dinary character for observation, thoughtfulness, and grave, deep passions. I took her on my knee, played with her hands, stroked her cheek, and never felt so much interested by any child of her age. Not that she said anything scarcely; for though delighted as I knew with the atten tion of a person to whom she had been led to attach an idea of importance, she was serious, confused, and as it were self-inclosed; but I was certain that I held on my knee a being signally marked from her co-evals by an ample and deep-toned nature, of which perhaps the country could not furnish a parallel. She has a strange accuracy and discrimination in her remarks, and a sort of dignity of character which yet is not mingled with vanity, but which puts one on terms of care with her, and makes one afraid to treat her as a child, or do or say anything which may offend her sense of character. She is affectionate to enthusiasm, but without any childish playfulness. When angry she is not petulent but incensed. She is loquacious often with her companions and her school-mistress, but still it is all thought and no frisk. She is a favorite with them all. The expression of her countenance is so serious, that one might think it impossible for her to smile; indeed I have never seen her smile. Her parents are uncultivated people of the lower class, who have no perception of the value of such a jewel, and will probably throw it away. (Should not one be very much inclined to cite such an instance as something very like a proof, that children are born with very different proportions of the capability of mind ?)

778. Mr. R. who has travelled over many parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, told me he had, at one time, a wish and a project to travel over France and the rest of the Continent. While musing on this favorite design, he one day entered the cathedral, at Worcester, in the time of service. Walking in the aisles, and listening to the organ which affected him very sensibly, his wish to travel began to glow and swell in his mind into an almost overwhelming passion, which bore him irresistibly to a determination. He could not have felt more if he had seen an apparition, or heard a voice from the sky. Every idea on the subject seemed to present itself to his mind with a surprising vivid clearness and force; and he believes, that from that moment, nothing could have prevented his undertaking the enterprise, but the commencement of the

war.

This seemed to me a happy illustration and proof of what I had maintained a few days before, in a conversation on music, that it powerfully reinforces any passion which the mind is at the time indulging, or to which it is predisposed. This was maintained in opposition to several amateurs of music, who asserted that sacred music has a powerful tendency to produce, by its own influence, devotional feeling. They had mentioned, with strong approbation, a pair of reverend divines, who commonly make a small concert on the Sunday evening, and choose sacred music, as adapted to the day. The devotional effect of any music, except on devotional minds, was utterly denied and disproved; and it

was asserted that a young man, very susceptible to the impressions of music, if inclined to vicious pleasures, would probably feel the sacred music inflame to intensity, and, at the same time, invest with a kind of vicious seductive refinement, the propensities which would lead him from the concert to the brothel. By the same rule a devout man, who should be strongly affected by music, would probably, if other circumstances in the situation did not counteract, feel his devotion augmented by pathetic or solemn music.

779. What a stupendous progress in everything estimable and interesting would seem possible to be made by two tenderly associated human beings of sense and principle, in the course, say, of twelve or twenty years. Yes, most certainly; for one has been conscious of undergoing a considerable modification from associating even a month with some one or two interesting persons. Only suppose this process carried on, and how great in a few years the effect; and why is it absurd to suppose this process still carried on through successive time in domestic society? Yet how few examples of anything respectable in this way.

784. What endless deceptions of the senses may happen. This morning I mistook one object for a totally different one, in passing it many times within a few feet; till I happened to examine it, when in a moment the deception was destroyed. What a number of reports and recorded facts may be of this kind.

789. Spent part of an hour in company with a handsome young woman and a friendly little cat. The young woman was ignorant and unsocial. I felt as if I could more easily make society of the cat. I was, however, mortified and surprised at this feeling when I noticed it. It does, however, seem to be a law of our nature, at least of mine, that unless our intercourse with a human being can be of a certain order, we had rather play awhile with an inferior animal. Similar to this is the expedient one has often had recourse to, of talking a large quantity of mixed sense and nonsense to a little child, to even an insensible infant perhaps, from finding the toil or the impossibility of holding any rational intercourse with the parents. Fortunately, in this case the parents are often as much pleased as if one were talking to them all the while. One has, too, very often felt one's self making the child a kind of substitute for the parent, and thus easily saying to the parent in fact a great many things, some of which would have seemed too trifling, and some too grave or monitory, to have been spoken directly to the mature person.

790. Each fact that comes within one's observation, and illustrates or suggests some useful principles of conduct, should be set down in the memory as a lesson for one's own conduct, if one ever be in similar circumstances. Remember then, in case of illness and confinement, to cause as little trouble as possible to attendant friends; make a great and philosophic exertion to avoid this. There is good old Mr. B. here, a worthy man, and very kind to his family, chiefly daughters, all grown

up, and most of them married. He has suffered a very severe illness, which made it indispensable for some person to sit up with him all night. For eight or nine weeks two of his daughters have fulfilled this office alternately, with an occasional exemption by the aid of a third person. Nothing can exceed their assiduity and affection, notwithstanding that he is an extremely tiresome patient. But owing to their having families of their own, they can seldom go to sleep during the day, after the watching night. The health of one of them especially, is suffering materially, though she is far too generous to give him the smallest hint of it; and though he is greatly recovered, so as in the opinion of all his friends not to need this service now, yet he has no wish to dispense with it, nor seems ever to recollect how laborious and oppressive it must be; and will not allow other persons, even one of his other daughters, to watch with him as substitutes sometimes, to relieve the two who have borne the main weight of the service, and who, he thinks, can do it bet ter than any one else. Strange inconsideration.

