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feel, that, in whatever transiently eclipsing clouds dulness or envy may involve them, yet that fame shall one day consecrate to immortality the claims of the poet,

"If she be right invok'd in warbled song."

Adio!

LETTER LXI.

JOSEPH SYKES, Esq.*

Lichfield, April 13, 1787.

RIGHT glad am I to perceive, in your last letter, the sprightly glow of your fancy; and for a reason more material than my own amusement, since well I know the son's danger incompatible with the father's vivacity. Silent as you are upon the subject, I see, in the gaiety of your style, Mr J. Sykes's recovery-yes, as in a mirror. On your own late indisposition, I will not condole with you. The recollection of past sufferings, merely bodily, and that have left behind them no vestige of pain or danger, give to re

* Of Westella, near Hull.

turning health the zest of delight. The advancing year will, I trust, perfectly restore your strength, though spring is at present somewhat sullen, and comes on shivering, and with a tardy step; but I trust she will brighten on her progress, diffusing health and gladness from her wings, amidst the bowers of West Ella.

With all Mr -'s genius, knowledge, and varied eloquence of intellect, I cannot persist in recommending it to my friends to put their sons under his tuition. Alas! he has not one ounce of ballast to those full sails of wit and ingenuity with which he steers amidst the dangerous shoals of life. His taste for expence has been, beyond all measure, inconsistent with the retired situation in which he fixed himself; with the narrowness of his certain income, and with his plan of pupilage. That taste involved him in perplexities, from which he will find it difficult to emerge. The consequences of this infatuation have unhinged his mind, and incapacitated him for the energetic and assiduous attention necessary in the education of youth, particularly at the period of life when he would receive pupils, during the ambiguous years of commencing manhood.

My father, then in the full vigour of his mind, warmly remonstrated with Mr when first he took a house in Eyam for that purpose,

against the superfluous, nay, absurd elegance with which he was furnishing it ;-white fringed beds for school-boys, azure stained papers, with gilt mouldings, and fine prints, framed and glazed, to be spattered over with the ink of their exercises, and broken by their robust plays! He talks much of having "built his nest in the rocks." He was certainly at liberty so to do, but not to hazard the contraction of debts he might never be able to pay, by lining with purple and fine linen, that eyrie for his eaglets.

Your friend's loss has been great indeed ;-her brother, her beloved and constant companion, the soother of her widowed years! How are such ties entwined around the heart! When they break, our peace, our cheerfulness, burst like bubbles. Youth easily blows more of those soft, shining meteors. Hope supplies the materials, and decks their forms with a thousand gay and agreeable colours. But in declining life, she no longer presents them-at least for this world.

Alas, no! Time cannot make me cease to regret my changed, my lost Honora. Few days pass away, some portion of which is not tinged with sadness, from the consciousness of her extinction. From year to year, musing on her idea, I often seem inclined to reproach the scenes she loved so well for pouring forth their vernal and summer

graces lavishly, as when her dear eyes used to glisten with the effusions of sensibility as they gazed upon them. It is then that affection sighs amidst the smiles of vegetable beauty:

"Since not for her the radiant morn returns,
Since not for her the golden summer burns.”

-On my life those people you mention have made a fine return to the kindness of you and yours. Reflection presents few things so painful to an elevated and feeling mind, as the frequency of human ingratitude, by which our confidence in society is unavoidably weakened. The instances you mention excite my indignation. Some years past they would have astonished me; but since my own experience can more than parallel them, wonder is changed into a regretful sigh. But never may the most repeated proofs of this dark depravity in the human heart, petrify ours with joyless selfishness, and listless unconcern for the welfare of our fellow-creatures!

Mr Saville thanks you for the Dandelion panacea. He will resort to it on the first returning symptom of the "yellow-tinging plague," as Dr Armstrong emphatically called that sick distemper the jaundice.

I am not surprised by what you tell me of Miss -'s new attachment. Your pale and peevish

nymphs are always amorous. The snow about their hearts resembles that of our English mountains, rather than the snows of Taurus or Mount Jura. Sun-beams from a lover's eye, seldom play in vain upon the white bosom of a prude. Adieu!

LETTER LXII.

MISS WESTON.

Lichfield, April 17, 1787.

You know Mr Saville to be a man of sense and a scholar, besides being completely master of his professional science. We have together, and more than once, read, with attention, the passage you quote from Mr Savary on the music of the Egyptians, and that of the ancient Greeks. Mr Saville affirms, that it is not only impossible to form any rational idea of this writer's meaning in those passages, but that he did not understand himself. It is certain that those languages, which are rendered harsh by being composed of a great number of consonants, are yet better adapted to musical expression than a dialect could be which

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