Rev. George Crabbe to Mrs. Leadbetter-Response to "The Child of Simplicity."

pleasure by writing, and yet-you will think me very vain-you felt some pleasure yourself in renewing the acquaintance that commenced under such auspices! Am I not right? My heart tells me that I am, and hopes that you will confirm it. Be assured that I feel a very cordial esteem for the friend of my friend—the virtuous, the worthy character whom I am addressing. Yes, I will tell you readily about my creatures, whom I endeavored to paint as nearly as I could and dared, for in some cases I dared not. This you will readily admit; besides, charity bade me be cautious. Thus far you are correct; there is not one of whom I had not in my mind the original, but I was obliged in some cases to take them from their real situations; in one or two instances to change even the sex, and in many the circumstances. The nearest to real life was the proud, ostentatious man in the "Borough," who disguises an ordinary mind by doing great things; but the others approach to reality at greater or less distances. Indeed, I do not know that I could paint merely from my own fancy, and there is no cause why we should. Is there not diversity sufficient in society? And who can go, even but a little, into the assemblies of our fellow wanderers from the way of perfect rectitude, and not find characters so varied and so pointed that he need not call upon his imagination?

Will you not write again? Write to thee, or for the public? wilt thou not ask. To me, and for as many as love and can discern the union of strength and simplicity, purity and good sense. Our feelings and our hearts is the language you can adopt. Alas! I cannot with propriety use it; our I too once could say, but I am alone now, and since my removing into a busy town, among the multitude, the loneliness is but more apparent and more melancholy. But this is only at certain times;

Hannah More to Mr. Harford-Description of a Drought. "Manners of the Great.”

and then I have, though at considerable distances, six female friends, unknown to each other, but all dear, very dear, to me. With men I do not much associate, not as deserting, and much less disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it; not hardy nor grave; not knowing enough; not sufficiently acquainted with the every day concerns of men. But my beloved creatures have minds with which I can better assimilate. Think of you I must, and of me I must entreat that you would not be unmindful. Thine, dear lady, very truly,

GEORGE CRABBE.

XXXII. DESCRIPTION OF A DROUGHT-" MANNERS OF THE

GREAT."

Hannah More to Mr. Harford.

BARLEY WOOD

MY DEAR FRIEND: I have been much entertained with your picturesque letter. Scotland is a country I should particularly like to visit, as its scenes retain so much of their original character, and have not been spoiled by art and industry, which, though very good things in themselves, yet efface the old ideas that contribute to the pleasant romance of life. I particularly envy you the sight of Staffa's cave. Its laird, or, as he styles himself, Staffa only, has visited me, and I remember his account of his little empire was very amusing. But if these scenes have my admiration, Dumblane would have my homage. Of Leighton I could almost say with Burnet, " And I am not the better for that man; I shall have to answer for it at the day of judgment." What sacrilege to demolish his cathedral!

66

The heat here is almost tropical. Not a blade of grass left.

Hannah More to Mr. Harford-Description of a Drought. "Manners of the Great."

The complexion of my field is hardly distinguishable from the gravel walk. I believe the farmers, like Milton's Satan, " never see the sun except to tell him how they hate his beams." What a fine description there is, in the 11th of Jeremiah of a drought : "And the nobles sent their little ones to the water; they came to the pits and found none; they returned with their vessels empty, and were ashamed and confounded. And the ploughmen were ashamed, for there was no grass. And the asses snuffed up the wind, for there was no grass," etc. Pray turn to the chapter.

I have just had a visit from a very old and interesting friend, Mrs. We had not met for twenty-seven years. We lived much together when I lived in the great and gay world. She told me when my little book of "Manners of the Great " was first published (anonymously), she was sitting with the Queen, who was reading it. When Her Majesty came to the passage which censured the practice of ladies in sending on Sundays for a hair-dresser, she exclaimed, "This, I am sure, is Hannah More; she is in the right, and I will never send for one again." She did not mean she would not have her hair dressed on a Sunday, but she would not compel a poor tradesman to violate the Sabbath, but rather employ one of her own household.

tells me that Mrs.

A letter from is doing well after her confinement. They still feel the loss of their son. I never saw a lovelier youth, or one better disposed. Oh vita humana chi est si bella in vista! etc., etc. What a sweet passage in Petrarca follows! With kind love to Mrs. H———, believe me, my dear friend, Yours very sincerely,

Miss Berry to Joanna Baillie-Little Use Men make of their Advantages.

XXXIII.—LITTLE USE MEN MAKE OF THEIR ADVANTAGES.

Miss Berry to Joanna Baillie.

WIMPOLE, NOV., 1809.

MY DEAR JOANNA: What are you doing? and where are you going? Troth, say you, if you had wanted to know, you would have inquired sooner; and troth, if I had been doing better myself, so I should, answer I. I have been here a month, with people that I love, in a comfortable family-circle, surrounded by every comfort and every luxury of life, and sitting in a library-such a library as would

"Make those read now, who never read before,

And those who always read, now read the more.'

Yet even thus situated, with the perfect command of my own time, and nothing to fatigue me, if I were to tell you how little use I have been able to make of all these advantages—if I were to reckon up how many days in this month I have enjoyed the free and unembarrassed use of my own faculties—I should make you, as well as myself, melancholy, and therefore, as this is a good day with me, I will say no more about it.

My last and only letter from you was on the 8th, from Cotswold. You had been seeing Oxford, which I was delighted to find had impressed your mind exactly as it had always done mine. During my stay here I have been to Cambridge, which I had seen in a slight manner so long ago as to have almost entirely forgotten. It cannot vie with the magnificent groups of Oxford. But it has one college which may rival, if not surpass Christ's Church in picturesque beauty, and one point of view in which it appears singularly adapted for the seat of calm contemplation and learned ease. I fear the evil

Lady Dufferin to Miss Berry-A Lady's Experiance at the "Old Bailey."

minded will say, the calm is often unaccompanied by contemplation, and the ease unaccompanied by learning. Still I must ever love to see such great means brought together, and such assistance offered to both, and must ever feel a degree of exaltation of mind in places dedicated for so many centuries to the cultivation of the noblest and most distinguished faculty of human nature; perhaps, too, a little spark of sexual vanity creeps in with the wonder one cannot help feeling at men enjoying such advantages and doing so little, and women laboring under such disadvantages doing so much. This, my dear Joanna, regards you more than any other female now living. Go on, then, and prove to them that poetry, at least, is as independent of sex as of rule; that it is a spark of ethereal fire kindled on earth once in an age, which Shakspeare alone has described, and with which you are enlightened.

M. B.

XXXIV.—A LADY'S EXPERIENCE AT THE "OLD BAILEY.”

Lady Dufferin to Miss Berry.

HAMPTON HALL, DORCHESTER, 1846.

Your kind little note followed me here, dear Miss Berry, which must account for my not having answered it sooner. As you guessed, I was obliged to follow my "things" (as the maids always call their raiment) into the very jaws of the law. I think the Old Bailey is a charming place. We were introduced to a live Lord Mayor, and I sat between two sheriffs. The common sergeant talked to me familiarly, and I am not sure that the Governor of Newgate did not call me "Nelly." As for the Rev. Mr. Carver (the ordinary), if the inherent vanity of my sex does not mislead me, I think I have made a deep impression there. Altogether, my Old Bailey recollections are of