possessed, might have exhibited a formidable contrast to the sub-acids of our grandfather. Still more was I diverted to see the lady, fast bound in the spells of her hero-partialities, sit gazing at the honest veteran, like a Catholic pilgrim upon her favourite saint, fixing upon him her solicitous dewy eyes, that seemed fearful of offending the majesty of super-human excellence by the intenseness of their homage. The good Captain knew not what to make of all this admiring veneration; but he constantly addressed her with jesting familiarity, which, though kind, she took for want of respect; yet seemed she rather pensively humbled than offended by the freedoms, not much calculated to the meridian of super-worldly refinement. "Damn it, where's Madam?"- Here, my noble brother, too much honoured in your inquiry.'—" Well then, zoons! come down stairs; the Concert Room will be full, and the devil a place shall we get." Now, you must not suppose from all this, that Mrs G is weakly ridiculous. Her manners, her language, though entirely unique in these days, become her infinitely. There is a certain naiveté in her elevations, which preserve them from appearing fustian. She tastes the beauties of every thing she reads with discriminating fervour. Her observations often discover powers of mind much above the level of the many who ridicule that singularity, which has been the result of seclusion, want of knowledge of the world, and of judging of mankind from the representations of the bard and the novelist. If her friends possess any one good quality, or pleasing accomplishment, she assimilates their whole mind and manners to her high standard of visionary excellence. Walking with her caro sposo in his gardens, in our first acquaintance, we beheld the graceful mistress of the domain approaching us, with a group of her favourites of both sexes.- "O! damn it," exclaimed sub-acid, "here comes my wife and her angels." He perfectly understands her character, is diverted with the altitudes of his lovely Quixotte, and has the good sense to smile at what would furrow, with jealous frowns, the brow of a less dis cerning Being. So much for Mr and Mrs G Every harmonic meeting I attend leads me to ponder with new astonishment, the universal affectation of musical feeling, while the audience evince so little of its reality. How often do we perceive them either not listening at all, or, with the most languid attention, to the sublimest com positions, both vocal and instrumental; to which, when a trifling ballad has succeeded, its notes have been unbibed with eager transport, and dismissed with vollies of applause. A great master takes a common country-dance as the subject of his solo, and forms, upon that worthless ground, the most elegant embroidery that florid and inventive fancy, united to consummate taste, can produce. Strange it is, to observe no general transport expressed during those daring efforts of ingenuity, while his return to Malbrook, or "Come, haste to the wedding," has been hailed with the glance of delight from a thousand eyes. By the same prevalence of bad taste, have I seen a London audience neglect the delicate and pathetic songs of the late Miss Linly, when the more powerful, but coarser and inexpressive tones of the then Miss Philips, now Mrs Crouch, were received with the loudest manual acclamation. I have, therefore, my doubts, whether Mrs Smith, whose voice is of such transcendent sweetness, who melts her liquid notes into each other with such charming flexibility, wanting the power to make a great noise, could ever be a popular public singer. But her father will never venture to launch her timid bark upon the capricious tides of metropolitan favour. It was at Manchester that I beheld, for the first time, the new-risen star of the harmonic world, Mara. Her fires are very dazzling, it must be confessed. She has, however, some harsh notes in the lower part of her voice, when she throws it out fortissimo; and the excursive cadences she uses are too gay ornaments for the mourning robes of Handel's solemn songs. Her Italian pathetic songs are enchanting ;her bravura ones stupendous ;-but those violent efforts, though miraculously successful, were as unpleasing to my ear, as they were visibly painful to the Syren who hazarded them. Ah! it was not tones in such supernatural altitudes that made Ulysses struggle in his voluntary chains. Certainly, however, Mara is a glorious singer. It is the false taste of the multitude which tempts her to aim at astonishing her audience, rather than affecting their passions. The winds of autumn are beginning to blow hollow and winterly, and to mourn around these bowers; and her umbrage is changing its varied and mellow tints, for the dim green and sickly yellow. How partial is nature to that last named colour!it is the first hue of her flowers, and the last of her leaves. But how different the golden glow of her crocus-borders, in the infancy of the year, to the wan lemon-tint upon the leaf that clings trembling to the naked spray, and quivers in the bleak gale! Lichfield has lost many of those inhabitants whose society used to gild the gloom of the approaching season; but a few are yet within her mansions, "Who, when it falls, and when the wind and rain Adieu. LETTER XXI. WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ. Lichfield, Dec. 23, 1785. I TAKE up my pen to you on the eve of a wintry excursion over roads white with snows, and in defiance of the keen Eurus. My purposed visit is to Mr Dewes, at his seat in Warwickshire. Of his talents and worth I have before spoken to you. His lovely sister, Mrs Granville, meets me there. Though an esquire and a justice, he little resembles his brethren of that tribe. Last summer, he told me, he had danced up to town, in a herd of |