"MY DEAR SIR, George-street, April 5, 1816. "I have not been able to see Mr. Cooper. My own opinion is, that, if the lungs float in water, it is an evidence that air, of some sort, has pervaded the air-cells, but by no means an evidence that the child has breathed, much less that it has been murdered; for, if putrefaction should have taken place, the air extricated during that process would insinuate itself into the air-cells, and, even if the child had been still-born, the lungs would float.-If, for example, you remove the lungs from a still-born child, and immerse them in water, they immediately sink;-if you replace them, and leave the body in a situation favourable to putrefaction, and, after a time, again repeat your experiment of immersion, you will find that the same lungs float. Consequently the test is here erroneous, and of course must always be considered as liable to error, and ought not therefore (without other marks of external or internal violence) to be admitted as decisive evidence of the guilt of the mother. This observation shews the necessity of minute enquiry as to the time between the supposed murder and the examination afterwards, that you may avoid the putrefactive error. The time will depend upon weather, situation, &c. &c.; so that nothing as to that can be specifically set down as a limit. Yours very truly, C. A. PEMBERTON." No. VI. (See p. 45.) Letters of Mr. HARDINGE to EDWARD EVANS, Esq. "DEAR SIR, Walton Lodge, Esher, Dec. 21, 1815. "Intrusion! Give me such intruders, kind Heaven. - Your Letter delights me; and I long for more of your freedoms, if you can venture upon them with such a lien of pride and of high ropes. "I don't like to confine your memory of Davies, or memorials of him, to a set of detached questions; but, as you will have it so, I will do my best.-1. His person, countenance, deportment, manners, voice, and, in general, the habits of his domestic and social intercourse; his condition of health, his constitutional frame of body and of nerves, and the malady of which he died.-2. Where he chiefly resided after he had lost his favourite, the Rector of Presteigne; whether most at Lichfield, or most at Kingsland; and particularly for the last four years of his life.-3. Had he any attachments to the fair sex, either sensual or Platonic? 4. You are too young to have heard him preach; but you may have heard whether he was eloquent in the pulpitnot one of his Sermons appears to be extant. 5. Who wrote his Epitaph, and which I beg you will send me, as I have mislaid the copy of it.-6. He seems, like me, to have been a bad horseman; but he was unlike me, in smoking pipes with fluency and with enjoyment.-7. Was he not rather an epicure? and was he temperate? He had some very Bacchanalian friends; and though though he laughed at them, he might have played with edgetools. What were his politics? He calls himself a Whig; but he seems to be fond of that popular Tory, if not Jacobite, Sir Watkin. "I worship his relicks, and every little scrap of his hand would interest me. I have written almost 100 sheets of his Life, by your Brother's benevolent and bounteous aid. All that relates to Dr. Cranke, to Phelps, and his other Friends, will be received most proudly and gratefully. I am, with grateful respect and regard, my dear Sir, ever yours, GEO, HARDINGE." "MY DEAR SIR, Walton Grove, Esher, Jan. 2, 1816. "I hasten to express my deep sense of the obligations which I owe to you. Yet, without prejudice to this gratitude, I must lament that you have been deceived as to Lord Camden. You are not, perhaps, aware that he was my Uncle, and my Parent in adoption. But of him in the sequel. At present, in the first place, I conjure you to send me ALL you can spare to me, including Williams's book, which I never saw, and ALL the MSS. which you confided into Mr. Duncomb's* hand, to the care of Mr. Austen, who is the Bank in care and fidelity.-Your Letter is gold, and I cannot thank you for it enough. But what I have, perhaps, more at heart than almost every other topic is the Poem to my Father upon the subject of Knoll Hills, respecting which you have been misinformed, and misled, if you have supposed that it was no more. I remember it perfectly in all its glories; but I saw it again, still beautiful, and kept up as a kind of Dairy-house appendage to the celebrated Sir Francis Burdett, whose capital seat, called Foremark, is near it. This was only in 1803, and I have heard of no change. The verses to which you allude enraptured me, and there was a time that I could have repeated every line of them; but I have lent them away, or mislaid them, except a mere fragment, which I wrote upon memory, and gave to my sister enthusiast Lady Knowles. I had them complete three or four years ago, and read them to those who were excellent judges of poetical effect. They were charmed with them-Oh, that you could recover them! I should half