was wholly composed of vowels.-Mr Savary's idea of expressing our meaning by sounds formed of vowels chiefly, if not totally, is like that of the farmer, who, when he gave a dinner to the judge on circuit, with his council, insisted that they should eat plumb-cake to their roast-meat instead of bread.

Variety is the soul of pleasure in nature, and in all the arts. Prospects without hills; pictures without a due proportion of shadow; music without discords, and a language without consonants, must have inevitable monotony, and. prove insupportably wearying to those who have been accustomed to the great effects produced by contrast in prospects, in pictures, in music, and in language.

That influence upon the passions, which history boasts of having been produced, in former ages, by the simple melodies of which only they were possessed, was naturally, I think, accounted for in one of my late letters to you. Familiarity with excellence has a prevailing tendency to chill and blunt the sensibility of its graces, and to render the judgment coy and fastidious. Upon two people, whose taste for music was by nature perhaps equally keen, if one of them has been in the constant custom of hearing the best music, and the other has had but seldom opportunity of listening even to the most moderate, probably the

simplest air, of perhaps but indifferent merit, would have more effect upon the passions of the novice, than the sublimest air of Pergolezzi's or Handel's, upon the feelings of him whose ear had been habituated to their admirable compositions.

Every adept in the science of music knows, that it is impossible for melody alone to have produced musical effects, that could, in excellence, bear any comparison with those which she has displayed since her association, in later ages, with the mightier powers of harmony.

The English language may have too many consonants; yet who, that listens to Milton's poetry, finely read, or to Johnson's best prose, or to Handel's oratorio airs, sung with expression, will pronounce it inharmonious?

In the amoroso style, we have beautiful music from Italy; more voluptuous certainly, but not more tender, more touching, more sweet, than the pathetic songs of Handel. That truth is now pretty universally felt and acknowledged; while none dispute the immense superiority of that great master in the more energetic harmonies. Thus is it proved, that our language, though less soft than the Italian, is yet sufficiently liquid for the most melting purposes of melody and harmony.

To descend from science and its professors, to individuals and their concerns. The world judges

of Mr's affairs as it does of those of most other people, with very rash decision. So generous, so humane, so affectionate a friend, as Mr W has long proved himself towards Mr B., is not, I dare assure myself, transformed into the hard and merciless creditor. That business has been misrepresented to you, and is one amongst the daily instances which ought to warn us of the imprudence of lending money, in considerable sums, even to our dearest friends; since, if payment is ever required, it is almost sure to be considered as a cruel hardship; and, what is the strangest thing imaginable, by the public as well as by the individual, who has been, so much in vain, obliged. Mr W. was perfectly right in obtaining every possible security that might oblige his friend to live upon his income, increased to a clear 6001. per ann., by the possession of his new living, and this till he had paid, by instalments, his debt of two thousand pounds to Mr W., contracted full twenty years before; a debt, the payment of which that gentleman, in justice to his own increasing family, ought no longer to neglect. People in debt will not, if they have right principles, allow themselves more than a maintenance till they are free of all obligations. Wanting those self-impelling principles, it is the kindest thing their friends can do to oblige them to be just.

Addison lent Sir Richard Steele a few hundreds. Perceiving that he was blazing away in careless profusion, that led to ruin, he remonstrated upon the infatuation; and finding him iucorrigible, and with a view to stop a career so dangerous, arrested Sir Richard. It answered the end. The startling prospect of a prison, for he was wholly unable to discharge the demand, awakened him from his dream of dissipation; and Addison withdrew his claim, upon his friend lessening the establishment of his household; and their amity, much to the honour of each, remained undissolved.

With all that absurd prejudice which frequently darkened the judgment of Dr Johnson, he violently condemns this action of Addison, in his life of that good man; an action which saved his friend from the ruin into which he was thoughtlessly plunging. That the undiscerning many should, at the time, condemn it as cruel, might have been expected :—from a philosopher and a moralist, we look for wiser decisions ;-but Johnson always greedily caught at every circumstance which wore the least ambiguity of appearance, when he was displaying a whig character to the world, that he might turn to posterity the darkest side of the fact, and thus cast a shadow where he might more fairly have thrown an illumination.

As for the anecdote you sent me of Mr HI never had esteem enough for his heart to wonder that sudden prosperity should have produced its usual effect upon narrow minds, and rendered him insolent and overbearing; little appearance as his manners wore of those propensities in his years of at least comparative indigence. Those vices of the heart often lie torpid in the winter of adversity

"It is the summer's day brings forth the adder."

Adieu !

LETTER LXIII.

MR W. NEWTON, THE PEAK MINSTREL.

Lichfield, May 10, 1787.

No, my friend, it is in vain to expect it—happiness is not of mortal growth. Every situation has its irksome circumstances; its griefs, its anxieties, and its regrets. I have mine-yet is my share of good much more ample than that of many who better merit the bounties of Heaven.