34 LETTERS TO GILBERT WHITE 



There have been no Letters for You since You went. I hope 

 Every Thing goes on to your mind. God bless you. 



I am dear Gil Your affte Friend & humble servt, 



J. Mulso. 



Letter 21. 



Sunbury, 



May 29, 1760. 

 Dear Gil : 



I have deferr'd writing to You for some Time, that I might 

 send You word of the Issue of a Business which I was engaged 

 in. As I never flatter'd myself with Success, & was put upon 

 undertaking it by Mr. Young, who alone carried it on, I can 

 tell You without any great Eegret & Dissappointment that 

 Another Person is made Brother of St Catherine's, which I 

 was recommended for. It would have been a very pretty 

 Addition if I had got it, & would have made a great Revolution 

 at ye Vicarage ; But I had little Eoom for Hope, where only Mr 

 Yg undertook to make Interest, & the Wallers were ye Disposers ; 

 where (as I take it) Principles again stood in my Way, & 

 determined (what was always an ill-omen'd Scene to me) ye 

 Election. 



Here are Ned & I only at Sunbury, prowling about, & seeking 

 whom we may devour, as Cormorant Batchelors will do. As to 

 my Father & Miss Heck, they are gone in ye open Chair down 

 to Canterbury : Miss Heck knows She cannot favour me more 

 than by describing her own Pleasures in your Phrases, because 

 it accumulates pleasing Ideas, & places me at ye same Time with 

 her in Kent & You in Hampshire. The Kentish road affords fine 

 Scenes, as I beleive You have experienced, & She tells me that 

 her craving Imagination was satisfied with Prospects; the Country 

 lies very uneven, & ye Hills are cover'd wth woods which are now 

 in their fullest Verdure ; as You go along You see on your left the 

 Thames, ye Medway, ye Swayle, interspers'd with Islands, & 

 loaded wth Shipping ; which She dares to look upon, not only as 

 a beautifuU moving Picture, but in ye manly Light, of ye Honour 

 & Riches of her Country. She writes that their second Day was 

 according to Mr White's Taste, a cool brown Day ; but as She is 

 as much given to agues as You are to Feavers, She invoked ye 

 blessed Sun to come & warm Her, with as much Earnestness 

 as You creep into the Shades, or shelter in the Nidus Acherontiae ; 

 by which Name I think you have christen'd your Arbour in 

 ye Hill.* 



• Probably this stood where the earlier of the two Hermitages was 

 afterwards built, near the top of the hill, a little West of the zigzag path. 



