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in 1757. During the greatest part of the time, I lived in the same house with my dear deceased friend, your mother; of course, you and I saw and conversed with each other much and often. It is to all our honours that, in all that time, we never had among us the smallest misunderstanding. Our friendship has been all clear sunshine, without any, the least, clouds in its hemisphere. Let me conclude by saying to you what I have had too frequent occasion to say to my other remaining old friends, the fewer we become, the more let us love one another! Adieu, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

Henry Kirke White to Mr. B. Maddock.

MY DEAR BEN,

Winteringham, August 3, 1804.

I AM all anxiety to learn the issue of your proposal to your father. Surely it will proceed; surely a plan laid out with such fair prospects of happiness to you, as well as me, will not be frustrated. Write to me the moment you have any information on the subject.

I think we shall be happy together at Cambridge; and in the ardent pursuit of Christian knowledge and Christian virtue, we shall be doubly united. We were before friends; now, I hope, likely to be still more emphatically so. But I must not anticipate.

I left Nottingham without seeing my brother Neville, who arrived there two days after me. This is a circumstance which I much regret; but I hope he will come this way, when he goes, according to his intention, to a watering-place. Neville has been a good brother to me, and there are

not many things which would give me more pleasure than, after so long a separation, to see him again. I dare not hope that I shall meet you and him together, in October, at Nottingham.

My days flow on here in an even tenor. They are, indeed, studious days; for my studies seem to multiply on my hands; and I am so much occupied with them, that I am becoming a mere bookworm, running over the rules of Greek versification in my walks, instead of expatiating on the beauties of the surrounding scenery. Winteringham is indeed now a delightful place: the trees are in full verdure, the crops are bronzing the fields, and my former walks are become dry under foot, which I have never known them to be before. The opening vista, from our churchyard over the Humber, to the hills and receding vales of Yorkshire, assumes a thousand new aspects. I sometimes watch it at evening, when the sun is just gilding the summits of the hills, and the lowlands are beginning to take a browner hue. The showers partially falling in the distance, while all is serene above me; the swelling sail rapidly falling down the river; and, not least of all, the villages, woods, and villas on the opposite bank, sometimes render this scene quite enchanting to me; and it is no contemptible relaxation, after a man has been puzzling his brains over the intricacies of Greek choruses all the day, to come out and unbend his mind with careless thought and negligent fancies, while he refreshes his body with the fresh air of the country.

I wish you to have a taste of these pleasures with me; and if ever I should live to be blessed with a quiet parsonage, and that great object of my ambition, a garden, I have no doubt but we shall be for some short intervals, at least-two

quiet, contented bodies. These will be our relaxa. tions; our business will be of a nobler kind. Let us vigilantly fortify ourselves against the exigencies of the serious appointment we are, with God's blessing, to fulfil; and if we go into the church prepared to do our duty, there is every reasonable prospect that our labours will be blessed, and that we shall be blessed in them. As your habits generally have been averse to what is called close application, it will be too much for your strength, as well as unadvisable in other points of view, to study very intensely; but regularly you may and must read; and, depend upon it, a man will work more wonders by stated and constant application, than by unnatural and forced endeavours.

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Ir is again midnight, and I am again alone. With what meditation shall I amuse this waste hour of darkness and vacuity? If I turn my thoughts upon myself, what do I perceive but a poor helpless being, reduced by a blast of wind to weakness and misery? How my present distemper was brought upon me, I can give no account; but impute it to some sudden succession of cold to heat, such as, in the common road of life, cannot be avoided, and against which no precaution can be taken.

Of the fallaciousness of hope and the uncertainty of schemes, every day gives some new proof; but it is seldom heeded till something rather felt than

seen awakens attention. This illness, in which I have suffered something and feared much more, has depressed my confidence and elation; and made me consider all that I have promised myself as less certain to be attained or enjoyed. I have endeavoured to form resolutions of a better life but I form them weakly, under the consciousness of an external motive. Not that I conceive a time of sickness improper for recollection and good purposes, which I believe diseases and calamities often sent to produce, but because no man can know how little his performance will answer to his promises; and designs are nothing in human eyes till they are realized by execution.

Continue, my dearest, your prayers for me, that no good resolution may be in vain. You think, I believe, better of me than I deserve. I hope to be in time what I wish to be, and what I have hitherto satisfied myself too readily with only wishing.

Your billet brought me what I much wished to have, a proof that I am still remembered by you at the hour in which I most desire it.

The doctor is anxious about you. He thinks you too negligent of yourself; if you will promise to be cautious, I will exchange promises, as we have already exchanged injunctions. However, do not write to me more than you can easily bear; do not interrupt your ease to write at all.

Mr. Fitzherbert sent to-day to offer me some wine: the people about me say I ought to accept it; I shall therefore be obliged to him if he will send me a bottle.

There has gone about a report that I died to-day, which I mention, lest you should hear it, and be alarmed. You see that I think my death may alarm you, which, for me, is to think very highly

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of earthly friendship. I believe it arose from the death of one of my neighbours. You know Des Cartes's argument. "I think-therefore I am It is as good a consequence, "I write therefore I am alive." I might give another: "I am alivetherefore I love Miss Boothby," but that I hope our friendship may be of far longer duration than life. I am, dearest madam,

With sincere affection, your, &c.

B. JOHNSON.

William Cowper to Lady Hesketh.

MY DEAR COUSIN,

Huntingdon, Oct. 10, 1765.

I SHOULD grumble at your long silence, if I did not know that one may love one's friends very well, though one is not always in a humour to write to them. Besides, I have the satisfaction of being perfectly sure that you have at least twenty times recollected the debt you owe me, and as often resolved to pay it; and, perhaps, while you remain indebted to me, you think of me twice as often as you would do if the account was clear. These are the reflections with which I comfort myself under the affliction of not hearing from you; my temper does not incline me to jealousy, and if it did, I should set all right by having recourse to what I have already received from you.

I thank God for your friendship, and for every friend I have; for all the pleasing circumstances here; for my health of body and perfect serenity of mind. To recollect the past, and compare it with the present, is all I have need of to fill me with gratitude; and to be grateful is to be happy. Not that I think myself sufficiently thankful, or

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