and privations, to which we must submit, with a serenity and fortitude, that administer to me perpetual consolation. With such an example, whatever I may feel, I should be ashamed to complain. During the principal part of the day, I am necessarily from home. We see no company whatever, and live in the utmost privacy and retirement. I have no books; but there is a library in the neighbourhood, where I may be furnished if I will. What leisure hours I have, particularly the evening, I employ in educating my children; in which task, when she is not indisposed, their mother is my assistant.

As if to reconcile us to our lot by proving how much worse it might be, we have been already visited with afflictions superadded to its ordinary and unavoidable hardships. Soon after we were settled in this house, a fire broke out one night in an adjoining street, to which I ran in order to assist in putting it out, while Jane and the children mounted up into the garret to have a better view of the danger. The parlour and chamber being thus deserted, some of those harpies who are always on the alert in this city to take advantage of confusion, found means to strip our ill-fated habitation of every article of furniture. Not a piece was left; and we were put to the expense, which we could but ill bear, of buying an entire new stock, or rather I should say another stock; for, far from being new, it was procured at second hand, at a sale of the goods of some companion in distress, which were brought to the hammer by an execution. This accident caused us a great deal of vexation and trouble; and we had hardly repaired its

ravages by pledging my unpaid salary for payment of the debts thus contracted, when another inroad was as unexpectedly made on our peace, which threatened much more serious consequences. I was walking along the wharves in a dress, as it should seem, too indicative of my poverty, when a pressgang seized on me, and, in spite of my resistance, remonstrances and entreaties, hurried me on board a guard ship, where I lay for two days in momentary expectation of being taken before the mast of a man of war. My deliverance was owing to the resolution and conduct of that incomparable woman, whom in all my trials I have found a tutelary angel; and whom it is the keenest of my pangs to think I have reduced to indigence and wretchedness. She locked up our house, and with her daughters hanging on her arms, flew to the admiralty, where, having made her way through the contumely of underlings and the repulses of their lords, she never ceased her suit till an order was granted for my release. Even this had nearly come too late; for it was with no small difficulty I satisfied the officers of the custom-house, that my absence was accidental, and not owing to some irregularity, which ought to deprive me of my place.

But I shall tire you with these sorry details; which, melancholy as they are, I cannot but think present an existence preferable to the vagabond career you follow. A few months will inure us to lowliness, and clothe our humble fire-side with all the ineffable charms of home. If you will but bring the large accession of relief which your society

would afford, I fondly persuade myself we could forget the abundance in which we once flourished, make a merit of adversity, and live on the hope of better things.

When, as is sometimes the case of a Sunday, I take a short leave of that gloomy part of this vast metropolis in which we reside, and wander through the magnificent squares and parks of the west, thronged with gay equipages and smiling multitudes, my breast swells with admiration at the unequalled prosperity of Great Britain, whose inhabitants, reposing under the shield of the mistress of the world, can be thus secure and happy, while hosts of enemies in vain environ and beset them. At such a moment I can chide my selfish misery, and almost wish I had not been born an Irishman and bred a catholic. How different is the scene that must strike your observation among the demi-savages of America; where a weak and ignorant government is idly engaged in framing laws for an uncivilized and heterogeneous population. After all, the lion is the noblest beast. Let France and Russia, with their tributary potentates, conspire against him, and the American eaglet too show his impotent talons; the lion shakes his imperial mane in dauntless defiance of them all. The American federation, I suppose, cannot maintain itself much longer. According to the best judgment I can form of the prospects of that distracted country, the crisis is not very distant, when it will implore once more the protection of a parent state, which it has ever studied to outrage. Notwithstanding all the injuries that have been re

ceived from those despicable freebooters by this magnanimous nation, I believe the cup of reconciliation is not yet exhausted. But let them beware the embrace of France. After seeing so many allies hugged to death by that perfidious power, they deserve their doom if they accept the kiss of corruption. ·

Good night. It is now past twelve o'clock, and I have been kept from my bed to so unusual an hour by the gratification I feel in pouring forth my feelings to you. If you will not come and live with us in England, I am afraid we must go and die with you in America.

LETTER IV.

FROM INCHIQUIN TO PHARAMOND.

Dated at Washington.

WHILE I was at Baltimore, the accidental circumstance of our living in the same hotel made me acquainted with a young Greek merchant, who has since become my companion here, where we share an uncomfortable chamber together. As he is to be your correspondent, on this occasion, and perhaps oftener, it is proper you should be generally informed that he is a native of Athens, who received a mercantile education in the English factory at Smyrna. Having finished his apprenticeship last year, in a spirit of enterprise not usual in a modern Greek, he resolved on accompanying a commercial adventure to this country; where he arrived a few weeks since with an investment, which good luck has doubled in profit. His amiable disposition, and the ideas naturally excited by the presence of an Athenian, together with such scanty intelligence as is to be gleaned from his conversation, respecting his country and language, both so idolatrously venerable in my eyes, have attached me to his society. In consideration of the friendly relations existing between us, he sometimes reads to me his letters to a fellow