on Mr. Erskine. Though at first an admirer and afterward a hater of the French Revolution, she vehemently reprobates our rushing into the war as in the highest degree impolitic; she despises Mr. Burke's eloquent ravings,' and ridicules that species. of religious cant which we are apt to mix up with our hostile measures. Alluding to the death of Mr. Pitt, she begins a letter thus:

• At last

"The extravagant and erring spirit hath hied

To his dark confine,"

covered with the lavished blood of slaughtered millions, and answer. able for the anguish of millions surviving to mourn the slain,'

Towards the conclusion of the correspondence, she exclaims, with a sort of poetic rage:

Whither can our frantic and impotent ministers be sending their continental expeditions? slaughter or imprisonment their certain fate. Our allies now see that British incendiarism, which has ended where it was always likely to end, in their destruction and vassalage, in its true light, and leave us on the brink of that precipice down which we have precipitated them.

• When our wretched politicians are standing in blank, and terrified astonishment,

"Spectators of the mischiefs they have made,"

while they are declaring, at last, the true and imminent danger of the country; are robbing every poor man of his liberty, by military coercion, fatal at once to freedom and to commerce; those who hold the reins of government are sending our soldiers by thousands and tens of thousands, out of these dominions, without one rational object, one probable hope; their valour and their lives sacrificed in vain attempts to commit useless outrages upon triumphant and impregnable France; to destroy, with bombs and shells, a few French houses and their guiltless inhabitants; or again to find ignoble graves amid the dikes of Holland, or to perish in impossible attempts in the dreadful climates of northern Europe; and this at a juncture when every British soldier will be wanted to defend his country from the longprovoked attacks of the invincible soldier, the unequalled General, who, by that stupid and mad assailance which we have stimulated, is risen to an extent of power unexampled as it is formidable, and from whose certain invasion reconcilement alone can save us.

O generation of madmen, who in hours like these, are vindicating our foolish ministers by crying out, "We must do something!" can no dire experience awaken you to a sense of the misery of obliging your country to become the seat of war? My very soul is sick of idiotism so big with universal danger, horror, and anguish.

And those who are so crying out, are echoing the if of the vanquished -"If England had sent twenty thousand men into Poland, Bonaparte had been defeated and the allies victorious."-Look at the fate of British armies in La Vendée! at Quiberon, in Holland, in

Turkey and be thankful that their blood did not swell the torrents that flowed in vain on the fields of Auerstadt and Friedland.'

Alas! the fate of our armies in South America has anticipated that reasoning of yours on the subject, which I dare assure myself is all demonstrative truth; and O! the dreadful business at Copenha gen! eternal stain on British faith, justice, honour, and humanity! The majority of the nation, obsequious to the powers that be, will "With necessity,

The tyrant's plea, excuse the devilish deed;"

and when in the end it has produced real mischief to this country, instead of fancied advantage, the general and almost inevitable fate of all evil actions, they will continue to do, what they have done through the whole course of this disastrous war, lay the consequences of ministerial guilt and folly upon the over-ruling power of Providence, and bring forth some obscure texts in the Revelations about calves and candlesticks, as shadowing forth the fate of France and England. O! it is ill for states, as for individuals, when they choose to incur cer tain and atrocious guilt, rather than distant and contingent danger.'*

To her anathemas on our modern system of war-politics, we should be happy to add her interesting account of Captain Hastings, who was wounded at Copenhagen while in the act of succouring a respectable Danish family: but we must restrain our pen, and only refer the reader to letter 69, vol. vi.

In the next place, let us take a glance at this lady's sentiments respecting religion. Though bred in the bosom of the Established church, she did not accede to all its doctrines; and her correspondence with the Rev. R. Fellowes appears to have somewhat modified her faith. Referring to Mr. F.'s "Picture of Christian Philosophy,” she says;

