.

ther copy of Romney's *Serena, which I mentioned to you as having accidentally formed a perfect similitude of my lost Honora Sneyd's face and figure, when she was serenely perusing the printed and unimpassioned thoughts of others. To the varying glories of her countenance, when she was expressing her own, or listening to the effusions of genius, no pencil could do justice. But that sweet, that sacred decency, that reserved dignity of virgin grace, which characterized her look and air, when her thoughts were tranquil, live in this dear portrait, while the turn of the head and neck, and every feature, reflect hers, as in a mirror.

The plate is now become so scarce, that fortune has singularly favoured my attempts. It was procured in the country, and will be sent to London to be framed ere it travels to Langollen. The lively interest which you have each taken in her idea, excites my fervent wish that you should behold her as she was, in a lovely work of art, which recals her image

"From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years,

In colours fresh, originally bright.”

Yes, I am ambitious that her form should be en

* His profile Serena, reading by candle-light.-8.

shrined in the receptacle of grace and beauty, and appear there distinctly as those of Lady E. Butler and Miss Ponsonby, are engraven on the and on the heart of their faithful, &c.

memory

LETTER III.

COLONEL DOWDESWELL, of Shrewsbury.

Lichfield, Nov. 30, 1797.

I THANK you for the always wakeful remembrance of your annual present. It arrived in taintless preservation the day of my return from Birmingham; whither I had been allured by a generous concert, every professional man performing gratis, in honour of the gallant Duncan's victory, and for the benefit of the women and children, widowed and orphanized, alas! by the obstinacy of Dutch resistance. Great part of the music was appropriate and good, and the band was numerous and able. Mr Saville's "Rule Britannia," chorussed at once by the full orches tra and brilliant audience, produced the most sublimely exhilarating effect, and was encored. As he had other songs, which called forth all his

noble energies of voice and expression, I feared their effect upon his precarious health might be too trying; happily my fear proved vain.

During the last ten months, eighty French prisoners have resided in Lichfield, with the wisest quietness-with the most uncomplaining patience. On their first arrival, and indeed long afterwards, they could not pass our streets without being brutally reviled by our populace; but they reviled not again. Though several of the officers were men of graceful manners and enlightened minds, yet by no family of this city, mine and the Simpsons excepted, were they in the smallest degree noticed. So little impression did compassion for their fate, or the involuntary testimony that could not be withheld to their unoffending manners, make upon the indurated hearts of our affluent gentry. The Simpson family and myself strove to cheer, by kindness and a little hospitable attention, the bitter hours of their exile.

On Monday a sad edict arrived from our government, which sent them away the next morning on foot, and under a convoy of cavalry, beneath these severely wintry skies, to pass the freezing nights of their cruel journey on coverless straw; and, on its close, to find themselves in an unwholesome jail at Liverpool, destitute of all the comforts of existence. This dire lot is undoubt

edly that of many of our own officers, nursed in the lap of ease and luxury.

O! this horrid, this remorseless war! Infatuated ministry! who have rejected so many opportunities of terminating it, with honour and advantage to this deceived country;—on the taking of Toulon and Valenciennes; on the desertion of Prussia; on the subsidiary claims of the emperor; -yet still they went on, regardless of our exhausted wealth, of the miseries of a bleeding world; floundering deeper and deeper in defeated projects, till the olive, with all its healing blessedness, is perhaps no longer within our reach. Yet it ought to have been tried, if it could have been procured even by the sacrifice of that (no longer great) title, King of France; by the restitution of the Toulon ships, and by the cession of all our foreign conquests, whose advantages are as dust in the balance against the miseries of protracted war. Peace is worth any price to England, short of the reduction of her navy. In another twelvemonth we shall offer the recently rejected terms, and then offer them in vain. So it has been through the whole progress of this mad contest. Nothing but the blindest prejudice can prevent the public from being universally sensible of that melancholy truth.

`I have perceived the drowning hopes of Mr

Pitt's adherents catching at the straw respecting English safety, another rupture between France and Spain, regardless of the renewed miseries of the harassed continent.

By stimulating Portugal to break her treaty with a foe she has not power to resist; by stimulating Spain to make a second helpless attempt at resistance, what are the mole-eyed cabinet of England about, but to bring the claim of new enormous subsidies from us,-perhaps the claim of auxiliary armies, to be sacrificed as they were in Germany? and, after all, as the event must evidently be (if there is any eye-couching power in experience), to throw both those kingdoms into the absolute power of France, as conquered countries; while, by wiser capitulation, Portugal might retain the power of trading with England.

Lawless power will demonize its possessors in every country. It has demonized the French ; but the French character has risen greatly in my estimation, from the exemplary conduct of our late unfortunate prisoners.

Without intending it, I have slid into politics. In a period so momentous, their attraction, to thinking minds of both sexes, is resistless.