“L’union de l’esprit et du corps est en effet si forte qu’on a de la peine a concevoir que l’on puisse agir sans que l’autre se ressente plus aux mains de son action” says Monsieur Tissot; and when you tell me you write under the influence of five weeks’ disorder, and yet send me a letter full of wit, sentiment, and imagination, I really know not whether to believe you or Monsieur Tissot; he has proved the sympathy of the soul and body in theory, but you practically prove there exists no inseparable connexion between them, and that the debility of the frame has no influence over the “strength of spirit.” The fact is, I am tempted to wonder (like an old general on the eve of a great battle to a mili-

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tary invalid), how you dare be sick? Had I your mind and imagination I should set the whole College of Physicians at defiance. And, as it is, though gifted with a very small portion of the vivida vis anima! (smile at my Latin), I am pretty well enabled to keep the reins of health in my own hands. In the first place I have got possession of the “citadel the heart,” and command its pulsations, fibres, nerves, &c., with the unlimited power of a field-marshal. Thus, having subjugated my constitutional forces, I play them off as I please. When my pulse grows languid, and the heaviness of approaching sickness seizes on me, I immediately set fancy to work, seize the pen, and mock the spirit of poetry; then the eye rolls, the pulses throb, the blood circulates freely in every vein—my poem is finished—I am well. Or should a fever seize my absorbing spirits—memory and hope thrill every nerve—call up the forms of joys elapsed, or paint the welcome semblance of joys anticipated; then the heart beats cheerily, and recruits every artery with new tides of health. Well! Vive le galimatias! for when it dies, my epistolary talent dies with it, and common sense may sing a jubilate as a requiem. Seriously though. Do you know I never was seriously ill. But the day I dined with you I was struggling hard with a cold—an influenza—and you might have perceived a fever burning in my cheek, that seized me beyond the power of fancy to dispel it on my return home. I must have appeared, therefore, to you very different from the thing I am,—“sober, demure, and steadfast.” I suppose I looked the personification of

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authorship or jeune savante, when, had I been myself, I should have romped with your boys, coquetted with your husband, and, probably, procured my lettre de cachet from yourself as a nuisance to all decorous society. Am I indeed of the age and mind to admire the splendid rather than the awful virtues? I am, at all events, glad to find you believe I do admire virtue of whatever species or description, for I have been so long attempting to make the “worse appear the better reason,” and pleading so strenuously for the errors of superior talent, that I began to fear you put me down as the decided apologist of the vices of genius; but I know, had I taken up the right side of the question, there would have been an end of the argument, and I should have lost some of the most delightful passages in your delightful letters. However, the best reason I know of the great soul being more liable to err than the little one, is that given by Mr. Addison. “We may generally discover,” says he, “a pretty nice proportion between the strength, and reason, and passion in the greatest geniuses, they having the strongest affections; as on the other hand, the weaker understandings have the weaker passions.” So poor genius mounted on his high-mettled racer, with no more power to check his pranks and curvettings, than is given to the leaden-headed dulness to guide his sorry jade (who sets off at a tangent), suffers thrice the concussion, if the zigzag caprices of his courser do not even force him to lose his equilibrium.

I entirely agree with you that some women, in attaining that intellectual acquisition which excite ad-

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miration and even reverence, forfeit their (oh! how much more valuable) claims on the affections of the heart, the dearest, proudest immunity nature has endowed her daughter with—the precious immunity which gives them empire over empire, and renders them sovereigns over the world’s lords. I must tell you, my dear madam, I am ambitious, far, far beyond the line of laudable emulations, perhaps beyond the power of being happy. Yet the strongest point of my ambition is to be every inch a woman. Delighted with the pages of La Voisine, I dropped the study of chemistry, though urged to it by a favourite friend and preceptor, lest I should be less the woman. Seduced by taste, and a thousand arguments, to Greek and Latin, I resisted, lest I should not be a very woman. And I have studied music rather as a sentiment than a science, and drawing as an amusement rather than an art, lest I should have become a musical pedant or a masculine artist. And let me assure you, that if I admire you for any one thing more than another, it is that, with all your talent and information you are “a woman still.” I have said thus much to convince you that I agree, perfectly agree with you, in all you have said on the subject, and that when Rousseau insists on le cosur aimant of Julie, he endows her with the best and most endearing attribute woman can possess. Am I to thank you or your Tom for the trouble he has had with my commission? Castle Hyde I am not a little anxious about, since I have taken the liberty of dedicating it to you, as I dedicated Ned of the Hills to Lady Clonbrock—

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the two friends whose tastes I most admire and revere. It is but just Castle Hyde should be all your own, since your approbation gave it a new value in my opinion, and tempted me to its publication. Have you, indeed, read St. Clair a third time? You have touched me where I am most vulnerable. I cannot conceive how you can think my hero and heroine dangerous; to have rendered them such I must have been myself not a little so; yet you know long since I am the most harmless of all human beings. There is a young man of some talent here, who has done a hundred profiles of me; one of them was so strong a likeness, I am strongly tempted to enclose it you. L’amour propre aime les portraits. The vanity of my intentions struck me so forcibly that I determined to expiate my crime by confessing it to her against whom it was meditated, and I sent the profile to a poor partial friend who will think more of it than the original itself deserves; but friendship can be un peu aveugle as well as love.

