more or less abroad, that I
cannot help thinking the intercourse must influence in
some degree the national manners, which I find by
Madame de Stael, are not yet to the taste of our
neighbours. They allow us to be respectable, but
they plainly intimate they do not think us amiable.
When I read such censures, I cannot help saying in
my mind to the author,—I wish you knew such a one,
and such a one, of my acquaintance; I am sure you
could not but love them.—Yet, after all, I fear we
must acknowledge something about us dry, cold, and
reserved; more afraid of censure, than gratified by
notice; very capable of steadiness in important pursuits,
but not happy in filling up the pauses and intervals
of life with ingenious trifles and spontaneous,
social hilarity…

It seems to me that there is more room for authors
in history than in any other department. It is continually
growing. It is like a tree, the dead leaves
and branches of which are continually pruned and
cleared away, and fresh green shoots arising. How
much less interesting since the French Revolution are
the glories and conquests of Louis XIV.! What is the
whole field of ancient history, which knew no sea but
the Mediterranean, to the vast continent of America,
with its fresh and opening glories! Will they be wise
by our experience, peaceable, moderate, virtuous?
No: they will be learned by our learning, but not
wise by our experience. Each country, as each man,
must buy his own experience.

To Mrs. Taylor.

I will write, now my dear friend is better, is recovering,
is, I hope, in a fair way to be soon quite
well, and all herself again; and she will accept, and
so will Mr. T. and Mrs. R. my warmest congratulations.
To tell you how anxious we have been, would,
I trust, be superfluous, or how much joy we have
felt in being relieved from that anxiety. It is pleasant
to have some one to share pleasure with; and though
I could have had that satisfaction in a degree with
every one who knows you, it is more particularly
agreeably to me at this time to have your dear Sarah
to sympathize with and talk to about you. Among
other things we say, that you must not let mind wear
out body, which I suspect you are a little inclined to
do. Mind is often very hard upon his humble yokefellow,
sometimes speaking contemptuously of her,
as being of a low, mean family, in comparison with
himself; often abridging her food or natural rest for
his whims. Many a headache has he given her,
when but for him, she would be quietly resting in her
bed. Sometimes he fancies that she hangs as a dead
weight upon him, and impedes all his motions; yet it
is well known, that though he gives himself such airs
of superiority, he can in fact do nothing without her;
and since, however they came together, they are
united for better for worse, it is for his interest as
well as hers, that she should be nursed and cherished,
and taken care of.—And so ends my sermon.

To Miss—.

… The enigma you do me the honour to
ask for, will accompany this; but I have first to find
it; for though I have looked a good deal, I have not
yet been able to lay my hands on it. I beg to make
proviso, that if I should want myself to insert it in any
publication, I may be at liberty to do it. Though,
truly, that is not very likely: for well do I feel one
faculty after another withdrawing, and the shades of
evening closing fast around me; and be it so! What
does life offer at past eighty (at which venerable age
I arrived one day last June); and I believe you will
allow that there is not much of new, of animating, of
inviting, to be met with after that age. For my own
part, I only find that many things I knew, I have forgotten;
many things I thought I knew, I find I know
nothing about; some things I know, I have found not
worth knowing; and some things I would give—O
what would one not give to know? are beyond the
reach of human ken. Well, I believe this is what
may be called prosing, and you can make much better
use of your time than to read it.

I saw yesterday two boys, modern Greeks in the
costume of their country, introduced by Mr. Bowring,
who has the charge of them—“du Grec—ah, ma
sœur, du Grec; ils parlent du Grec!” I have been
reading one or two American novels lately. They
are very well, but I do not wish them to write novels
yet. Let them explore and describe their new country;
let them record the actions of their Washington,
the purest character perhaps that history has to boast
of; let them enjoy their free, their unexpensive government,
number their rising towns, and boast that
persecution does not set her bloody foot in any corner 8(4)v 92
of their extensive territories. Then let them kindle
into poetry; but not yet,—not till the more delicate
shades and nicer delineations of life are familiar to
them,—let them descend to novels. But, tempted
by writing to you, I am running on till my eyes are
tired, and perhaps you too. Compliments to Mrs.
――, and all your family. If I find the riddle, I will
send it to you; meantime I am, with the truest esteem
and friendship,