tests have been not with my opinion against yours; but, inferred from their practice, the opinion of many ingenious against that of one ingenious person.

Your friend's letter is very animated. I love every species of enthusiasm ; but a noble mind loses ground with me a little, when I see it employ its energies upon the arts, while they slumber fastidiously over the higher exertions of intellect.

This observation refers to the glow over the statue of Apollo, in a former letter of his; a glow which I have never seen from his pen over any poet of any age or country. Painting and statuary are imitations-poetry is creation; and when she "gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name," and that in her happiest manner, there must be some defect in the understanding, if it pays not its first and most ardent devotion at her shrine. However, I wish success to this gentleman's benevolent exertions, and fair befal your eloquence to speed it!

If I had leisure for the muses, which I have not,-if I had spirits, which I have not, to encounter the solicitudes of publication;-and if I thought, which I do not, that poetry could have any influence upon our senators to induce them to espouse the cause of liberty and mercy, in behalf

of the negroes, I would demand if Africa has no benevolent genius ?—if her nymphs and her rivergods are all besmeared with blood! I would make the Naiads of Niger and Gambia complain of the human gore which pollutes their waves. I would try if I could not rummage out some black muses, some sooty graces, to sit upon the topmost stone of an high African mountain, listening to the groans of a thousand nations. I would make an execration from a sable river-god to a ship loaded with slaves, crammed together in its hold, whose groans and cries should, at intervals, like the sound of the death-bell in Mason's beautiful Elegy on Lady Coventry, interrupt the execration, or be a kind of returning chorus to it.

That execration should be something like the Roman augur's to the legions of Crassus. I would call upon the Genius of England to remember what lustre the improved humanity of building hospitals, &c. has cast around his civic crown, and conjure him, by casting away the galling, and hitherto indissoluble chain, from the naked savage, toiling for him beneath torrid suns, to open a prospect of golden days to come,

"Where the swart negroes, 'mid their palmy groves, Might quaff the citron juice, and woo their sable loves."

Were I to write a poem on this popular subject, it would be on somewhat of the above plan; but the want of time, spirits, and faith, are in the opposite scale, and my sooty muses and graces kick the beam. How should the solemn mourners march through the gates of my versifying region, since neither leisure, vivacity, or hope, are at hand to open them?

Adieu !—May you never experience the absence of those gentlewomen-ushers to wit-making, verse-making, or love-making!

LETTER XX.

MRS STOKES.

Lichfield, April 30, 1788.

I TRUST We shall not be less sincere friends for the inevitable seldomness of our epistolary intercourse; that, if we complain, it will be of the complication of our employments; and if we reproach, that we shall reproach only the shortness of the day.

Much am I gratified by the wish you express

that we may sometimes meet, as we journey

down the vale of life. ever delightful to me.

Such meetings must be
My wanderings through

the pleasant paths which led to my friends, have, through life, as you know, been much restrained by the filial bands; and now those bands are become stronger than ever, by his weakness to whom they bind me.

The circumstance of your having once conversed with Mr Butt, beneath this roof, had indeed escaped me; but my conviction was perfect that you would all four be delightful acquisitions to each other. I might travel far ere I should find so interesting a parté quarré.

Miss has lately favoured me with long and very amusing letters. She is a good deal in public, and much in literary parties, to which she has been introduced by her former acquaintance with Mrs Piozzi, Mrs Siddons, and the Greatheads, and by my efforts to draw her and Miss Williams together. Though her reading has not been very deep, or very general, and though I do not think she discriminates accurately in works of genius, yet her vivacity, her wit, and the graceful flow of an eloquence so natural to her, will enable her to support her part in such conversations with considerable eclat; unless, finding her own taste pall, as I have often seen it do, for li

terary conversation, she should, after a while, lose part of her desire to please, and with it a yet greater degree of the power of pleasing.

I tremble for the temptations to elegant dress and expensive amusements, which must assail her on every hand. God forgive the sin, if a sin it is, of wishing cross and stupid Madam V in a world, where she must acquire, or soon be expelled, better sense and better temper. I do believe the thus emancipated would put on the brilliant fetters of our friend, though I could not engage that they would not pinch him now and then, as did the old ones; however, if a man must be galled, the smart is less painful, and the wound sooner heals, that is given by polished steel than by rusty iron.

of

I was happy to hear news from Mrs Rthe health and welfare of you and yours, more recent than that which came to me in your last letter; but I had hoped from Mr Butt ere now, in his purposed visit to Lichfield, accounts of them more circumstantial. But yet he comes not,Why tarry his chariot wheels? Not yet rolling towards us; but soon I hope to roll. Cannot you and the Doctor follow their track closely ?— Would not the little suppers of such a party in our dining-room be animated, where you and I have so often supt pleasantly?