expire with joy. "I am delighted with your portrait of Davies. His modesty as to the sex is wonderful, and the wonder is increased by what you tell me of Dr. Cranke. - Whaley, Dodd, and Thirlby, were free livers; Rees Price, of Erdisland, an honest toper. Yet all these are his friends, and he was not seduced by any of them. He had not even the impulse of Platonic tenderness, or of general homage to the sex. "I knew of Miss Seward's éloge, and of her duplicity afterwards, which I mean to expose. I wish you could send me Weaver put up in a cover, though I should eat him up with delight in his Memoirs. But you have reported some which are interesting and curious. I shall rejoice in his fun upon Lord Camden, who loved, admired, and revered him.- Obloquy, alas! * Author of "Collections towards the History of Herefordshire." finds tongues and ears that are prone to the circulation of it into ingenuous hands, but of those who are credulous at first, and then too indolent for examination of the tóte. "Are you aware of the Verses which Davies addressed in 1766 to Lord Camden through Camden the Antiquary, sent with his Portrait, and with his own?-They are lines unworthy of Davies, inflated by panegyric, quaint in their phrase, and laboured-but (more unfortunate for his memory) they disclaim all ideas of preferment (which he by no means wanted for himself), and assert (as he had previously done) the dignity of independence. Are you aware that in one of these Letters he goes the length of saying, that a man who ACCEPTS preferment is the SALESMAN OF HIS OWN SOUL?—I knew that Lord Camden was fond of him to the last-and lamented, not his want of means to elevate him in the Church, but his Friend's irritable state of nerves, that made him fretful, impracticable, and wild in his notions of his own importance; in short, the reverse of his former life, and (as he expressed it) not himself. He took huff. He arraigned, and even ridiculed, his Friend behind his back. He circulated his own verses.-He went to Eton College at an Election, and there he had a conversation with his brother Etonian Mr. Bryant, the celebrated Scholar; which that gentleman, whom I intimately knew (and who was an acute observer of men) reported to me.—It convinced him, as it also convinced me (from him), that he was not correct in his mind; and that his machine, which never had been strong, was impaired in such a degree as to affect his temper, his feelings, and his intellect. Yet I perfectly exculpate this Angel. But he had not the wisdom of Socrates. He was ignorant of himself.-It's demonstration to me that he asked for preferment in 1761, and I know that he half-intimated his claim upon lawn-sleeves to Mr. Bryant. "I trace his ambition to a letter of Lord Camden's in 1761. He had the simplicity of Parson Adams-and perpetually misconstrued flying words. I know it was my Uncle's intention to find out something for him after he had the Seals, which this early disagreement between them intercepted and baffled; for I know that Lord Camden solicited a cordial reconciliation, but in vain. If his low spirits could arise from the coldness of his Friend in elevating him as a Churchman, what could more prove (should the fact even be affirmed) that his mind was overcome and had lost its two prominent features, modesty in the opinion of himself-energy in the spirit of independence? But I love truth, and wish to see all the evidence. I am therefore extremely desirous to cover these few closing years of his life as well as I could -with every circumstance that can be gathered.—That he was in town in 1766, I know-and that he was in the March of that year at Eton, I know. That he was at Eton at some one Election, which is in August, I know from Bryant; but I cannot recollect in what year.—I understand, that in those days he was little at Kingsland, and chiefly at Lichfield.-What convinces me decisively that he had no solid ground of complaint against Lord Camden Camden is, that Cornwallis, the most amiable, generous, frankhearted of men, whom I intimately knew and loved, never gave me the faintest image of Lord Camden's unkind behaviour to their common Friend, and lived in the most cordial amity with Lord Camden as long as he lived at all. His Nephew, the Bishop of Lichfield, informs me, that he saw Davies at Bath, even in 1761, weak and paralytic. I need not say that even a paralytic impulse, though partial and slight, will often undermine strong powers of intellect and spirit. My Uncle had the least pride of any man living, and passed all his life in cultivating his personal favourites in domestic intercourse, with better company than Statesmen. Adieu. "DEAR SIR, AND BRO THER ENTHUSIAST, - GEO. HARDINGE." Walton Grove, Esher, "I think our love has been the shortest that ever was known. -You are a naughty man; you have been the ruin of me; and you have thrown me upon the parish. You promised you