TO MRS GWYLLIM,

HOUSEKEEPER AT BRAMBLETONHALL.

I am astonished that Dr Lewis should take upon him to give away Alderney, without my privity and concurrants. What signifies my brother's orders?— My brother is little better than noncompush. He would give away the shirt off his back, and the teeth out of his head: nay, for that matter, he would have ruinated the family with his ridiculous charities, if it had not been for my four quarters. What between his wilfulnes and his waste, his trumps, and his frenzy, I lead the life of an indented slave. Alderney gave four gallons a-day ever since the calf was sent to market. There is so much milk out of my dairy, and the press must stand still :-But I won't loose a cheese-paring; and the milk shall be made good, if the sarvants should go without butter. If they must needs have butter, let them make it of sheep's milk; but then my wool will suffer for want of grace; so that I must be a loser on all sides.-Well, patience is like a stout Welsh poney; it bears a great deal, and trots a great way, but it will tire at the long run. Before its long, perhaps I may shew Matt, that I was not born to be the household drudge to my dying day. Gwyn rites from Crickhowel, that the price of flannel is fallen three farthings an ell; and that's another good penny out of my pocket. When I go to market to sell, my commodity stinks; but when I

want to buy the commonest thing, the owner pricks it up under my nose, and it can't be had for love nor money-I think every thing runs cross at Brambletonhall. You say the gander has broke the eggs, which is a phinumenon I don't understand; for, when the fox carried off the old goose last year, he took her place, and hatched the eggs, and protected the goslings like a tender parent. Then you tell me the thunder has soured two barrels of bear in the seller. But how the thunder should get there, when the seller was double locked, I can't comprehend. Howsomever, I won't have the bear thrown out, till I see it with mine own eyes. Perhaps it will recover—at least it will serve for vinegar to the sarvants. You may leave off the fires in my brother's chamber and mine, as it is unsartain when we return. I hope, Gwyllim, you'll take care there is no waste; and have an eye to the maids, and keep them to their spinning. I think they may go very well without bear in hot weather it serves only to inflame the blood, and set them agog after the men-water will make them fair, and keep them cool and tamperit. Don't forget to put up in the portmantle, that cums with Williams, along with my riding habit, hat, and feather, the vial of purl-water, and the tincktur for my stomach; being as how I am much troubled with flutterencies. This is all at present, from yours,

TABITHA BRAMBLE.

BATH, APRIL 26.

TO DR LEWIS.

Dear Dick, I have done with the waters; therefore your advice comes a day too late. I grant that physic is no mystery of your making. I know it is a mystery in its own nature, and like other mysteries, requires a strong gulp of faith to make it go down.Two days ago, I went into the King's Bath, by the advice of our friend Ch- in order to clear the

strainers of the skin, for the benefit of a free perspiration; and the first object that saluted my eye was a child, full of scrophulous ulcers, carried in the arms of one of the guides, under the very noses of the bathers. I was so shocked at the sight, that I retired immediately with indignation and disgust-Suppose the matter of those ulcers, floating on the water, comes in contact with my skin, when the pores are all open, I would ask you what must be the consequence?-Good Heavens, the very thought makes my blood run cold! We know not what sores may be running into the water while we are bathing, and what sort of matter we may thus imbibe; the king's evil, the scurvy, the cancer, and the pox; and, no doubt, the heat will render the virus the more volatile and penetrating. To purify myself from all such contamination, I went to the Duke of Kingston's private bath, and there I was almost suffocated for want of free air, the place was so small, and the steam so stifling. After all, if the intention is no more than to wash

the skin, I am convinced that simple element is more effectual than any water impregnated with salt and iron; which, being astringent, will certainly contract the pores, and leave a kind of crust upon the surface of the body. But I am now as much afraid of drinking as of bathing; for, after a long conversation with the doctor, about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me, that the patients in the pump-room don't swallow the scourings of the bathers. I can't help suspecting, that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beverage is every day quaffed by the drinkers, medicated with the sweat, and dirt, and dandriff, and the abominable discharges of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below! In order to avoid this filthy composition, I had recourse to the spring that supplies the private baths on the Abbey-green; but I at once perceived something extraordinary in the taste and smell; and, upon inquiry, I find, that the Roman baths in this quarter were found covered by an old burying ground belonging to the Abbey, through which, in all probability, the water drains in its passage; so that, as we drink the decoction of living bodies at the pump-room, we swallow the strainings of rotten bones and carcases at the private bath-I vow to God the very idea turns my stomach! -Determined, as I am, against any farther use of the

Bath waters, this consideration would give me little disturbance, if I could find any thing more pure, or less pernicious, to quench my thirst; but, although the natural springs of excellent water are seen gushing spontaneous on every side from the hills that surround us, the inhabitants in general make use of well-water, so impregnated with nitre, or alum, or some other villainous mineral, that it is equally ungrateful to the taste, and mischievous to the constitution. It must be owned, indeed, that here, in Milsham-street, we have a precarious and scanty supply from the hill, which is collected in an open basin in the Circus, liable to be defiled with dead dogs, cats, rats, and every species of nastiness, which the rascally populace may throw into it from mere wantonness and brutality.

Well, there is no nation that drinks so hoggishly as the English.-What passes for wine among us is not" the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; yet we, and our forefathers, are, and have been, poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour.-The only genuine and wholesome beverage in England is London porter, and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cyder and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species.-But what have I to do with the