How happily have you removed that dire impediment to rational faith, the doctrine of original sin, which the revived Calvinistic school, of which Mr. Wilberforce is the head, so injudiciously presses upon the attention of the public. Its mystical tenets are read and extolled (in preference to those of the authors who represent Christianity as a system of consistent justice, mercy, benevolence, and happiness) from the same disposition, which makes children delight. more in perceiving objects of terror presented to their imagination, than those of beauty and pleasure; but no mischievous or obstinate child is rendered gentle or docile by the dread of spectres; neither have the fanatic tenets any tendency to reclaim from vice or irreligious thoughtlessness. The licentious, or giddy votaries of fashion wish to have an excuse for persisting in their career, and think

the

*The following remark, though true, we should not expect from pen of a woman: Every hour more and more convinces me that love of war is the worst quality which can belong to a prince of Great Britain; the lust of wine and women is far less criminal in a king than the lust of blood.'

they

they have found it in the dark and cruel difficulties in which resumed Calvinism involves Christianity. They say to themselves, "We cannot, in the high-day of our youth and passions, feel all this prescribed misery, which, we are told, is essential to appease our Maker for having created us full of cursedness and sin; we cannot sacrifice all our amusements, even those which are generally allowed to be innocent ; and since less sacrifices are fruitless; since the Rock of Salvation is too steep and rugged for our strength, we may as well strew all the sensual flowers over the paths which lead to our destruction ; if, indeed, the Deity is this hard task-master, and if he created so large a part of mankind vessels of wrath; if all are obnoxious to punishment ere yet they know the nature of crime,"

'Such is the certain mischief of Mr. W.'s doctrine, and that of his coadjutors, They transfer the hairy mantle, the tedious pilgrimage, and the voluntary scourge, and all the dark train of monkish self-inflictions, from the body to the mind. If voluntary wretchedness for less than atrocious sin, for the curse of our nature, not self-incurred, be indeed a duty, what, alas! must be the nature of that power who enjoins it?

O that your volume, in which righteousness shines as a sun, in the pure beams of justice, of mercy, and of earthly happiness, may so gild the gentler ascent from the gulfs of impiety, that its hapless votaries may not despair of attaining the pure summit!'

With the affection and tenderness of an amiable daughter, Miss Seward long "rocked the cradle of the declining age" of her father: but, when death had broken the tie which confined her to her home, and her own indisposition forced her to try bathing and change of air, she visited Buxton, Scarborough, and the sea-coast of North Wales; residing at times with friends whose society and habitations, in sites of the most picturesque and romantic scenery, afforded her the highest gratification. Her tour to North Wales was marked by a circumstance which was not less flattering to her pride than the source of much subsequent pleasure, viz. a friendly intercourse with Lady Eleanor Butler aud Miss Ponsonby, the celebrated recluses (as they are called) of Langollen Vale. After her first visit, she thus writes, full of the subject, to the Rev. H. White, Lichfield, in a letter dated Barmouth, September 7, 1795:

I resume my pen, to speak to you of that enchanting unique, in conduct and situation, of which you have heard so much, though, as yet, without distinct description. You will guess that I mean the celebrated ladies of Langollen Vale, their mansion, and their bowers.

By their own invitation, I drank tea with them thrice during the nine days of my visit to Dinbren; and, by their kind introduction, partook of a rural dinner, given by their friend, Mrs. Ormsby, amid the ruins of Valle-Crucis, an ancient abbey distant a mile and a half from their villa. Our party was large enough to fill three chaises and two phaetons.

• We

We find the scenery of Valle-Crucis grand, silent, impressive, awful. The deep repose, resulting from the high umbrageous mountains which rise immediately around these ruins, solemnly harmonizes with their ivied arches and broken columns. Our drive to it from the lovely villa leads through one of the most picturesque parts of the peerless vale, and along the banks of the classic river.

After dinner, our whole party returned to drink tea and coffee in that retreat, which breathes all the witchery of genius, taste, and sentiment. You remember Mr. Hayley's poetic compliment to the sweet miniature painter, Miers:

"His magic pencil, in its narrow space,

Pours the full portion of uninjur'd grace." |

So may it be said of the talents and exertion which converted a cottage, in two acres and a half of turnip ground, to a fairy-palace, amid the bowers of Calypso.

It consists of four small apartments; the exquisite cleanliness of the kitchen, its utensils, and its auxiliary offices, vieing with the finished elegance of the gay, the lightsome little dining-room, as that contrasts the gloomy, yet superior grace of the library, into which it

opens.