would make my fortune, and I have expected the box of jewels day after day. If you have quite shaken off dear Neddy, tell me so at once, that I may hope no more. I know a willow that hangs over the Thames, and have surveyed one branch that would bear me. "Joke apart, I am disappointed that I have not a line or a word since December 30. My impatience for Knoll-Hills admits of no description, and I beg a few syllables upon that subject by return of post. Your affectionate, GEO. HARDINGE." "Walton-Grove, Jan. 13, 1816. "I have seldom received more pleasure, dear Sir, than from your obliging note. I had begun to call you NAPHTHALI. If you know a certain pathetic and whispering Surveyor of your neighbourhood, you will know from him what I mean by these words. You shall be accused of 'INFIDELITIES' no more; and if has misrepresented you to me, I have no objection to your killing him, but with due care of his wife, who is one of my passions. He told Mrs. Knight of Downton, that all he knew was from you, and that he would not send it through her to me, because you had informed him it was in my hands deposited there by you. This made me half call you that wicked name, because the deposited wealth rested in promise, not in hope. I shall now WAIT for all the jewels But one. "The Menoirs which I have written are now in the press, a fact which I the rather mention, to mark (as a powerful cause for it) why it is my EARNEST request that you will send BY RETURN OF POST the verses to my Father. Of these verses I have a part corrected by the Writer, and the remainder has been so mislaid that I cannot just now recover it. You could not therefore have gratified me half so much as by sending me this poem; nor can a MOMENT be lost. I shall add WITH JOY AND pride of HEART the verses to my Father. I am, with transport of gratitude, ever yours, GEO. HARDINGE." "My "MY INCOMPARABLE FRIEND, Waiton Grove, Jan. 28. "I long for the Lempster Guide, and beg you to send it for me by the stage; together with such of the papers as you can spare to me (either from Newcomb, or others). As the Memoirs are in the press, not a moment is to be lost. I shall consider it as gold, from the Mint.-I am very anxious to undeceive you, as well as others, upon the subject of Lord Camden's neglect of his friend. From a puzzle of dates and facts, it has become the source of a calumny on both of these friends. That he was too spirited in the four or five last years of his life, I know; but you are not aware that he had a paralytic stroke in 1760 or 61, which made him irritable, impatient, and splenetic.-You represent what you have heard, that he was hurt at Lord Camden's refusal of Aymstry to your Father, solicited by him.—This mode of stating it would make one believe that, after Lord Camden was Chancellor, Davies asked him for nothing but for the gift of this living to his friend just in orders, and that it was refused. The papers which I possess will enable me to refute this tradition. Dr. Thomas, of Kington, represents that it was prior to 1766; and that in that year Davies never could have gone to London for preferment, and much less could have paid his court to the Patron who had used him so ill.-Your impression is, I dare say, the same. "In the first place, however, if it was true, unless the refusal, as it is called, was peremptory and qualified by no reason, it is no proof of neglect, or ground for low spirits. A Chancellor may have refused a living to a perfect stranger, solicited by his friend in orders for the substitute, not for himself, upon grounds importing no indifference to him and what you mention of the offer to Davies himself, in answer to the application for another, is a very natural distinction; for you must be aware that, if I desired the Chancellor to make another man a Judge because I recommended him, it is to ask a very peculiar favour; to which the answer, declining it for him, but offering it me, would be very handsome, and by no means offensive or injurious to the recommended substitute. But you will oblige me very much if you will date the application. Was it prior to 1766 ? When you have sent me the date, as you suppose it (just after the father was in orders), I will send you the fact; and you will (as you appear to be of a most ingenuous and liberal mind) be happily undeceived in all the impressions of this fact which you have entertained. I cannot express to you what obligation I owe to you, or how gratefully I feel it. Ever yours, GEO. HARDINGE." "Walton Grove, Jan. 30, 1816. "Oh, my dear, my Angel Friend, where is the verse of Davies to my Father?-It is life or death to me that you should send it without a moment's loss of time. I ask it upon my knees, directed for me by post at Walton-upon-Thames. The other papers may be sent in a little box, by the coach, to the care of Mr. Austen. "Your grateful, but anxious and impatient lover, G. HARDINGE." "MY |