prodigy in science and literature, of the name of Christie, brightened with his society a sullen evening of this summer. Scotland produces more of these early enthusiasts in the arts and in knowledge than England, or than, perhaps, any other nation. High of spirit, patient of toil, and emulous of fame, they travel far and wide, and do their country honour in every part of the world, as soldiers, statesmen, legislators, historians, philosophers, and poets: "As from their own clear north, in radiant streams, LETTER LXXII. GEORGE HARDINGE, Esq. Lichfield, Oct. 1, 1787. I AM enchanted with your last letter of so much joyous wit;-circumstances so truly burlesque ;characters so singularly marked ;-pathetic narration, with an awakening portion of horror in the conclusion; and, perhaps welcomer than all the rest, the most agreeable and well-imagined flattery. Since we have each so lately been at Ludlow, I wish we had met there. Chance must have brought about an interview between you and me in that town, but you might, at will, have done Sophia the honour of a visit. These past twelve years Ludlow has been her home. She quits it finally this month to keep her brother's house in the great Babylon. You could not suppose your name, or nature, as my friend and correspondent, unknown to her; and you must think me cold to the pleasure of imparting pleasure, if you do not believe my communications, from the treasures of your imagination, must have ensured your welcome. You were very absent not to recollect these things. Surely if you had, wandering through the streets of that town, you would have paused upon the threshold of your kindred spirit. When I was at Ludlow in June last, a party of eight conducted me, one bright summer's day, into the recesses of Mr Knight's romantic, his, in my eyes, matchless valley. We obtained permission to eat our cold meat, and drink our wine and water in the lower apartment of the mill-house, furnished in all rustic ele gance. The windows look immediately upon the river, that brawls along its craggy channel at the feet of those high and sylvan rocks, which, circling round the glen, and shutting out every other prospect, make the lovely solitude a very JuanFernandez. I should have liked to have met you in this secluded dell, and there introduced you to our party. Surely the years which have passed away since our only and transient personal interview, have not been so oblivious, but we should have known each other. Why do you think me cold to the idea of meeting you? You have no reason for such a suspicion, unless you put that odd construction upon my desire that you should bring your wife with you. A little more about this same party of ours to Downton. One of the nymphs that formed it, contributed, by an happy frolic, to make us fancy ourselves in one of the beautiful wilds of the southern latitudes. She has immense animal spirits, and at times a great deal of genuine archness. Her sprightliness, and the command of her father's horses and servants, make her an inevitable ingredient in all the Ludlow parties of excursion. She is brunette, almost to swarthiness; and, though her features are not disagreeable, there are the thick lips, and the large, dark, heavy eyes of the torrid zone. She had, that day, no powder in her sable locks, from which the heat, and riding on horseback, had taken every degree of curl. In another seclusion, romantic as that of the mill, and more absolute, since it contained no trace of human habitation, or even footstep, the valley again widening into a circular glen, we sat down, beneath one of the surrounding rocks, to shelter ourselves from the noon-beams. Whether the idea struck our little nymph of making the scene more perfectly Otaheitean I know not, but she ran to the river-brink, threw off her riding-hat, and, parting her long coarse black hair down the sides of her face, danced to her own purposely dissonant singing, in all sort of antic postures, and became the very figure we had seen represented in Cook's Voyages. We were all seized with the same idea, and exclaimed to each other" what a complete little savagewe are certainly in Otaheite.” I have procured the handsomest frame our neighbourhood produces for the* Armida-Imogen, as you oddly term your Lucy. You were very good to the family you mention * Print of Mrs Hardinge, and her little nephew. shivering on the Cambrian mountains. The barbarity they met from the fat Plurality of Windsor, amply entitled him to the lashes he received from your avenging wit. ແ I have been infinitely diverted with your image, presented to me walking solemnly up Brecon church, in your large flowing wig, while the requisite gravity of your judgeship's countenance was put to so severe a trial by the organ striking up, on your entrance, God save great * George our King."-O! it was irresistible. Nor less ludicrous the choice of air selected by your preceding trumpeters, who played before you, "Youth's the season made for joy," as prelusive to the hanging sentences. These same trumpeters certainly understood the disposition of the judge, or else had received a private hint from you to make that odd experiment upon the risibility of your council. It flatters me that my sonnet, which begins "Since dark December shrouds the transient day, Has, on the whole, pleased you so much—but I * Mr Hardinge's name is George; he is one of the Welch Judges. |