HE Parish of Loders, near Bridport, co. Dorset, is very large, being about six miles in length, and is situated for the most part in a vale, encompassed by hills that rise gently above it. Much hemp and flax grow here. Loders is mentioned in Domesdaybook, being surveyed in four parcels or manorsi There was formerly a Priory or Cell here, subordinate to the Abbey of Montburgh in Normandy. This Priory was frequently seised into the King's hands during the wars with France; and on the suppression of Alien Priories, 2 Hen. V. it was given to the Nunnery of Syon, in Middlesex. Not far from the Church are the remains of an antient stone building, supposed to have been part of the Priory-house. I request you to insert a View of the Church. (See Plate II.) It is a large antient structure, and is dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, after whose festival the wake is kept. The antient patron of this Vicarage was the Abbot of Montburgh; and afterwards the Abbess of Syon. 28 Eliz. the advowson was granted to Sir Christopher Hatton. It subsequently came to the family of Ashley, Earls of Shaftesbury; and was by them exchanged, 5 Geo. II. for the rectory of Wimbourne St. Giles; since which the patronage has been in the Crown. It is a discharged living, in Bridport Deanery. For fuller particulars of this Parish, and particularly of the descent of the manerial property in it, see the new edition of Hutchins's "Dorset shire," vol. I. p. 590-595. Yours, &c. B. N. RESOLVE never to exceed my paper, unless there is a great occasion for it; and therefore I thought it enough in all conscience that I covered it all in my last; and so would not begin on another piece of paper, though I had a great deal more to say, but reserved that to the next, which I now am set to, before I have received yours. GENT. MAG. December, 1915. Indeed the chief subject of my last affected my thoughts so much, both then and since that time, that I could scarce think of any thing else; and I shall not be fully at ease till I hear that you have brought your mind to a better temper, and that you have shaken off those funest resolutions. I threatened you in one letter to persecute you with long ones ever till you confessed your fault in charging me as sparing of my pen to you; you have not yet done that, and so the persecution goes on: but when you do that, I will understand your meaning, and will abridge. I thank you for your kind censure of those Verses you call Pindaricks but it seems you read them carelessly when you call them Pindaricks, for they are for a song, the measures being, the first of 4, the second of 6, the third of 8, and one of 10 feet; yet, in writing the second line, I added "to know" to it, which ought to begin the third. Now the measure of a song is a lower sort of poetry than is to be allowed in Pindaricks, which should be all flight. Read it over again with this prospect, and then tell me if you are still of your former opinion; and I assure you I am better pleased when your censure is severe, than when it is like yourself, all mild and gentle. Your censure of the other two copies *, in which you prefer that of "Pure Love" to the "Magnetism," I in so far agree to, that the lines are softer; but the conceits in the other, I think, are much finer: so much of that. But, since I am in as to Poetry, I shall add, that though I finished the Poem I sent you last, which I intend to shew to some others after I have your opinion of it, yet I have since added one stanza to it, which I will shew nobody but the party concerned, except yourself; therefore give me your opinion of it, for I send it herewith inclosed. In your letter you tell me, that a generation of people, whom you are inclined to believe, have assured you that I was a mighty Whig; pray let me know what generation that is. You also thank me for the good you hear I speak of you in Town-pray *See our Poetry, p. 543. were were you in earnest when you thanked me for this? You may as well thank me for eating when I am hungry, or sleeping when I am weary. We are not to be thanked for things that are not in our power. I can hold my peace, and not speak of you; but, if I speak of you, I am sure I cannot, without lying, but say the best things I can bring out, if I speak what I think so, upon the whole matter, by this compliment you have thanked me for speaking what I think, and not lying a very meritorious thing, in good truth. I shall only add, that if you will apply your mind with that great care to the things of Religion, and give them their free scope in your soul, I will look upon you as the brightest piece of God's workmanship I ever saw; and if I can contribute any thing towards the giving you this last perfection, without which all the rest are nothing, I will esteem it the greatest blessing that ever befell me, or indeed can befall me on earth. But, after all this, I cannot devine who these should be, to whom I should have given such characters of you; therefore pray let me know who these are, for I have seen so very few of late, that I can easily call to mind who they are. I shall, in the last place, tell you, that, since I writ my last, I was a day and a night so ill, that I thought a fever was coming upon me; and the last I had was so terrible, of thirty days' continuance, that I reckon the first I have will carry me off-upon that I composed my mind to think of dying, and, I thank God, I felt joy in mind in all respects but one; and that relates to yourself- thought I might be yet of some service to you, and this was the only thing that was in the other balance: otherwise I am so weary of life and the world, that I would with unspeakable joy be gone, and enter into my rest. I do really feel already such beginnings of a joy in God, that they are scarce expressible; and every prospect I have of landing, sets my heart a leaping; have had some good effects on you: on the other hand, the noise it might make, and the danger of communicating the fever, stopped me. Now do you tell me which of these you would have me do ;-but I do verily believe the concern I had about the last I had from you, and the grief it occasioned me, were the chief causes of this disorder, which is now quite off. And this is all I have to say, till I see what occasion your letter will give of a