792. I observe that all animals recognize each other in the face, as instinctively conscious that there the being is peculiarly present. What a mysterious sentiment there is in one's recognition of a conscious being in the eye that looks at one, and emphatically if it have some peculiar significance with respect to one's self. A very striking feeling is caused by the opening on one of the eyes of any considerable animal, if it instantly have the expression of meaning. While the eye is shut the being seems not so completely with us, as when it looks through the opened organ. It is like holding in our hand a letter which we believe to contain most interesting meanings, but the seal secludes them from us.

793. A very respectable widow, who lost her husband ten or twelve years since, told me that even now the last image of her husband as she saw him ill, delirious and near death, generally first presents itself when she recollects him. I always think I would not choose to see a dear friend dead, because probably the last image would be the most prompt remembrance, and I should be sorry to have the dead image presented to me rather than the living.

794. It is a great sin against moral taste to mention ludicrously, or for ludicrous comparison, circumstances in the animal world which are painful or distressing to the animals that are in them. The simile, "Like a toad under a harrow," has been introduced in a way to excite a smile at the kind of human distress described, and perhaps that human distress might be truly ludicrous, for many such distresses there are among human beings; but then we should never assume as a parallel a circumstance of distress in another subject which is serious and real. The sufferings of the brute creation are to me much more sacred from ridicule or gaiety than those of men, because they never spring from fantastic passions and follies.

796. Qu. Whether two much attached friends, suppose a married

pair, might adopt a system of confidence so entire, as to be to al confessors to each other; disclosing, for instance, at the end of each day, all the most unworthy or ungracious ideas and feelings that had passed through their minds during the course of it, both with respect to each other, and any other question or thing?

What would be the effect of this on characters of given degrees ? and what degree of excellence must exist on each side, to prevent its having a most unfortunate effect on their mutual attachment ?

XLII.

*

TO MISS MARIA SNOOKE.

[On the Metropolis, No. 1.]

New Bristol, March 14, 1803.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-You have again been an observer now for several months of the various aspects of human life in the metropolis; a city exceeding, as to the number of inhabitants, and probably in many other respects, the far-famed Nineveh and Babylon. I have often thought of the interest I should feel in hearing you express the ideas suggested by the scene while they have the vividness of immediate impression. Perhaps these ideas would have been still more interesting if you had not become acquainted with the city at a period of life too early for thoughtful observance; and thus precluded in some measure from the impression of grand, diversified novelty, which is felt very powerfully by an observant person of mature age, and unaccustomed to the sight of great cities, on first entering this wonderful place. A person educated in a rural situation, if he have acquired the habit of viewing every scene with an appropriate feeling, and a mental scale of proportion by which to compare every new object with those known before, has a great advantage over one who has always resided in the metropolis, for seizing at least the superficial characteristics of the place. His attention is arrested by a thousand circumstances of significant peculiarity, of which a constant citizen has no perception, from having grown up amidst them, and from having no other sets of ideas and feelings to make these familiarized circumstances palpable by contrast. And even the visitant,

if he protract his stay long enough to lose, if I may express it so, the separateness of his thought and feelings from the spirit of the place, and that freshness of mind which he brought from simpler scenes and contemplations, will find that he has lost much of his delicate perception of the distinctive appearances around him, so that he is scarcely conscious

*This and the three following letters were prepared by Mr. Foster for the press, but laid aside as not suitable for a first publication. Vide Letter to the Rev. John Fawcett, May 23, 1805.

of noticing many things that at first glared on him with a most marked and obtrusive aspect. Are not you by this time sensible of something of this kind? On this account it would be a good method just to note in writing the most striking impressions that are made on the mind in the first days or hours that are spent in any remarkable place.

London is really a very wonderful place. I do not so much refer to its prominent inanimate features, its great buildings, its repositories of art and curiosities, its shipping, and its magnificent mass of habitations. Accumulations of brick, stone, and wood, are of very subordinate account, except indeed as some of them are the monuments of the industry, ingenuity, or superstition of past ages, and others the indication of the condition of the present inhabitants. What strikes me infinitely more is the astonishing assemblage of human beings. One human individual is to a thoughtful mind a most wonderful object; but in the midst of London you are conscious of being surrounded with eight or nine hundred thousand such individuals, collected together so thick and close, as to give at some moments the idea of one undivided, enormous living mass, of which the numerous streets are as the arteries and veins through which the stream of vitality is for ever flowing. You may walk on, and wonder where the moving mass will end. But there is no end; an unnumbered succession of faces still meets you, while you recollect, at every step, if thinking of what you see, These are not the same that I saw the last moment; and again, These are not the same that were passing me when I made that remark; what is become of all that are gone by? You are apprised at the same time that there is a much greater number in the houses that you pass. Some parts are so crammed that one might suppose there was not a single square league of ground unoccupied on this side the Arctic or Antarctic circle; or that if there be, some powers of pestilence and death possess it, and prohibit the intrusion of man to seek there space, air, and freedom. Image to yourself at the same time, if you can, all the other numerous streets with their moving crowds, and the numbers in the houses on each hand; and finally recollect that each of all this multitude has his thoughts, his tempers, his interests, and his cares, measuring still the importance of those interests and cares to each person by the importance which you feel in your own, and you will soon find that the contemplation and the scene contained within a few square miles, grows, like that of infinity, into a magnitude beyond the compass of the mind.

The extreme activity that prevails on every side, would seem partly allied to cheerfulness; but I own that the reflections by which I am subject to be haunted amidst this vast display of eager and gay activity, are not of a very cheerful cast. I should have a mean opinion of the moral sensibility of the man that should not be mournfully impressed by a view of the depravity that is obvious and apparent, and which is but the slight external sign and indication of the enormous measure of unseen evil. This great city in desolation and ruins would be deemed a