A Good Grandmother

better in the season. The streets are very empty now, and the shops not so gay as she expected. They are at No. 1 Henrietta Street, the corner of Laura Place, and have no acquaintance at present but the Bramstons. Lady Bridges drinks at the Cross Bath, her son at the Hot, and Louisa is going to bathe. half starving Mr. Bridges, for he is restricted to much such a diet as James's bread, water and meat, and is never to eat so much of that as he wishes, and he is to walk a great deal — walk till he drops, I believe gout. It really is to that purpose.

I have not exaggerated.

Dr. Parry seems to be

gout or no

Charming weather for you and me, and the travellers, and everybody. You will take your walk this afternoon, and ...

Dame Dorothy Browne (Sir Thomas Browne's lady) gives postscript news of the health and well-being of Master Tommy Browne, her grandson

DEARE SONNE,

I

Aug. 29 [1678]

I bless God your Tomy is

very well; goose to scolle, and is a very good boy, and delights his grandfather when hee comes home.

II

June 28 [1679?]

EARE DAUGHTER,

DEARE

Wee dayly wish for the

new cloths; all our linen being worne out but shefts, and Tomey would give all his stock to see his briches. I bless God wee ar all well as I hope you ar. Tomey presents his dutty, your sisters all love and services. -Your affectionate mother, DOROTHY BROWNE

ΤΟΜ

Tommy Browne's Puppet Show

III

July 5 [1679]

OMEY have receved his cloues, and is much delighted, and sends you and his mother and grandmother dutty and thanckes, and meanes to war them carefully.

DEARE

IV

Novemb. vii. [1679]

EARE DAUGHTER, - I thanck God for your latter, and shall be so glad to see my Tomey returne in helth though ever so durty: hee knows fullars earth will cleane all. I besich God of his mercy blesse you all.. Your affectinat mothar,

DOROTHY BROWNE

V

Sept. 6 [1680]

I

BLESS God wee all continow wel, and Tomey present his dutty to you and his fathar, and give you many thanks for your touken. Hee did thinke to wright him selfe. Hee is now a very good boy for his boak, I can assuer you, and delights to read to his grandfather and I, when he coms from schole. God of his mercy bless you all. — Your affectinat mothar,

DOROTHY BROWNE

VI

Feb. xiii. [1681-2]

YOUR

OUR Tomey grows a stout fellow, I hope you will com and see him this svmmor, hee is in great expextion of a tumbler you must send him for his popet show, a punch he has and his wife, and a straw king and quen, and ladies of honor, and all things but a tumbler, which this town cannot aford: it is a wodin fellow that turns his heles over his head. . . .

THE GRAND STYLE

The Swan of Lichfield greets the Ladies of Llangollen (To the Right Hon. Lady Eleanor Butler, and Miss Ponsonby)

THE

LICHFIELD, April 24, 1798

HE frame for Honora's exact, though accidental, resemblance in the print of Romney's Serena reading by candle light, is at length arrived. I dare believe my charming friends will think the figure, countenance and features express the sweetness, intelligence and grace, with which the strains, honoured by their mutual partiality, invest the fair friend of my youth.

You must each have been deeply disquieted by the miserable scenes which have been acted in your native Ireland since I had last the honour to address you. None of your particular friends are, I trust, on the dire list of those who have fallen the victims of its assassinations. Had my gallant friend, the murdered Colonel St. George, the happiness of your acquaintance? - Of him at least you must well know, from your intimacy with his lovely and accomplished sister-in-law.

Miss Seward improves Fénelon

My Telemachus has taken a snail's walk since I gave myself the pleasure of writing to you. Two mornings of leisure, the only ones I could obtain in the interim, produced the enclosed extract. You have heard me say, that I could scarcely ever persuade myself to admit the Muses, in exclusion of any social or epistolary duty or pleasure. Small, therefore, with connections and correspondence so numerous, is the probability that I shall ever finish an epic poem.

You will perceive that Fénelon's Telemachus forms as yet but the mere basis of this attempted work; but I conclude, that when the prince, in what will form my third book, narrates his own adventures, I must be more indebted to the prose composition. Whether those incidents, not very interesting from Fénelon's pen, are capable of receiving poetic spirit and animation from mine, remains to be tried. If I retain my excursive manner of going over the ground, there will be sufficient length for an epic poem, without pursuing the long train of less animated events that ensues after Telemachus and Mentor quit Calypso's island. Homer follows not Achilles when he leaves the ruins of Troy; and if Virgil had not followed Æneas after he left Carthage, his poem, though less complete, would have been more interesting. After the death of Dido I yawned through the remainder; read it once as a task, and never since looked into the pages beyond that epoch.

Ah! dearest ladies, how groundless has the assertion proved on which every one relied, that Duncan's victory threw the perils of invasion at a wide distance! — but I will not pursue the alarming subject.

This day a summer's sun warmly gilds the fields, the gardens, and the groves, now diffusing fragrance, and bursting into bloom. Fresh and undulating breezes from

Scenery at Lichfield

the east lured me into my drawing-room, having placed in its lifted sash the Æolian harp. It is, at this instant, warbling through all the varieties of the harmonic chords. This apartment looks upon a small lawn, gently sloping upwards. Till this spring, it was shrubbery to the edge of the grassy terrace on its summit; but I have lately covered it with a fine turf, sprinkled with cypresses, junipers, and laurels. It is bordered on the right hand by tall laburnums, lilacks, and trees of the Gelder rose,

"

throwing up, 'mid trees of darker leaf,

Its silver globes, light as the foamy surf,

Which the wind severs from the broken wave."

Beyond this little lawny elevation, the wall which divides its terrace from the sweet valley it overlooks, is not visible. These windows command the loveliest part of that valley, and only its first field is concealed by the sloping swell of the fore-ground.

The vale is scarcely half a mile across, bounded, basinlike, by a semicircle of gentle hills, luxuriantly foliaged. There is a lake in its bosom, and a venerable old church, with its grey and moss-grown tower on the water's edge. Left of that old church, on the rising ground beyond, stands an elegant villa half shrouded in its groves; and, to the right below, on the bank of the lake, another villa with its gardens. The as yet azure waters are but little intercepted by the immense and very ancient willow that stands opposite these windows in the middle of the vale; that willow, whose height and dimensions are the wonder of naturalists. The centre of the lake gleams through its wide-spread branches, and it appears on each side like a considerable river, from its boundaries being concealed. On the right, one of our streets runs from the town to the water, interspersed with trees and gardens.

It looks