it tarry in making its uses felt; but while I recovered my peace under its beneficial influence, I grow daily more anxious to enlarge its sphere of action. My mind became once more strong, as its powers were concentrated on one object. To make you understand how extensive were my desires and my projects, I must tell you that my wealth is very considerable-for a lone woman it may be called immense; and I am therefore enabled to satisfy those desires to do good, which doubtless many have formed with equal fervour, but without equal means of indulging.

"Our happy country is so rich in great and excellent charities, that it is difficult to think of any particular infirmity which has not the benefit of relief from some charitable foundation. Our poor are mostly well cared for, their age and infirmities rendered as easy to them as the numbers seeking relief will

permit. Almost every malady has a specific hospital, devoted to its attempted cure, or at least its amelioration, But in all this national munificence-in all these public charities, one class, and that a very large one, appeared to me to be without asylum and without the hope of relief; I mean, those persons who have been brought up in ease, comfort, many of them in luxury, but who from adverse fortunes find themselves without the means of continuing to enjoy themselves, or harder still, of giving to their children that ease to which they have been accustomed. The privations undergone, the secret struggle to hide from prying curiosity or idle speculation their altered state, must be seen to be believed. They must also be searched for to be found, for where the want is most pressing, the reverse the most appalling, it is often the most reluctantly avowed. In all feeling minds there is such a shrinking from

supposed obligation, that it requires great tact and exceeding delicacy to approach the fallen in fortune.

For many years past I have been an active labourer in this field of discovery, and have had the heartfelt gratification of making happy, through the medium of that wealth, which, but for such golden harvests, would be but dross in my hands, those who had despaired of happiness. My own blighted affections have, I imagine, disposed me peculiarly to assist in making marriages between those, who have in their mutual affection the necessary elements for happiness, but who are withheld by the horizon of poverty, which, even through the vista of their love, is perceptible to one or other, perhaps to both of them. A few of my otherwise worthless thousands smoothes their path. They are happy, and I have gained another cause for peace.

There are many well connected, nay

highly born women, whose positions are changed from the enjoyment of great affluence to comparative poverty by a husband's death. During the best years of their life they have been surrounded by every comfort and at an age when comforts are more required; at a moment when the once cheerful home has become lone and solitary; at a season when the buoyancy of youth has fled, and the wintry hues are apparent in the deeper lines, and the fast silvering hair-these comforts, which from long habit have become necessaries, are either cut off or curtailed. To supply these deficiencies in a manner, which, while it gives pleasure to me, rouses no spark of offended pride in them, is another of my pursuits.

"Besides the livings which are in my gift, and which I take care shall be bestowed on men whose views accord with my peculiarities, as they are termed, and my own domestic

chaplain's, I have many auxiliaries; in fact, since the possibility of contributing so largely to the comforts of those whose wants are not less absolute, whose poverty is not the less galling because coupled with gentle blood, and removed by pride from public alleviation, I have not made a single appointment among the many which belong of right to the old house, of which I am the representative, without considering how far the individual could assist my views.

I am rich enough to do

As I have told you,

much, but I have not

the means to do all I am labouring to see accomplished. I desire to see founded a retreat for impoverished widows, and for single gentlewomen of a certain age, who may from death or ruined fortunes have become destitute of those comforts to which their birth entitles, and long usage has habituated them. The establishment called St. Catherine's offers some idea of my plan, but it is so circum