Edmund Burke to Agmondisham Vesey, Esq.

DEAR SIR,

:

Sunning Hill, September 10, 1760.

I CANNOT express how much I am obliged to you for your kind and successful endeavours in my favour of whatever advantage the remittance was, the assurance you give me of my father's reconciliation was a great deal more pleasing, and both, indeed, were rendered infinitely more agreeable to me by passing through your hands. I am sensible how very much I am indebted to your goodness upon this occasion. If one has but little merit, it is some consolation to have partial friends. Lord Lyttleton has been at Hagley for this month past, or near the matter; where, for the first time, he receives his friends in his new house. He was so obliging to invite me: I need not say that I am much concerned to find I shall not be able to obey his lordship's commands, and that I must lose, for this year at least, the sight of that agreeable place, and the conversation of its agreeable owner. Mrs. Montagu is, I believe, at Tunbridge, for she told me, on her leaving town, that she intended to make a pretty long stay there. May I flatter myself with the hopes of seeing you this winter in London? I cannot so easily forget the evenings I have passed, not to be most desirous of renewing them. I wish most heartily that Mrs. Vesey's health may be so well established, that she may be able to bear the late sitting up, for I foresee that must be the case whenever she comes to London,—— it is a fine she must pay for being so agreeable. Mrs. Burke looks upon herself to be very unhappy that she had not the honour of being known to

Mrs. Vesey, but is in hopes that she will this winter be so fortunate. Once more I give you thanks for your kind interposition.-Believe me, dear sir, your much obliged humble servant,

EDMUND BURKE.

Hon. Horace Walpole to Miss H. More.

March 6, 1784.

MR. WALPOLE thanks Miss More a thousand tines not only for so obligingly complying with his request, but for letting him have the satisfaction of possessing and reading again and again her charming and very genteel poem, the "Bas Bleu." He ought not, in modesty, to commend so much a piece which he himself is flattered; but truth is more durable than blushing, and he must be just, though he may be vain. The ingenuity with which she has introduced so easily very difficult rhymes, is admirable; and though there is a quantity of learning, it has all the air of negligence, instead of that of pedantry. As she commands him, he will not disobey; and so far from giving a single copy, he gives her his word that it shall not go out of his hands. He begs his particular compliments to Mrs. Garrick, and is Miss More's most devoted, Much obliged humble servant, H. WALPOLE.

Mrs. Carter to Mrs. H. More.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

1799.

It must have appeared very strange, that I have not sooner thanked you for your kind and most valuable present; but indeed, through my almost

continual headaches, which have affected my spi. rits, I have found writing a difficult task. To you who are secure of the approbation of angels, human applause is of small consequence; but you must be pleased for the sake of others, that your most excellent work is so universally read and admired, and I trust will on many produce a suitable effect. It is surely a hopeful symptom, that though you and the Bishop of London so strongly oppose the false maxims and absurd conduct of this giddy and nonsensical world, your endeavours are treated with the greatest attention and respect.

Of Mrs. Montagu, I am happy to be able to give a more comfortable account. She is in perfect good health and spirits, though she has totally changed her mode of life, from a conviction that she exerted herself too much last year, and that it brought on the long illness by which she suffered so much. She never goes out except to take the air of a morning; has no company to dinner, (I do not call myself company,) lets in nobody in the evening, which she passes in hearing her servant read, as, alas! her eyes will not suffer her to read to herself. I flatter myself that this pause of exertion will restore her to us, and will help to prolong her life; and that a taste for the comfort of living quietly, will for the future prevent her from mixing so much with the tumults of the world as to injure her health.

beg to be kindly remembered to your good sisters. Adieu, my dear friend; may God restore your health, and long continue you an example and an instructor to the world.

I am,

Ever your most obliged and affectionate,

E. CARTER.

The Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Watson) to Mrs. H. More. Great George-street, 1799.

MADAM,

I LOSE no time in returning you my best thanks for the valuable present of your "Strictures on Female Education." I received the books yesterday, and being confined by indisposition, have employed this day usefully, I feel, in perusing them. I do not quite agree with you on some theological points; but I have so little confidence in the rectitude of my own interpretation of Scripture, that I will not enter into any discussion on the subject. Your publication is calculated to do much good. I have put it with great satisfaction into the hands of my daughters, and I hope their piety will prompt them not to be backward in that reciprocation of Christian charity which you, with amiable sincerity and humility, entreat from your readers.

I am, madam,

Your much obliged servant,
H. LLANDAFF.

Mrs. Barbauld to Mrs. H. More.

DEAR MADAM,

Hampstead, 1799.

You have done me both honour and pleasure in the gratification you have indulged me with, of receiving, from the respected hands of the author, a treatise which every one who reads will peruse. I dare not speak to you, who write with so much higher views than those of fame, of the brilliancy of the style, or the merit of the work considered as a literary composition. You will be better pleased

if, passing over these excellences which, though every person of taste must feel them, every person solicitous for the interests of virtue and religion must consider as subordinate ones; I express my ardent wishes that your benevolent intentions towards the rising generation, and your unwearied exertions in every path where good is to be done to your fellow-creatures, may meet with ample success. The field is large, and labourers of every complexion, and who handle their tools very dif ferently, are all called upon to co-operate in the great work. May all who have the good of mankind in view preserve for each other the esteem and affectionate wishes which virtue owes to virtue, through all those smaller* differences which must ever take place between thinking beings seeing through different mediums, and subjected to the weakness and imperfection of all human reasoning. Mr. Barbauld and myself recollect with infinite pleasure the delightful and interesting day we passed under your roof the summer before last. It was only damped by your indisposition; and the accounts I have heard of your health have not been such as to favour the hope that you have been much freer from it of late. Spare yourself, I entreat you, for the world cannot spare you; and consider that, in the most indolent day you can possibly spend, you are in every drawing-room, and every closet, and every parlour-window, gliding from place to place with wonderful celerity, and talking good things to hundreds and hundreds of auditors. I do not know where you are at this moment, but if at home, I beg you will give Mr.

The differences, however, were by no means small between Mrs. More's and Mrs. Barbauld's religious opi nions.