654 
lent and distinguished Mr. Wilberforce, 
and Mr. Wilberforce’s friend, the inge- 
nious Deam of Carlisle, “Lt was a trium- 
virate of .eloquences Their diflerent 
politics drew forth their mutual powers, 
very amicably exerted. They were in 
my parlour the day before I came away, 
from eleven till one in the morning ; fr 
six till nine in the evening. Mrs, Chile 
ders shared with me the whole of that 
mental banquet, and other company im 
turn dropt in. It was an attic day. 
MR. (NOW LORD) ERSKINEs 
Did Mr. Erskine tell you of our acci= 
dental rencounter on the Chatsworth 
road, half a mile from Middleton, on 
the morning I left the golden Crescent, 
through which you and I so often walked 
together. I believed him in that gay 
throng, and he thought me much farther 
on my way to Sheffield, which I had for- 
saken to visit an old servant. After 
staying with her an hour, my wheels were 
retracing their wandering course through 
those lanes, where rocks and cliffs, co- 
vered with dwarf-wood, rise from the 
curving Derwent, that foams at their 
base. 
I said to my maid, What an elegant 
fizure is that gentleman approaching us, 
who, loitering with a book, now reads 
and now holds the volume in a dropt 
hand, to contemplate the fine views on 
his right! There seems mind in every 
gesture, every step; and how like Mr, 
Erskine! 
A few seconds converted resemblance 
into reality. After a mutual exclama- 
tion, the graceful being stopt the chaise, 
opened the door, and putting one foot 
on the step, poured all his eloquence 
upon a retrospect of the hours we had 
passed together at Buxton ; illuminating, 
as he flatteringly said, one of those sel- 
dom intervals of his busy life, in which 
his mind was left to enjoy, undisturbed, 
she luxury of intellectual intercourse. — 
A sudden scheme of the preceding 
night to go to. Chatsworth that day, with 
Mrs. and Miss Erskie, and a large par- 
ty; and they being obliged to wait at 
JMiddleton for some returning horses, in- 
duced him to beguile the hour of waiting 
dy that ramble, which bad given us such 
an unexpected interview. donot 
= When people have. any cordiality to- 
wards each other, such interventions of 
chance are right pleasant. At the in- 
stant they.act upon the spirits like wine ; 
and, as time rolls. on, their recollection 
gilds the mind, as sun-beams a placid 
lake. pe at aii is see 
Letters of Avna Seward. 
@UANM OLD, LOVER ory) 2 
All you write onthe subject of Cos, 
lonel and Mrs. ————= is. beautiful. 
The picture the lady draws of her hus- 
band’s mind in her Jetter, on which you 
comment,, is so strangely, so extrava= 
gautly, and so darkly, coloured, as to 
leave my experience and observation 
without the means of justifying it to 
nature and probability, by any approx- 
imation in the apparent feelings or con- 
duct of others. It ‘resembles nothing 
one knows, and nothing one has read 
of, except the Falkland of Caleb Willi- 
ams. But there was a_ cause which, 
when revealed, fully accounts for the 
terrible gloom and sad. iction of his 
spirit; but that a disappointment in the 
enamoured affections, thirty-one years 
ago, in aman who had never, to their 
object, appeared a passionate lover; that” 
it should operate, with unabating cor- 
rosiveness, through s an immense 
lapse of time! That i terness should 
have resisted the tender attentions of a 
wife, younger and lovelier than ber whom 
he had lost, and indurate his feelings 
against the enlivening power of filial ate 
tentions, even from objects to whose 
welfare he was sedulously attentive! All 
this seemed to me so inconceivable, that 
I concluded Mrs. —— had nursed 
an enthusiastic fancy, Which causelessly 
imputed to unextinguished passion for 
another object, a constitutional and mor- 
bid discontent of heart and temper: but 
the strange manner of his attempted visit 
last June, vouches for the reality of this 
represented, this long delirium. He in- 
quired for me at the door, and sent up 
his name, Lieutenant-colonel 
I was dressing. My man-servant brought 
his card up stairs, While he did that, 
my housekeeper, coming up the stairs 
from the kitchen, saw a gentleman whom 
she did not know, stand at the fout of 
the next flight of stairs, looking up them 
with earnest’ melancholy eyes. Per 
ceiving her, he went back into the hall ; 
and when the man brought my message 
to request his going into the parlour, and 
to say that I would be down immedi- 
ately, lo! he had vanished. 
I found a letter from this lady on my 
return from my summer’s excursion, in 
which she thus speaks of that attempt to’ 
see me, so strangely renounced in the 
instant of making it. , 
“Of Colonel —’s flying visit to you 
in June, I knew not a syllable till J learne 
it from your letter; which, en perasings 
I exclaimed, good Heaven! how. could 
iyo igos 
. 
a 
