sion of it: it seems the course of this noble blood was a little interrupted, about two centuries ago by a freak of the lady Frances, who was here taken in the fact with a neighbouring prior; ever since which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the Adultery Chamber. The ghost of lady Frances is supposed to walk there, and some prying maids of the family report that they have seen a lady in a fardingale through the key-hole but this matter is hushed up, and the servants are forbid to talk of it.

I must needs have tired you with this long description: but what engaged me in it was a generous principle to preserve the memory of that, which itself must soon fall into dust, nay, perhaps part of it, before this letter reaches your hands.

Indeed, we owe this old house the same kind of gratitude that we do to an old friend,who harbours us in his declining condition, nay even in his last extremities. How fit is this retreat for uninterrupted study, where no one that passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even those who would dine with us dare not stay under our roof! Any one that sees it, will own I could not have chosen a more likely place to converse with the dead in. I had been mad, indeed, if I had left your grace for any one but Homer. But when I return to the living, I shall have the sense to endeavour to converse with the best of them, and shall therefore, as soon as possible, tell you in person how much I am, &c.

Pope.

SIR,

A CITIZEN'S COUNTRY-HOUSE.

I REMEMBER to have seen a little French novel, giving an account of a citizen of Paris making an excursion into the country. He imagines himself about to undertake a long voyage to some strange region, where the natives were as different from the inhabitants of his own city as the most distant nations. He accordingly takes boat, and is landed at a village about a league from the capital. When he is set on shore, he is amazed to see the people speak the same language, wear the same dress, and use the same customs with himself. He, who had spent all his life within the sight of Pont Neuf, looked upon every one that lived out of Paris as a foreigner; and though the utmost extent of his travels was not three miles, he was as much surprised, as he would have been to meet with a colony of Frenchmen on the Terra Incognita.

In your late paper on the amusements of Sunday, you have set forth in what manner our citizens pass that day, which most of them devote to the country; but I wish you had been more particular in your descriptions of those elegant rural mansions, which at once show the opulence and the taste of our principal merchants, mechanics, and artificers.

I went last Sunday, in compliance with a most pressing invitation from a friend, to spend the whole day with him at one of these little seats, which he had fitted out for his retirement, once a

week, from business. It is pleasantly situated, about three miles from London, on the side of a public road, from which it is separated by a dry ditch, over which is a little bridge, consisting of two narrow planks, leading to the house. From the lower part of the house there is no prospect; but from the garrets, indeed, one may see two men hanging in chains on Kennington common, with a distant view of St. Paul's cupola enveloped in a cloud of smoke. I set out in the morning with my friend's book-keeper, who was my guide. When I came to the house, I found my friend in a black velvet cap sitting at the door smoking: he welcomed me into the country, and after having made me observe the turnpike on my left, and the Golden Sheaf on my right, he conducted me into his house, where I was received by his lady, who made a thousand apologies for being catched in such a dishabille.

The hall, for so I was taught to call it, had its white walls almost hid by a curious collection of prints and paintings. On one side was a large map of London, a plan and elevation of the Mansion House, with several lesser views of the public buildings and halls on the other was the Death of the Stag, finely coloured by Mr. Overton: close by the parlour-door there hung a pair of stag's horns; over which there was laid across a red roquelo, and an amberheaded cane. Over the chimney-piece was my friend's picture, who was drawn bolt-upright in a full-bottomed periwig, a laced cravat with the fringed ends appearing through a button-hole, a snuff-coloured velvet coat with gold buttons, a red velvet waistcoat trimmed with gold, one hand

stuck in the bosom of his shirt, and the other holding out a letter with this superscription: To Mr. common-council-man of Farringdon-ward without.' My eyes were then directed to another figure in a scarlet gown, who I was informed was my friend's wife's great great uncle, and had been sheriff and knighted in the reign of king James the First. Madam herself filled up a pannel on the opposite side, in the habit of a shepherdess, smelling to a nosegay, and stroking a ram with gilt horns.

I was then invited by my friend to see what he was pleased to call his garden, which was nothing more than a yard about thirty feet in length, and contained about a dozen little pots ranged on each side with lilies and coxcombs, supported by some old laths painted green, with bowls of tobacco-pipes on their tops. At the end of this garden he bade me take notice of a little square building surrounded with filleroy, which he told me an alderman of great taste had turned into a temple, by erecting some battlements and spires of painted wood on the front of it: but concluded with a hint, that I might retire to it upon occasion.

As the riches of the country are visible in the number of its inhabitants, and the elegance of their dwellings, we may venture to say that the present state of England is very flourishing and prosperous; and if our taste for building increases with our opulence, for the next century, we shall be able to boast of finer country-seats belonging to our shopkeepers, artificers, and other plebeians, than the most pompous descriptions of Italy or Greece have ever recorded. We read, it is true,

of country-seats belonging to Pliny, Hortensius, Lucullus, and other Romans. They were patricians of great rank and fortune: there can therefore be no doubt of the excellence of their villas. But who has ever read of a Chinese-bridge belonging to an Attic tallow-chandler, or a Roman pastry-cook? Or could any of their shoemakers or tailors boast a villa with its tin cascades, paper statues, and Gothic root-houses? Upon the above principles we may expect, that posterity will, perhaps, see a cheesemonger's apiarium at Brentford, a poulterer's theriotrophium at Chiswick, and an ornithon in a fishmonger's garden at Putney.

From the Connoisseur.

A CITIZEN'S FAMILY SETTING OUT FOR BRIGHTHELMSTONE.

SIR,

THAT there are many disorders peculiar to the present age, which were entirely unknown to our forefathers, will, I believe, be agreed by all physicians, especially as they find an increase of their fees from them. For instance, in the language of the advertisement, 'Never were nervous disorders more frequent:' we can hardly meet with a lady that is not na-a-arvous to the last degree, though our mothers and grandmothers scarce ever heard the word nerves: the gentlemen too are affectated in the same manner; and even in the country this disorder has spread like the small-pox, and infected whole villages. I have known a farmer toss off a