Sir W. W. Pepys to Hannah More-Felicity in Metaphor. Third Marriages.

employed at a distance on the same book, as well as two lovers that of both looking at the same time on the moon. Your observations, too, on them correspond exactly with my own.

Many thanks for your kind congratulations on my dear S's marriage. She is really a charming creature, with one of the best hearts and most cultivated minds I have ever known. What you say of Lady O. S. has raised in me a strong desire to be acquainted with her; but I have not yet arrived at that happy state of confidence which would enable me to say, as a Frenchman once said to me, J'ai con que vous senez charmé de ma compagnie, a sentence which I much question whether the vainest Englishman could pronounce.

Your complaint of the dampness of churches is not only well founded, but of so important and serious a nature that I think you cannot do a better service to religion, or at least to religious people, than to take an opportunity in some of your next publications (which are sure of being universally read) of descanting on that subject, and recommending, as somebody well said, that the old alliance between the Aris and the Focis should be restored. In recommending to you this subject, I do full as well, methinks, as a gentleman I know, who, when I asked him how he liked the subject of a sermon which was very abstruse, answered that he had rather hear him preach against the crime of putting alum into bread. Apropos of abstruse subjects for sermons, I shall certainly, at your recommendation, read some more of Horsley's; but must own that I have been deterred from it upon finding that one of them was upon the place in which our Saviour passed the interval between his crucifixion and his resurrection. Such subjects as those are better left untouched, because every one sees that the most learned theologian and the

Sir W. W. Pepys to Hannah More-Felicity in Metaphor. Third Marriages.

convert of yesterday must be equally informed upon them. I did read, and did, I confess, experience great disappointment in reading, his attempt to "show what part of our Saviour's discourses applied to the destruction of Jerusalem, and what to his coming at the end of the world." His disposing of the principal difficulty, by applying it to Judas Iscariot, appears to me very forced and improbable. Horsley was, however, the right sort of man to grapple with those and similarly difficult passages, and I am truly sorry that I could not obtain from him more satisfaction, for you cannot rank him among

"Those commentators who dark meanings shun,

But hold their farthing candle to the sun."

As to his explanation of the 45th Psalm, as I have no better to offer, I must be content with it, though the meaning which he annexes to it does seem very strange. I have often lamented that, instead of giving the whole book of Psalms, to be read in churches, which habituates the people, as well as the priest, to repeat daily what they no more understand than if it were Arabic, our ancestors did not make a copious selection of those divine passages, so feelingly adapted to every state of mind, and so expressive of the most pure and most exalted devotion.

I hear from Mrs. Dickenson, and indeed from everybody, how delightfully you are situated, and how hospitably you receive your friends; so that, were I ever to be within reach of you, I should make no more scruple of presenting myself at your gate, than a pilgrim would have had in throwing himself upon the hospitality of my lady abbess.

Pray convey my congratulations to Dr.

when you see

him, upon his marriage, though they will have but little effect, he

Sir W. W. Pepys to Hannah More-Felicity in Metaphor. Third Marriages.

is so used to them; as a lady once said to me, when I was going to give her away to her third husband, and told her that she ought not to appear in such high spirits, but look timid and apprehensive: "Matrimony is like a cold bath, very formidable the first time, but when you have tried it often, you become used to it."

Cadell promises two more volumes of Mrs. M―'s letters; but from what I can learn, they will not come out immediately. If I had had to advise on the former publication, I should have suggested that as some of the letters could have been written by very few except Mrs. Montagu, none ought to have been admitted which anybody could have written as well as Mrs. Montagu. But the editor is under great difficulties, for it often happens that some brilliant passages are so intermixed with headaches, etc., which occupy the rest of the letter, that it is hardly possible to detach the embroidery from the cloth. You, therefore, whose letters hereafter will be sought after with great avidity, should so write that the subjects, though familiar, should be always interesting; and though it might spoil your letters were you to write them with a view to publication, yet I would not have you totally lose sight of the possibility of such a thing taking place. "Why don't you wear your ring, my dear?" says a father in some play to his daughter. "Because, papa, it hurts me when any body squeezes my hand." "What business have you to have your hand squeezed?" "Certainly not; but still you know, papa, one would like to keep it in squeezeable order !"

As I trust you never fail to repeat every day, every year, my favorite lines in the beginning of Dryden's "Flower and the Leaf," I will say nothing about this delicious spring weather, but will only add, which I am sure you feel with me, that nothing

George Washington to Dr. John Cochran-Bill of Fare for Camp Dinner.

excites in me so strong an emotion of gratitude as that sense of the gracious and beneficent protection of Providence, which has permitted me once more, in health and prosperity, to see the reminiscences of these His glorious works. Remember Beattie, and the beautiful apostrophe in the Minstrel, and

Believe me always most faithfully yours,

W. W. PEPYS.

XXXVII.-BILL OF FARE FOR CAMP DINNER.

George Washington to Dr. John Cochran.

DEAR DOCTOR: I have asked Mrs. Cochran and Mrs. Livingston to dine with me to-morrow; but am I not in honor bound to apprise them of their fare? As I hate deception, even where the imagination only is concerned, I will. It is needless to premise that my table is large enough to hold the ladies. Of this they had ocular proof yesterday. To say how it is usually covered is more essential, and this shall be the purport of my letter. Since our arrival at this happy spot, we have had a ham, sometimes a shoulder of bacon, to grace the head of the table; a piece of roast beef adorns the foot, and a dish of beans or greens almost imperceptible decorates the centre. When the cook has a mind to cut a figure, which I presume will be the case to-morrow, we have two beefsteak pies, or dishes of crabs, in addition, one on each side of the centre dish, dividing the space, and reducing the distance between dish and dish to about six feet, which, without them, would be about twelve feet apart. Of late he has had the surprising sagacity to discover that apples will make pies; and it is a question if, in the violence of his efforts, we do not get one of apples instead of having both of beefsteaks. If the ladies can

Geo. Washington to Lieut-Gen. Burgoyne÷On his departure as a Prisoner to Europe.

put up with such entertainment, and will submit to partake of it on plates, once tin, but now iron (not become so by the labor of scouring), I shall be happy to see them.*

XXXVIII.-ON THE EVE OF HIS DEPARTURE AS A PRISONER TO EUROPE.

George Washington to Lt.-Gen. Burgoyne (then a prisoner).

HEADQUARTERS, March 11th, 1778.

SIR: Your indulgent opinion of my character, and the polite terms in which you are pleased to express it, are peculiarly flattering; and I take pleasure in the opportunity you have offered me of assuring you that, far from suffering the views of the national opposition to be embittered and debased by personal animosity, I am ever ready to do justice to the merit of the mau and soldier, and to esteem, where esteem is due, however the idea of a public enemy may interpose. You will not think it the language of unmeaning ceremony if I add, that sentiments of personal respect are in the present instance reciprocal.

Viewing you in the light of an officer contending against what I conceive to be the rights of my country, the reverses you experienced in the field cannot be unacceptable to me; but abstracted from considerations of national advantage, I can sincerely sympathize with your feelings as a soldier, the unavoidable difficulties of whose situation forbade his success; and as a man, whose lot combines the calamity of ill health, the anxieties of captivity, and the painful sensibility for a reputation exposed where he most values it to the assaults of malice and detraction.

* Mr. Irving states that this is almost the only instance of sportive writing in Washington's correspondence.