and a bare independence, how much more useful should I be, and how much more happy! It is not talking nonsense when I say that the London air is as bad for the mind as for the body, for the mind is a cameleon that receives its colours from surrounding objects. In the country, everything is good, everything in nature is beautiful. The benevolence of Deity is everywhere presented to the eye, and the heart participates in the tranquillity of the scene. In the town my soul is continually disgusted by the vices, follies, and consequent miseries of mankind. "My future studies, too. Now, I never read a book without learning something, and never write a line of poetry, without cultivating some feeling of benevolence and honesty; but the law is a horrid jargon a quibbling collection of voluminous nonsense; but this I must wade through, aye, and I will wade through,-and when I shall have got enough to live in the country, you and I will make my first Christmas fire of all my new books. Oh, Grosvenor, what a blessed bonfire! The devil uses the statutes at large for fuel, when he gives an attorney his house warming. "I shall have some good poems to send you shortly. Your two birthday odes are printed; your name looks well in capitals, and I have pleased myself by the motto prefixed to them: it is from Akenside. Shall I leave you to guess it? I hate guessing myself. 666 Oh, my faithful friend! Oh early chosen! ever found the same, "My Triumph of Woman is manufactured into a tolerable poem. My Hymn to the Penates will be the best of my minor pieces. The B. B. Eclogues may possibly become popular. "Read St. Pierre, Grosvenor; and if you ever turn Pagan, you will certainly worship him for a demigod. . . . . I want to get a tragedy out, to furnish a house with its profits. Is this a practicable scheme, allowing the merit of the drama? or would a good novel succeed better? Heighho! ways and means! .. Yours sincerely, R. S." CHAPTER V. GOES ΤΟ LONDON ΤΟ STUDY THE LAW. THENCE. TAKES LODGINGS AT BURTON IN LAMB. - GOES TO BATH. RETURNS ΤΟ LONDON. — LINES BY CHARLES LETTER TO MR. WYNN. VISIT TO NORFOLK.- LETTERS FROM THENCE. TAKES A HOUSE AT WESTBURY, NEAR BRISTOL. EXCURSION INTO HEREFORDSHIRE. — 1797. My father continued to reside in Bristol until the close of the year 1796, chiefly employed, as we have seen, in working up the contents of his foreign note-books into "Letters from Spain and Portugal," which were published in one volume early in the following year. This task completed, he determined to take up his residence in London, and fairly to commence the study of the law; which he was now enabled to do through the true friendship of Mr. C. W. W. Wynn, from whom he received for some years from this time an annuity of 1607., - the prompt fulfilment of a promise made during their years of college intimacy. This was indeed one of those acts of rare friendship, -twice honourable,"to him that gives and him that takes it;" bestowed with pleasure, received without any painful feelings, and often reverted to, as the staff and stay of those years, when otherwise he must have felt to the full, all the manifold evils of being, as he himself expressed it, "cut adrift upon the ocean of life.” How reluctantly he had looked forward to his legal studies, his past letters have shown; nor did the prospect appear more pleasing when the anticipation was about to be changed to the reality. To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq. "Jan. 1. 1797. "So, Bedford, begins the year that will terminate our correspondence. I mean to spend one summer in North Wales, studying the country for Madoc, and do not intend writing to you then, because you shall be with me. And for all the rest of the days I look on to clearly, the view is bounded by the smoke of London. Methinks, like Camoens, I could dub it Babylon, and write lamentations for the 'Sion' of my birth-place, having, like him, no reason to regret the past, except that it is not the present; it is the country I want. A field thistle is to me worth all the flowers of Covent Garden. However, Bedford, happiness is a flower that will blossom anywhere; and I expect to be happy, even in London. You know who is to watch at my gate; and if he will let in any of your club, well and good. "Time and experience seem to have assimilated us: we think equally ill of mankind, and from the complexion of your last letters, I believe you think as badly as I do of their rulers. I fancy you are mounted above the freezing point of aristocracy, to the temperate degree where I have fallen. . . . Methinks, Grosvenor, the last two years have made me the elder; but you know I never allow the aristocracy of years. "I have this day finished my Letters, and now my time is my own,- my 'race is run;' and perhaps the next book of mine which makes its appearance will be my posthumous works!'. . . . I must be on the Surrey side of the water; this will suit me and please you. I am familiar with the names of your club,-shall I ever be so with themselves? Naturally of a reserved disposition, there was a considerable period of my life in which high spirits, quick feelings, and principles enthusiastically imbibed, made me talkative; - experience has taught me wisdom, and I am again as silent, as self-centering as in early youth. “After the nine hours' law study, I shall have a precious fragment of the day at my own disposal; now, Grosvenor, I must be a miser of time, for I am just as sleepy a fellow as you remember me at Brixton. You see I am not collected enough to write, - this plaguy cough interrupts me, and shakes all the ideas in my brain out of their places. "Jan. 7. "A long interval, Grosvenor, and it has not been employed agreeably. I have been taken ill at Bristol. . . . I was afraid of a fever. . . . a giddiness of head, which accompanied the seizure, rendered me utterly unfit for anything. I was well nurst, and am well. . . . When I get to London I have some comfortable plans; but much depends on the likeability of your new friends: you say you have en |