Letters of Anna Seward, 
you leave the place without seeing Miss 
$———— at last, since she was at home! 
He replied, with much solemnity, ‘ The 
momentary gratification must have been 
followed by regret and pain, that would 
sufficiently have punished, the temerity of 
attempting to see her at all. I had no 
sooner entered the house, than I became 
sensible of my perilous state of feeling, 
and fled with precipitation.” 
° Mrs. ——— laments the abortion of 
this design, alleging reasons exactly si- 
milar to those you express, for wishing 
the renewal of our acquaintance. I re- 
gret it too, from a motive not acknow- 
ledged by either of you, though doubt- 
less felt by both, viz, that it would have 
proved a spell-dissolving interview. He 
had then found in his Eloisa, that disen- 
chanting change which St. Preux could 
not find in Mrs. Wolmar,’ An absence 
of ten and of thirty-one years, are very 
diffrent, things. Small traces would 
have been perceived in me of that image 
so unhappily 1 ssed on his mind, and 
which yet glows in the gay bloom of 
youth. If there is any reality in this de- 
- scribed infatuation, and Colonel ———~ 
feels pain from it, why does he shun the 
infallible remedy; “the sensible and 
true avouch of his own eyes?” 
You place the forbearing sweetness 
and patience ye —+—_——"s conduct 
in a very bright, yet not less just point 
of view. I feel such soothing uncom- 
plaining endurance far above my attain- 
ment ina sintlar situation, Yet I wish 
she had abstained from partaking her 
husband’s infatuation, and from the 
strange desire of even transcending its 
excess. It is painful to know that I 
have been; however innocently, the cause 
of misery to an estimable couple, Next 
to the desired non-existence of such in- 
sane constancy, I should have wished 
unconsciousness of an evil I know not 
how to remove, .since Colonel —_——— 
rejects the remedy that must obliterate 
the past, by enabling him to compare it 
with the present, For the lady, alas! 
it is much too late in Jife for me to meet 
the enthusiasm of such boundless par 
tiality. 
¢ And in disparity, 
The one intense, the other still remiss, 
Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove 
Tedious alike.” bs 
A rational and moderately affectionate 
esteem, such as my heart might tell me 
‘was not wholly undeserved, would be a 
thousand times more welcome. Friend- 
635 
ship should owe nothing to illusion 5 and 
all is illusion in Mrs. , respect= 
ing me. She trusted the exaggerating 
portraits of infatuation, ingenuously given 
to her before she married the infatuated, 
anda fondness for my poetic writings bas 
completed her generous mania. 
/OPINIONS OF 1797. ; 
wApropos of politics, in their presen& 
desperate situation, which puts them 
into the mouth of very babes and suck- 
lings in state affairs, You do me but 
justice in acquitting my mind of the least 
bias towards republicanism; but Mr, 
Pitt has lost my long-existing confidence 
in his wisdom and integrity. It has va- 
nished beneath the mad extravagance 
with which he has lavished the public 
money, seduced the bank into clandestine 
and ruinous traffic with the court, and 
outraged the constitution by loans to the 
Emperor, made in treacherous privacy, 
without the consent of parliament: loans, 
which can only defer, not prevent the 
inevitable hour of the emperor’s separate 
peace with our enemies. [low evidently 
to all cominon sense, better to England 
to have met the assaults of France, when 
they shall be turned solely against her, 
before her public credit had received the 
late fatal blight, than thus to go on pur- 
chasing present exemption (if, indeed, 
lavished millions can purchase it), ull 
state-bankruptcy, and the consequently 
ruined fortunes of three parts of the 
nation, shall palsy our nerves of self= 
defence, exasperate us with government, 
and render us desperately careless who 
may be our masters, or what becomes of ° . 
@ constitution, violated out of all its 
power to protect property. O! hapless 
England! how rapidly art thou falling 
from thy late high prosperity, the victim ~ 
of thy credulous confidence in One proud 
man, whom no chastizing experience 
could warn from his tricking expedients, 
so fraught with danger to his country ; 
and by which he buys 
66 Short intermission, fraught with double . 
woe!” rf 
DR. PARR, 
The celebrated Dr. Parr called at my: 
house in my absence, and, not meeting 
with me; left a very kind letter. He is 
allowed to have been the only man whd 
brought equal forces with Dr. Johnson 
into the field of argument, equal strength 
of native talents, equal learning, equal 
eloquence, equal wit, and equal effron. 
tery. The day is recorded in which they 
measured their lances as chieftains pes 
ory 
