securing all the anchors of the admirable constitution the more, the more the enemy tries to remove them, that England waits without fear and without impatience the issue of her dangers.

"When we see innumerable fleets bearing the tributes of the whole world to England, and without interruption renewing the national wealth, under the protection of a naval force, before which the French scarcely dare now to venture a few pirates; when we compare those wonders of industry, labour and activity, all the sources of opulence and grandeur maintained and increased, with the obstructions, languor, discouragements and disasters, which have ruined for six years past the commerce and wealth of the most flourishing nations; when from London to the Highlands of Scotland, from the Throne to the Cottage, from the Par liament to the pettiest Borough, in Counting. houses as well as in Palaces, at the obscurest citizen's as at the peer's, we observe a uniform sentiment and zeal, so much knowledge united to so enthusiastic an attachment to the country

and its laws, so happy an agreement between

the Government and the Nation, and all ranks and degrees in harmony conspiring to repel the ferocious stranger who menaces their liberty and their happiness, we fall on our knees before Providence, who gives this living lesson to all nations as a watch-tower of help and preservation."

LETTER XIII.

HOUGHTON.

W

ITH assenting heart, I joined in the harmless merriment of these humble children of nature, and after the cheap dedication- I wil not call it sacrifice of a single half hour to their festivities, I withdrew, amidst their blessings, to my chamber, where, having transcribed the impressions I had received, I took my walk of contemplation in the park, under favour of the Harvest-moon, in one of the most balmy. breathing evenings I have ever known in Eng land. I repassed every object which I had visited in the morning; but partly from the accession of interest they had gained by the various circumstances and reflections that had since taken place, and partly from the new and more benign aspect they assumed, from the

mild influence of that orb, which softens every thing within reach of her beams, my satisfaction seemed not so much a repetition as an improvement. The gentle night-breeze that whispered amongst the branches - the majestic foliage, whose canopy half admitted and half excluded the moon-ray, which broke into fairy and playful shadows at my feet - the timid steps of the deer, as they tripped before me the attempered magnificence, yet height. ened magic, of the Hall where the illustrious persons who had supplied my heart with so many impressive circumstances, both within and without the mansion, and the lunar survey of that church, in which the ashes of those persons reposed, combined to produce that feeling of the mind which is the most solemn, and, perhaps, the most salutary. To the farthest extent of the scene within sight of the eye, or hearing of the ear, every thing, for even the

-

zephyr seemed to slumber for a time, — became

as still as the silent portraits of the family in the house, or the dust of the originals over which I had paused in the church,

Going up close to one of the Gothic windows I looked into the church, and aided by the moon, saw the flat marbles under which the Walpoles were buried as distinctly as by day, and in a more awful point of view. Of the Prime Minister and the Poet, what then remained, my dear Baron, that could give them "form and pressure" in the mind of a meditative traveller, but the image of the virtues and talents they were known to possess in their days of nature, and which that mind appreciated? Truly may I answer, the rest "was leather and prunella:" their titles, their wealth, their honours, the loud applauses of the senate, and the softer voice of the Muses were lighter than the dust of their crumbling bones, in the scale of reflection,

Yet a few years, thought I, and the whole of those merry-hearted groupes whom I have just left in a happiness, high, perhaps, as mortals can taste, from the strong and mingled emotions of simplicity, vivid spirits, animated by unusual auxiliaries, and a respite from labour, —yet a few years, and these, with all the myriads