Society. I felt that my consolements must be derived from a similar source - I had, indeed, no friends, to whose bosoms I could resort for immediate relief; but, blessed be the medium through which our joys and griefs can be communicated from heart to heart, and receive returns of sympathy, though separated by distant shores, and though vast gulphs roll between them!-I could hasten to my "local habitation" at the King's-head, and relieve mys self, as I have now done, by addressing the Baron de B****.

LETTER XIV.

T

HOUGHTON.

Ir will interest you to read whatever can be collected to the posthumous honour of a nobleman whose life was distinguished by so many works of practical benevolence. I will not, therefore, deny either you or myself the pleasure of communicating a liberal and judicious review of his general character, from a gentleman who was well acquainted with the valuable qualities that formed it.

Such an example of active patronage in the agriculture of an extensive county, added to so much unvaunted private bounty, cannot be too widely diffused, nor too closely emulated. It is, indeed, of more importance to society, and goes nearer to the heart than all the catalogues, and criticisms of pictures and paintings, whether modern or antique, from the

imperial palace where the pictorial treasures of Houghton Hall are now transferred, to the dismantled gallery of Duzzeldorf, thence to dismantled Italy, onward to their present revolutionary depositories in Paris. Such a cultivator of his native land, and such a protector of the useful peasantry that render it productive, under his encouraging auspices, gives to the part of the earth intrusted to his care, a new face, to nature a richer form, and teaches wealth and industry their wisest lesson.

The public papers that have announced the death of Lord Orford have recorded the ancestry from which he was descended, the heirs of his honours, and the inheritors of his wealth, and have dwelt upon the titles that are extinct or devolved, together with all the posts and employments that are vacant. To me be the melancholy duty, says the author of this tribute, of noting what is of much more moment than the descent of peerage, or the

transfer of an estate - the loss of an animated improver; of one who gave importance to cultivation by a thorough knowledge of political œconomy; and who bent all his endeavours towards making mankind happy, by seconding the pursuits of the farmer, and the inquiries of the experimentalist: I leave the lieutenancy of a county, the rangership of a park, and the honours of the bedchamber, to those in whose eyes such baubles are respectable. I would rather dwell on the merit of the first importer of South-down sheep into Norfolk; on the merit of sending to the most distant regions for breeds of animals represented as useful, not, indeed, always with success, but never without liberality in the motive; on the patron and friend of the common farmer, not the lord of a little circle of tenants, but the general and diffusive encourager of every species of agricultural improvement. Nor did he associate with useful men because he was not qualified for the company of higher classes, for his mind was fraught with a great extent of knowledge; it was decorated by no trivial stores of classical

learning, which carried and set off the powers of a brilliant imagination, and thus qualified alike for a court, or an academy of science, he felt no degradation in attending to the plough.

There were, it is said, strong peculiarities, and some shades in this estimable character: but they have so little to do, with the real and general good to be educed from the parts above stated, that you will excuse my officiously gathering them up to send them into Germany, or extend their circulation in England. Much less shall I allow myself to dwell on the circumstances which clouded several years of his valuable life, and which grew, alas! more and more dark till they brought on the gloomy catastrophe of his death. Be it sufficient to say, that in that event, the British farmer was deprived of a wise instructor, the labourer of a generous friend, the county of Norfolk of a protector, and England of a real patriot, without any of the obtrusive claims, and noisy pretences to patriotism -a word as little understood, and as much abused, perhaps, in all countries, as any in language.