LETTER XXII.

MRS CHILDers.

Belmont, Sept. 19, 1798.

You, my beloved friend, whose health appeared to receive that benefit from Buxton air and springs, which they refused to my longer residence, continue, I warmly hope, to perceive their salutary influence;-that your internal pains have not resumed their baleful tyranny. I hope, also, that the wanness and languor which we used to observe about the fair face and tall embonpoint figure of your youthful Anna, are vanished like the scattered clouds of April, before the rising beams of approaching May. Nor less do I hope that headachs, too customary with your Harriet, . have not repressed the bodily and intellectual energies of that dear young doctor in petticoats. Never will I forget, or coldly recollect, her attention to my deranged health and precarious safety. Both were in jeopardy at Matlock, and neither escaped without injury.

Ignorance and ill-luck dictated my application, by letter, to the old hotel, once Mason's, for good

and comfortable apartments. Its master answered my application with a promise, which, perhaps from the clamour of crowds pressing for admittance, he most inadequately fulfilled.

Absurdity and bad taste, heirs-apparent of that despot Fashion, lead the fine, and would-be fine, people to throng into that inconvenient and decayed habitation, with its countless doors; blind passages, with lurking unsuspected steps; plaster floors with holes; steep and broken stone staircases; small, low, and dirty bed-chambers, with one little sash-window, and no chimney to ventilate the repeatedly breathed air; old fusty stuffbeds, and blankets dusky from long and, perhaps, not very cleanly occupation.

Feebleness and invalidism might almost as safely walk in woods full of spring-guns, and steeltraps, as poke about that mutilated and superannuated mansion, in which I got a violent fall, that bruised me considerably, but from which, thank God, I escaped unfractured.

Venturing into the bath the day after our arrival, its comparatively cold and heavy waters, produced great accession of rheumatic pain, which still remains with me. It was fixed by the damps ascending from the river, and which, in the three rainy days of our destined week, came in at every open door and gaping window. Thus my stay in

that Eden of England, as to scenery, will send me home with a great increase of the malady, for the dispersion of which I roved. Woods so luxuriant and so near, retain and give back the moistness of a showery atmosphere, long after the sky has cleared.

Of absurdity and bad taste, the politer resorters to Matlock cannot surely be acquitted in flocking to the old hotel, since there is a large, commodious, and cleanly habitation, at the top of the hill, on a lawny space, whose opposite rocks, lavishly curtained, with the river rolling at their feet, present a much finer scene, and dispense purer air, than the central receptacle can boast; while the lately-built house, at the bottom of the hill, contains large, lightsome, pleasant, sashed apartments, furnished with every possible convenience, and even elegance. Its situation, though in the vale, is picturesque and beautiful in the first degree. It looks up to a pyramidal mountain, covered with dark woods, with bold rocks on either hand, the plenteous foliage descending from the mountain's top, and dipping its long boughs in the river, which, round the convex base of the mountain, brawls over a rocky channel, and winds away into the right-hand thickets. Both these mansions have a bath and spring within themselves.

The old and middle hotel receives little beauty from the river, of which it only catches a distant and short reach, in which the stream appears dull, and has no graceful course.

All the three houses, on our arrival, were full; but, in the two so preferable, as to scenery and comfort, the inhabitants seemed of an inferior class, destitute of that nameless something which, even in silence, generally distinguishes those who have trod, from their birth, the path of independence. The inconvenient abode presented several strangers of that latter class to our attention, and also several whose talents were above the level of mere politeness.

In speaking of the two better hotels, and their inferiority as to company, I ought to have excepted the transient intellectual treasure which I found in the lower mansion, Miss Lee of Bath, author of the Recess, &c. Two of her pupils were with her, one of whom is Miss Tickel, daughter to the sweet warbler, Mary Linley, who married Mr Tickel, and niece to the British Cecilia, the late Mrs Sheridan. This young lady sung to us with a thin, weak, but pretty voice, that wanted the sustaining power of instrumental accompaniment, and which, besides, was not modulated with Linleyan skill. She gave me, however, an oppor

tunity which I had wished for, of hearing the ballad sung which I made for Rauzzini to set, and which was so often sung at Bath last winter,"O! why my locks so yellow," &c. It is sweetly adorned by the recitative and air.

Miss Lee and I loitered an whole hour, one amber morning, on the banks of the prattling river. We were in interesting conversation, which she is eminently capable of supporting.

My friends, Dr and Mrs Stokes of Chesterfield, were my guests at Matlock three days. The light and diminutive form of the latter, contains a strong and cultured mind, and a poetic imagination. She is somewhat fastidious in her appreciation of the apparent worth and merit of strangers; but rates high, and perhaps partially, that of her friends. A hardness in sounding the consonants, which mark the provinciality of Derbyshire and Lancashire, is so great a disadvantage to the grace of her conversation, as scarcely to be balanced by the uncommon strength of her ideas, the efflorescence of her fancy, and the accuracy of her language. It is, in a degree, inimical to the existence of that subtle essence of gentlewoman, which you and I have endeavoured to analyze ;which, since it diffuses its spirit even in silence, we agreed, could not consist wholly in the voice;