humble submission to the decrees of unerring wisdom, who knows that present time is but as the twinkling of the eye to that eternity of consolation ordained for the virtuous, and which should be our comfort in viewing "the solitary in families."

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To overcome, even under our utmost resignation, anxiety and grief, is not in our power. Where congenial minds have been severed asunder -the wound will bleed the remembrance of past scenes of mutual comforts never to return the void of reciprocal participation of present enjoyments and future prospects and a thousand tender recollections will never suffer the chasm to heal, or the tear of sensibility to dry up -nor would I wish it. In this tranquil state of domestic melancholy the mind feels some solace; and, with my friend, we will not cease to court a tender, though an actiye grief. That chain of affection which bound us together here, I trust will unite us hereafter, and I do not wish one link to be removed.

In advancing age, when our connexions here have been long cemented, and our separation from futurity cannot be far distant, that grief is more durable than in youth, though less violent. If the embers do not blaze and appear vivid, they long preserve an equable warmth; and the mind, weaned from the pressure of former connexions by the inroads of time, expands to contemplations connected with another life; and looks forward

to a more durable union of soul and purity of sentiment. Come then, sweet Melancholy, and with thy balm soothe, but do not heal our wounds; under thy influence we will retrace with sedate sensibility past enjoyments, and cast an eye of hope towards the future, ever preserving prominent in our minds, that

"Whatever is of God ordain'd, is right."

I trust I know so much of my friend — of his manly heart, softened by domestic comforts, and humanized by virtuous reflection-that he will go with me in sentiment, and sympathize with me in affliction, as I do with him; and under its meliorating influence, acknowledge with an ancient, "It was good for me that I was afflicted."

In feeling for, and with my friend, I could not find power to advert to any other subject, but remain affectionately,

J. C. LETTSOM.

LETTER CI.

Sir M. MARTIN, Bart. to Dr. LETTSOM.

Dear Doctor,

March 8, 1801.

Having yesterday dispatched a small parcel of Mangel Wurzel seed for you by the Fakenham coach, give me the comfort of feeling a pretence for troubling you with this information of it. Indeed I value the benefit of your correspondence so

highly that I gladly catch at any matter to form a letter to you. A severe return of my dreadful malady (gall-stones) prevented my attempting to answer yours of Jan. 3d at the time. Thank God, pain has this time been my most distressing symptom. I think rubbing mercury on my breast has not weakened me so much as the quantity of calomel I took in my former attack, and the pills of soap and rhubarb have apparently done me so much good that I have some confidence in their preventing the violence of any future attack, if applied in time. Worried, as you describe yourself to be, "with professional calls," I should feel no small comfort in being within reach of adding to them.

Although you were, in some degree, accessary to passing the brown bread act, you observe, that "fine bread will somehow be had, at least from American flour." That was not the case here; and to children, sick persons, and many labourers, who had nothing but that and water, the effect really justified Mr. Horne Tooke's epithet of "The poisoning act." Observe, it is not the general but the indiscriminate use of it which I think did the harm. At all times I prefer it for my own breakfast, and continue to use it in my own family. My own wheat (which I had the good fortune to house before the rain) sifted in the coarsest hair sieve, and what that takes out I think is more profitably applied in my farm-yard than it would be in my family.

I see by the paper of this night that the potatoe premium bill is rejected. I cannot refrain from repeating to you the purport of what I wrote a few days since to a member, who has complimented me with giving me credit for the papers which I could not get inserted in the newspapers.

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Happily there has been time to repeal the brown bread act; but that cannot be the case with the measure now proposed respecting potatoes; which, taken in all its consequences, makes me shudder. The food so much wanted at present will be applied to sowing much land ill suited to the crop. A quantity of land will be taken from more immediate produce; the grass land which will be destroyed for it would furnish beef and mutton, or dairy produce and pigs; and in dry arable land much of it will be taken from corn, which is more portable and preservable, and returns straw for future manure without exhausting the land near so much as experience tells me a crop of potatoes does; and they cannot be taken up in large quantities till harvest and gleaning time is over. Do not suppose that I am unfriendly to the growth of potatoes in suitable soils; what I deprecate is, the forcing by premiums an unnatural produce on a quantity of land which experience would lead the occupiers to apply to more profitable crops. If popular clamour must be indulged with premiums, had they not better be applied for the greatest quantity of any crops produced on an equal space of ground, which would lead occupiers

to study the nature of their soils? But even that would lead to robbing a large space to make small spots extravagantly rich. Premiums upon the greatest space throw all competition into the hands of the great occupiers, while the little ones labour under disadvantages enough already, which seem to be daily increasing."

I have lately perused and re-perused a book, in which I do not in all points enter into the sentiments of the author; for I fully agree with you, that "no two persons think alike on all subjects ;" but if Fellowes's Christian Philosophy, 2d edition, falls in your way, I think our hearts will beat in unison in reading the 109th and 110th pages.

The last lines of the book give a trait of his own character, from which I think I see more of you than in your picture, for I am much mistaken if you "ever heard, without a wish to soothe, the piercing cries of human misery." It is this opinion which animates my fervent hope of becoming worthy of the title of

Your obliged friend,

MORDAUNT MARTIN.