longer conversation; so for the first time I bumbly bid you Adieu! I have an addition more to make, before I receive an answer that I expect from you to-day. The town is all in amaze at the sudden and severe disgrace of the Earl of Mulgrave, who is turned out of all his places: he was about a month ago forbid going more to St. James's, upon some apprehensions the Duke had of his addressing to Lady Anne *; but now it seems some further discovery is made, but what that was, I do not know. Some talk as if his addresses had been entertained, but I do not believe that at all. The next thing I have to tell you is, that I have, since I wrote the former part of this letter, suffered more pain than I ever felt in my whole life, by a most violent head-ach for two days-in which I had one small consolation, that as I believe it was chiefly occasioned by the sad strains in your last, so it will give me a more tender sympathy for you when I hear you complain of that distemper, of which I knew so little before now, that I could not form a notion of it—so as I suffer for you, I will better sympathize with you. In the last place, I send you a very pretty letter, which came to me last night from that unfortunate gentiewoman, whose board I expect from you; and therefore all the pretty things in this letter, as I will tell by my next to her, belong to you; for I so little doubt your sending the money, that, before it comes, I have given orders for paying it to her. Thus you will see what pity it is, that but that went over, and I am well one of so fine a sense should be so again; or rather, I must be ill a little basely abandoned — but I know you longer. I was in some doubt whe- will not grudge the renewing this ther, if my illness had continued, I should have desired the favour to have seen you. I hoped my last words, and sense of religion, might * The daughter of the Duke of York, afterwards married to the Prince Royal of Denmark, and Queen of England. charity, charity, for perhaps a quarter or two, for I am in hope to carry a suit for her of about 401. a year, and then she will have whereupon to subsist. So again Adieu. So far I had writ in hopes of a letter from you by yesterday's carrier; and, if my last came to your hands, you will not wonder if I tell you I looked for an answer as soon as was possible; so I am apt to think it has been intercepted, which will trouble me much, both because it was a very long one, a sheet like this, writ all over, and had a long Poem with it, and such doings will make me give over writing such long and particular letters; but chiefly because I am apprehensive it may give you some trouble, and increase your uneasiness in your present circumstances. There were also many things in that letter which make me think of its falling into any hands but your own with some regret; though it will appear to those who are so criminally cu rious, that one of the chief designs of my correspondence with you, is to persuade you to bear all things with that easiness that becomes a Christian, a philosopher, or indeed a creature endued with reason or wisdom. Remember my maxim, that I charged Mrs. Baxter to put you in mind of, that Wit and Wisdom are two different things. My next thought is, that you may be perhaps ill, and that must trouble me yet much more; but I hope, if it were so, you would order some about you to let me know it. So, since I cannot think you would have failed to answer my last, if you had got it, and had been in health, especially since I desired you to send me up five pounds for two charities, and Jerusalame Liberata, I having lost that you gave me in my removing, I conclude you have been somewhere from home. Thus, you see, I put the best constructions possible on your silence, for I will impute it to any thing rather than to any faultiness in yourself. But, having writ so much, I resolve to send this, and put it to hazard, though I am not sure of the fate of the last. To encourage you the more to send me your Tasso, I shall have a brave present made me ere long of all that's fine in the Italian tongue; and then, you know, you are master of it. Prince Borghese, who is the greatest man in Rome next the Pope, is travelling over Europe, and is now in England; and as travellers do often hear of the slightest things of the countries through which they pass, so some unlucky body told him somewhat of me, and yesterday he found me out in my retirement: he was about two hours with me, and finding that I loved their Italian books, he said he would presently write to Rome for all that was curious in their language, and present me with its and he having heard that I had talked of going to Rome some long vacation, offered me lodgings in his Palace, and the use of his coach and servants. It perhaps raised his idea of me, that while he was with me, Duke Hamilton came to see me: he is a man of great wit and knowledge, but talks eter nally; and so I believe, you will say I do, when, notwithstanding my not hearing from you this week, I give you no rest, but continue to perse cute still with such long letters. In pure charity I will not turn the leaf, and this page will let me add no more but a third Adieu! 8th November. Strictures on the Sermons of the N a subsequent part of the same Discourse from which our preceding extracts have been taken, occur the following passages: "But the humanity of Jesus Christ may be considered by those who feel their need of his grace, as an infallible security. What is the relation in which Jesus, as the Son of Man, stands to our fallen race? It is the relation, of a Neighbour and a Brother. Consequently, by being made under the Law, which requires that a man should not only love the Lord his God with all his heart, but also, that he should love his neighbour as himself, Jesus became engaged to afford us all the succour which our necessities require, and which he possesses the power to administer." (Pages 18, 19.) "And is he not the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever? Has his exaltation to the throne of glory defaced that image of God which was stamped on his humanity? Is the heart of Jesus less perfectly conformed to the law of love than it was in the days of his humiliation? (P. 20.) Impossible. What! if you knew that power to forgive sins was. vested |