find me coated and buttoned according to your recommendation.

I write but little, because writing is become new to me; but I shall come on by degrees. Mrs. Unwin begs to be affectionately remembered to you. She is in tolerable health, which is the chief comfort here that I have to boast of.

Yours, my dearest Cousin, as ever,

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, Sept. 4, 1787.

My dearest Coz.-Come, when thou canst come, secure of being always welcome! All that is here is thine, together with the hearts of those who dwell here. I am only sorry, that your journey hither is necessarily postponed beyond the time when I did hope to have seen you; sorry too that my uncle's infirmities are the occasion of it. But years will have their course and their effect; they are happiest, so far as this life is concerned, who like him escape those effects the longest, and who do not grow old before their time. Trouble and anguish do that for some, which only longevity does for others. A few months since I was older than your father is now, and, though I have lately recovered, as Falstaff says, some smatch of my youth, I have but little confidence, in truth none, in so flattering a change, but expect, when I least expect it, to wither again. The past is a pledge for the future.

VOL. III.

S

Mr. G. is here, Mrs. Throckmorton's uncle. He is lately arrived from Italy, where he has resided several years, and is so much the gentleman that it is impossible to be more So. Sensible, polite, obliging; slender in his figure, and in manners most engaging every way worthy to be related to the Throckmortons.

I have read Savary's Travels into Egypt; Memoires du Baron de Tott; Fenn's Original Letters; the Letters of Frederick of Bohemia, and am now reading Memoires d'Henri de Lorraine, Duc de Guise.* I have also read Barclay's Argenis, a Latin romance, and the best romance that ever was written-all these, together with Madan's Letters to Priestley, and several pamphlets, within these two months. So I am a great reader.

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, Sept. 15, 1787.

My dearest Cousin-On Monday last I was invited to meet your friend, Miss J- at the Hall, and there we found her. Her good nature, her humorous manner, and her good sense, are charming, insomuch that even I, who was never much addicted to speech-making, and who at present find myself particularly indisposed to it, could not help

*

Savary's Travels are in repute; Baron de Tott, a series of eventful incidents; Fenn's, elucidation of past historical periods, Duc de Guise, the great opponent of the Huguenots in France.

saying at parting, I am glad that I have seen you, and sorry that I have seen so little of you. We were sometimes many in company; on Thursday we were fifteen, but we had not altogether so much vivacity and cleverness as Miss J whose talent at mirth-making has this rare property to recommend it, that nobody suffers by it.

I am making a gravel-walk for winter use, under a warm hedge in the orchard. It shall be furnished with a low seat for your accommodation, and if you do but like it I shall be satisfied. In wet weather, or rather after wet weather, when the street is dirty, it will suit you well, for, lying on an easy declivity through its whole length, it must of course be immediately dry.

You are very much wished for by our friends at the Hall-how much by me I will not tell you till the second week in October.

Yours,

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, Sept. 29, 1787.

My dear Coz.-I thank you for your political intelligence retired as we are, and seemingly excluded from the world, we are not indifferent to what passes in it; on the contrary, the arrival of a newspaper, at the present juncture, never fails to furnish us with a theme for discussion, short indeed, but satisfactory, for we seldom differ in opinion.

I have received such an impression of the Turks,

from the memoirs of Baron de Tott, which I read lately, that I can hardly help presaging the conquest of that empire by the Russians. The disciples of Mahomet are such babies in modern tactics, and so enervated by the use of their favourite drug, so fatally secure in their predestinarian dream, and so prone to a spirit of mutiny against their leaders, that nothing less can be expected. In fact, they had not been their own masters at this day, had but the Russians known the weakness of their enemies half so well as they undoubtedly know it now. Add to this, that there is a popular prophecy current in both countries, that Turkey is one day to fall under the Russian sceptre. A prophecy, which, from whatever authority it be derived, as it will naturally encourage the Russians, and dispirit the Turks, in exact proportion to the degree of credit it has obtained on both sides, has a direct tendency to effect its own accomplishment. In the mean time, if I wish them conquered, it is only because I think it will be a blessing to them to be governed by any other hand than their own. For under heaven has there never been a throne so execrably tyrannical as theirs. The heads of the innocent that have been cut off to gratify the humour or caprice of their tyrants, could they be all collected and discharged against the walls of their city, would not leave one stone on another.

O that you were here this beautiful day! It is too fine by half to be spent in London. I have a perpetual din in my head, and, though I am not deaf, hear nothing aright, neither my own voice,

nor that of others. I am under a tub, from which tub accept my best love. Yours,

W. C.

The following letter discovers an afflicting instance of the delusion under which the interesting mind of Cowper laboured in some particular instances.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.*

Weston Underwood, Oct. 2, 1787.

My dear Friend-After a long but necessary interruption of our correspondence, I return to it again, in one respect at least better qualified for it than before; I mean by a belief of your identity, which for thirteen years I did not believe. The acquisition of this light, if light it may be called which leaves me as much in the dark as ever on the most interesting subjects, releases me however from the disagreeable suspicion that I am addressing myself to you as the friend whom I loved and valued so highly in my better days, while in fact you are not that friend, but a stranger. I can now write to you without seeming to act a part, and without having any need to charge myself with dissimulation ;-a charge from which, in that state of mind and under such an uncomfortable persuasion, I knew not how to exculpate myself, and which, as you will easily conceive, not seldom made my correspondence with you a burthen. Still, indeed, it wants, and is

* Private Correspondence.