This room is fitted up in the Gothic style, the door and large sash windows of that form, and the latter of painted glass, "shedding the dim religious light." Candles are seldom admitted into this apartment. The ingenious friends have invented a kind of prismatic lantern, which occupies the whole elliptic arch of the Gothic door. This lantern is of cut glass, variously coloured, enclosing two lamps with their reflectors. The light it imparts resembles that of a volcano, sanguine and solemn. It is assisted by two glow-worm lamps, that, in little marble reservoirs, stand on the opposite chimney-piece, and these supply the place of the here always chastized day-light, when the dusk of evening sables, or when night wholly involves the thrice-lovely solitude.

A large Eolian harp is fixed in one of the windows, and, when the weather permits them to be opened, it breathes its deep tones to the gale, swelling and softening as that rises and falls.

"Ah me! what hand can touch the strings so fine,
Who up the lofty diapason roll

Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine,

And let them down again into the soul!"

This saloon of the Minervas contains the finest editions, superbly bound, of the best authors, in prose and verse, which the English, Italian, and French languages boast, contained in neat wire cases: over them the portraits, in miniature, and some in larger ovals, of the favoured friends of these celebrated votaries to that sentiment which exalted the characters of Theseus and Perithous, of David and Jonathan.

Between the picture of Lady Bradford and the chimney-piece hangs a beautiful entablature, presented to the ladies of Langollen Vale by Madam Sillery, late Madam Genlis. It has convex minia

tures

tures of herself and of her pupil, Pamela; between them, pyramidally placed, a garland of flowers, copied from a nosegay, gathered by Lady Eleanor in her bowers, and presented to Madam Sillery.

The kitchen-garden is neatness itself. Neither there, nor in the whole precincts, can a single weed be discovered. The fruit-trees are of the rarest and finest sort, and luxuriant in their produce; the garden-house, and its implements, arranged in the exactest order.

Nor is the dairy-house, for one cow, the least curiously elegant object of this magic domain. A short steep declivity, shadowed over with tall shrubs, conducts us to the cool and clean repository. The white and shining utensils that contain the milk, and cream, and butter, are pure" as snows thrice bolted in the northern blast." In the midst, a little machine, answering the purpose of a churn, enables the ladies to manufacture half a pound of butter for their own breakfast, with an apparatus which finishes the whole process without manual operation.

The wavy and shaded gravel-walk which encircles this Elysium, is enriched with curious shrubs and flowers. It is nothing in extent, and every thing in grace and beauty, and in variety of foliage; its gravel smooth as marble. In one part of it we turn upon a small knoll, which overhangs a deep hollow glen. In its tangled bottom a frothing brook leaps and clamours over the rough stones in its channel. A large spreading beech canopies the knoll, and a semilunar seat, beneath its boughs, admits four people. A board, nailed to the elm, has this inscription,

"O cara Selva ! e Fiumicello amato !"

It has a fine effect to enter the little Gothic library, as I first entered it, at the dusk hour. The prismatic lantern diffused a light gloomily glaring. It was assisted by the paler flames of the petit lamps on the chimney-piece, while, through the opened windows, we had a darkling view of the lawn on which they look, the concave shrubbery of tall cypress, yews, laurels, and lilachs; of the woody amphitheatre on the opposite hill, that seems to rise immediately be. hind the shrubbery; and of the grey barren mountain which, then just visible, forms the back ground. The evening-star had risen above the mountain; the airy harp loudly rung to the breeze, and completed the magic of the scene.

You will expect that I say something of the enchantresses themselves, beneath whose plastic wand these peculiar graces arose. Lady Eleanor is of middle height, and somewhat beyond the embonpoint as to plumpness; her face round and fair, with the glow of luxuriant health. She has not fine features, but they are agreeable; enthusiasm in her eye, hilarity and benevolence in her smile. Exhaustless is her fund of historic and traditionary knowledge, and of every thing passing in the present eventful period. She has uncommon strength and fidelity of memory; and her taste for works of imagination, particularly for poetry, is very awakened, and she expresses all she feels with an ingenuous ardour, at which the cold-spirited beings stare. I am informed that both these ladies read and speak most of the modern languages. Of the Italian poets, especially of Dante, they are warm admirers.