I took the liberty of tormenting you with a long and nonsensical letter some time back, which I was in hopes would have procured me the favour of an answer; for it is so long since I had the pleasure of hearing from you, that I began to fear I had either unconsciously forfeited your friendship, or that you found me a troublesome correspondent. I hope that has not been the cause of your silence, for I really know not whether I should feel most at losing your friendship, or your losing your health—a most unpleasant alternative. But one line from you will be sufficient to obviate my suspicions, or subdue my fears. As I found that these good folks were determined on going for life to Castle-tumble-Down, and as I never had a very strong propensity for the society of crows, who have established a very flourishing colony in the battlements and woods in Court Jordan, I gave in my resignation last week. But, seriously, I do not think I ever was more agitated in my life. They made me every offer it was possible could tempt me to remain with them, even till November, when Mrs. Crawford would take me herself to town; and when they found me irrevocable in my decree, they paid me the compliment of saying, they would not entrust their children to any but one whom I approved. So that the choice of my successor depends entirely on myself. I shall be in Dublin about the 27th, I believe; will it be taking too great an advantage of your already experienced kindness to renew my claim on

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the little hole in the wall? If not, or at any rate, will you have the goodness to let me know, by return, whether it will be perfectly convenient to you to accede to my request, that I may make some other provision. I shall stay but a day or two in town, as I am extremely anxious to get home; my father has taken a nice little place about two miles from the town of Strabane, and delightfully situated. Olivia is well and happy, and desires to be most affectionately remembered to my dear little friends, whenever I wrote to them.

Illness has prevented my answering your letter; an epidemic cold attended with fever has borne very hard upon my family. My eldest son has been very near death, and I have been myself confined to my bed, and am still obliged to keep the house, with the usual consolatory reflections that I am no worse off than other people, &c., &c. If the miseries of others were to render us satisfied with our own lot, no one would have a right to complain. You remember La

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Fontaine says, “Et le malheur des consolations sur croit d’afflictions.” In real illness and sorrow one has often occasion to think of that.

I shall be very glad to see you when you are in Dublin. Two gentlemen of my acquaintance have added to my wish to know you, and yet they certainly saw you in society unsuited to you, and which I am sure chance alone could have thrown you into. My daughter has been taught music and still continues to learn, but has not, I think, any decided taste or talent for it—both my sons have; the eldest son is a student in Trinity College, plays the harp finely and is also an excellent performer on the pianoforte; for him I shall thank you for the Irish air you mention. No music more than the Irish bears the stamp of originality; none speak more to the affections; I think it possesses more variety than the Scotch, and expresses more forcibly the gay and the tender. Poor Charlotte Brooks, my friend and my relation, assisted in making me in love with the Irish bards. I am sure you know her beautiful translations of some of them. Carolan’s monody on the death of his wife, is truly pathetic

I was on the point of sitting down to write to you, my dear little friend, when I received your welcome letter. The cause of my silence was this: anxious to discharge as much of my debt of obligation as was dischargeable, I waited for a Mr. Steward who was going to Dublin, and by whom I meant to send a letter to you, a drawing (which I did since I came here) to mamma, and the money to papa he was kind enough to pay for me; however, to my own little disappointment, my commissary is still philandering in the streets of Strabane. So I am all this time lying under the imputation of ingratitude and neglect. I hope, however, papa and mamma will add to all I already owe, by believing that the kindness and friendly attention I have received from them on every occasion when my interest or welfare has been concerned, is deeply felt and must always be gratefully acknowledged. My father, thank Heaven! is quite recovered; but my poor Olivia had a relapse, and by going too lightly clad at a party at a Dr. ——’s, has brought on a delicacy that has terrified us with an apprehension of a consumptive habit,—she is but a shadow of herself. The doctors have ordered perpetual exercise and goat’s whey. We have got a gig, and mean next week to go and visit the city of county Londonderry, so fa-

