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possessed, the sceptre of moral and intellectual supremacy over our native country. A few illustrious examples of genius and virtue do not ennoble the whole rabble of a nation; and although they constitute just objects of national pride, they do not certainly offer fair samples either of the state of mind or morals in any age or country. But John Bull is perpetually boasting, and our countrymen perpetually believe, that he himself is nothing less than a Shakspeare in genius, a Locke in Philosophy, a Newton in science, and a saint in morality, although, so far as my experience goes, he is occasionally a great rogue, sometimes a great blockhead, and always a great boaster. He seems, in truth, to have forgotten that those who play at bowls, even with inferior players, may sometimes meet with rubbers; and like most people given to boasting and taking liberties with their neighbours, is exceedingly disquieted when they take liberties in turn. He puts me in mind of our old schoolmaster, who allowed his boys to joke with him so long as he kept the laugh on his side, but always fell into a great passion, and hoisted them as soon as the joke went against him.

I permit you to allow your worthy neighbour, and my old friend, the member from *******, to read my letters, if he will take the trouble. Knowing me from my youth upwards, when I have so often been dandled on his old linsey woolsey knee, and that I am incapable of misrepresenting a whole people, I am not without hope, that he will yet open his eyes to the vast difference between England as it was, and England as it is. He himself is not more altered within the last sixty years than this country. The pictures given in history no longer represent her as she is; and he who should attempt to delineate her present features from his impressions of the past, would de

ceive us quite as much as he who should point to the curly pate and ruddy cheeks of the youthful picture over your mantle-piece, and call it a likeness of our good old neighbour. He knows perfectly well, that however I may abhor the policy and maxims of the government, the people themselves have ever been objects of my respect and regard. If there ever were a nation that might justly point to the wastefulness and corruptions of its rulers, in excuse for its own, it is this of England. When, therefore, as the truth will compel me to do, I am fair to admit, that a very large proportion of ignorance, vice, and poverty prevails among them, and that in their actually existing state, they are not exactly fitted for the task of self-government, I trust that neither you nor he will accuse me of prejudice or hostility. It requires ages of bad government to render a people incapable and unworthy the enjoyment of rational liberty; and we cannot expect them to be regenerated, like a methodist convert, in one night. It is no just argument against the struggles of a people for freedom, that they are not just at the moment fitted for its enjoyment. All salutary changes are the gradual production of time and experience; and a people struggling for their rights, will, in that very struggle, acquire the ideas and habits necessary to their enjoyment. A long system of oppression will render any people ignorant, desperate, and brutal, in some degree; but to say that because they are so, they must continue to submit to the system which brought about their degradation, is to argue in favour of the eternal duration of every bad government, and the everlasting ignorance and barbarity which are its natural results.

I am now comfortably and quietly settled in lodgings, with an elderly lady, who has good blood

in her veins, that is to say, if blood be an hereditary commodity, which some people doubt, but which I do not, for there are diseases bodily and mental in most of the old families here that have descended through half a score of generations. She claims descent from Tudors and Plantagenets to boot, and combines the conflicting claims of both York and Lancaster. Though too well bred to boast, she sometimes used to mention these matters, until one day, I advised her in jest, to procure a champion to tilt against young parson Dymoke for the broom at the ensuing coronation, since her claim was far superior to the Hanoverian upstarts. The good old soul took the joke ill, and I was sorry for it. What right had I to ridicule that which to her was an innocent source of happiness? I despise the cant of sentiment, but I promise never to do so again.

She has a number of noble relatives among the respectable, old-fashioned nobility, who still possess some of that sturdy, antique morality and honesty, now so scarce among this class throughout all Christendom. Their occasional visits in the dusk of the evening, and the contemplation of her own august descent, seem to constitute her little fund of worldly enjoyment. It is so blameless, that I humour her by often inquiring the names of her visiters; which gives occasion to a variety of family details and claims of kindred, distant enough to be sure, but still sufficient to support the little edifice of vanity, erected in her heart upon the tombs of her ancestors. The old matron is excessively methodical, and particularly neat in her dress-hates Napoleon Bonaparte with a zeal past all human understanding, and has brought to war against him most exclusively seve ral passages of the Old and New Testaments. To do her justice, however, she has no great respect

for her present liege-lord; but whether on the score of his morals, or her own superior claim to the crown, I cannot decide. The queen she adheres to, I believe merely from the spirit of the

sex.

Comfort, neatness, and economy distinguish her household, from the cellar to the garret. Nothing is wasted, nothing is wanting. Such, indeed, is her economy, that I verily believe she never throws away a pin for want of a head, or a needle for being without an eye. This economy is neither the offspring of meanness nor avarice, but the rational result of a determination to preserve her independence. Her means are just sufficient, with this rigid economy, to enable her to appear with that sober sort of gentility, which it is her pride and delight ever to exhibit. Were she to relax in any one respect, the nice system would lose its balance and fall to the ground. To sum up all, she is so perfectly upright in all her dealings, that, I am satisfied, no prospect of impunity, no certainty of escaping discovery or suspicion, would tempt her to defraud the living or the dead, or receive more than her due. It is amusing to see her uneasiness at incurring the slightest obligation, or being subjected to the smallest debt. I happened to pay the postage of a letter for her one day in her absence, and she was quite unhappy because I could not make change, and release her from the obligation. She and I are great friends after the cold English fashion. If I be sick, every attention is scrupulously paid, but paid as if from a sense of propriety, not from the heart. Our occasional conversations are friendly, but formal; rather genealogical I confess, but let that pass-the old lady comes from Wales. Still I cannot help respecting her most sincerely, and I feel more at home in her

house than any place where I have sojourned since I left my own home. I have been the more particular in my sketch, because she belongs to a class of females which once gave a character to England, and to English domestic life, of which the country yet feels the benefit, in the enjoyment of a reputation for integrity, founded on the past, rather than the present. It was this homely honesty, this inflexible regard to principle, which made amends for the absence of those easy and sprightly manners, which attach a stranger, who is generally more in want of courtesies than benefits, and consequently forms his estimate of a people, from their general deportment, rather than from any particular act of kindness. This class is, however, I regret to say, daily mouldering away amidst the speculating extravagance, and splendid pauperism of the times. They cannot keep pace with the more numerous class of nobility and gentry, because their pride will not stoop to an alliance with vulgar wealth, nor their principles bend to earn the rewards of the government by the sacrifice of their integrity.

Our house is situated in one of the old streets, running into ********, which, though rather narrow, was considered quite genteel until lately, that a corrector of enormities in beards made a lodgment directly over the way, and poked his pole at an angle of some forty degrees, almost into the old lady's window. This awful invasion put to flight two persons of quality who lodged in the house. ""Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good," and I was wafted by this breeze into lodgings that suit me exactly.

Adieu.

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