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mous in Irish history; we shall spend a few days there; and on our return stop for a day at the races of St. Johnston’s. A thousand times have I wished to have you and —— here; amidst your level lawns and young plantations you have no idea of the rude sublimity of our northern scenery. We have no farmers, so, consequently, no tillage; all is bold, savage and romantic; the manners, dialect, customs and religion of the people are all as purely Scotch as they could be in the Highlands, even the better order of people are with difficulty understood, and the manners of the inferior class are ferocious; there is, however, a great spirit of independence among them; “every rood of ground maintains its man,” and there are none of those wretched cabins which you perpetually see in the other provinces. They call all strangers foreigners or Irish people, and have not many ideas beyond their wheels and looms. A market day presents a curious scene. The young women are all dressed in white, with their hair fastened up fancifully enough and seldom covered. At the entrance of the town they bathe their feet and put on shoes and stockings which are constantly taken off when they are leaving it. I have frequently seen them with flowers and feathers in their heads and their stockings tied up in a handkerchief. In a social sense they are most unpleasant, and, upon the whole, they are the last people in the world that an educated person would wish to spend their life with. We have been pretty fortunate; the rector’s family of Raphoe (a little village near us) have paid us every friendly attention, and we are

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frequently together; this, with a few of the military, make our little circle pleasant enough. We have music every evening. I bought a very fine Spanish guitar from the master of the band here. I have a great deal of music for it, and can accompany myself on it almost as well as on the piano; at which I practice a good deal. There is an excellent drawing-master here, from whom I have got some beautiful drawings, so that I am in a fair way of improvement. I am sure you will be glad to hear that I have got a price far beyond my most sanguine wishes for St. Clair. Mr. Harding, of Pall Mall, says, it will be done in a very superior style, and will be certainly at Archer’s in three weeks. Mrs. Colbert wrote to me about Nina, but her terms were too low. The Minstrel goes on famously, I think you will like it best of all,—it is full of incidents. I was very much flattered by the Doctor’s (the Knight’s I mean,) intention; I do not know which of St Clair’s poems would answer for composition. I continue to receive the most elegant letters in the world from Mrs. Lefanu; her three children, herself and niece, have been for seven weeks confined with a spotted fever. The Crawfords are in great trouble about a governess—they cannot get one to please them; they write to me in a manner that seems to indicate their wish for my return,—but that is out of the question. I intend to lie fallow in the A, B, C, D-way for some time. I am glad to hear that all your friends are well; pray present my respectful compliments at Grange and Riverdale. Poor Fanny, I am truly sorry for her! I wish she was

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with Mr. B. Tell C. that as she has no opportunity of practising French, I will write constantly in French to her (provided she will answer me in the same language) it will help her more than she can imagine. I shall be delighted to have it in my power to be in any means instrumental to her improvement. Say everything that is kind for me to papa and mamma; assure the dear boys that I participate in their regret in our not meeting. Adieu, my dearest little friend, continue to write to me, and believe that I am among the warmest of your well-wishers and sincere friends,

I read your little secret memoir with much the same species of emotion as Uncle Toby listened to

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Trim’s account of Le Fevre, for more than once I wished I was asleep.

You allude to the “imprudence of Ellen Maria Williams. Although I am perfectly acquainted with her works, I know not anything of her history. May I hope in your next for a little biographical sketch. Imprudence of conduct so frequently connected with superiority of talent in woman, is, indeed, a solecism. Dare we say with Burns, that “the light which leads astray, is the light from Heaven?” Salvater says, “the primary matter of which woman is constituted is more flexible, irritable and elastic than that of man;” added to this, their delicacy, the ardour of their subtilized feelings, the warmth, the animated tenderness of their affections; then, for a moment, conceive the influence of genius and talent over this dangerous organization; conceive a flowing but dejected heart, refined but desponding mind, escaping from the solitary state of isolation its own superiority has plunged it in,—deceived by a gleam of sympathy, and led “by passion’s meteor beam,” beyond the barrier virtue has erected and which prudence never transgresses. Then, though we lament, while we condemn, we almost cease to wonder. I had yesterday a letter (four pages long) from Lady Clonbrock, with an account of St. Clair’s reception at Bath and Bristol. It is just such as I knew you would wish for the bantling, who first sought protection and countenance from yourself. I know you will smile at the vanity of this account; but it set every particle of authorship afloat which had been for some time grad-

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ually subsiding, Can you forgive me sending such a letter of “shreds and patches,” to you as this? the truth is it has been written by snatches,—sometimes with the “buzz and murmur of those unfinished things one knows not what to call,” (who come in droves to us every day) still sounding in my ears and dissipating every propensity to common rationality; and sometimes by the side of an invalid sister, who is paying the tribute of a rheumatic complaint for having too closely adhered to the fashionable costume of the day; added to this, I began my epistle in full dress, going to a party, that I continued it in deshabillé, and literally concluded en bonnet de nuit; and then, if you consider (according to Buffon) that dress enters into the character, and becomes part of the individual “man” (or woman), it will account for the nuances de style of this letter, which by fits is sad, and by starts is wild! Adieu, my dear madam, have the goodness de faire mes amitiés to your fireside circle. My father desires to be respectfully remembered, and I request you to believe, I am yours most sincerely,