manner in which they are communicated, is owing to that freedom which I always feel the most completely with those for whose judgment and candor I have the most entire respect; of you, therefore, I shall not need to entreat forgiveness.

I am, dear sir, your sincere friend and servant,

J. FOSTER.

XXXVII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Downend, Dec., 1801.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-A small number of intervals so long as that since I wrote to you before, will conclude the short day of life,—a life not very auspicious to the best order of mental intercourse; for letters do not deserve any such name-and this is one of the principal causes of my dilatoriness in writing them; a letter (though I am very glad to receive one) is so poor a substitute for the expansive discussion and romance of four or six hours. I was more gratified with the intercourse of your last visit than in any former season of my communications with you; and felt after you went away, great regret that our situations are so distant from each other. I always feel that your society has the effect of a powerful mental discipline; and I could not help sketching in fancy the large augmentation of knowledge and power I should derive from the earnest, habitual co-operation of two minds, certainly well adapted to exercise each other. I should be happy to flatter myself that future time may have some chances of bringing us into more frequent or longcontinued contact.

. . Here one recollects that prince of magicians, Coleridge; whose mind, too, is clearly more original and illimitable than Hall's. Coleridge is indeed sometimes less perspicuous and impressive by the distance at which his mental operations are carried on. Hall works his enginery close by you, so as to endanger your being caught and torn by some of the wheels; just as one has felt sometimes when environed by the noise and gigantic movements of a great mill. I am very sorry that by means of a short-hand writer, or by any other means, some of Hall's sermons cannot be secured and printed. It is probable they would on the whole be equal to Saurin's; as to manly simplicity, much preferable; for I now dislike Saurin's ingenious arrangements. I read yesterday his sermon on the Passions; the greatest I think that I ever read or heard. . . . Hall spoke of you, and attributed “a great deal" (I believe was the expression) of genius," but reprobated your written style, on the same account that I always do; its want of simplicity. I have heard in Bristol that Coleridge means to go and take his family to France.

At the invitation of Mrs. Snooke's family, I went to Bourton, to Coles's ardination; not at all caring, as you may suppose, about the ordination; but pleased with an occasion of visiting the family, though sorry that one

of them was absent in London, and sorry not to meet you there, as I half expected. Hinton was there with a very superior sermon. I like Coles very much for his equal mixture of sense, piety, simplicity (as appears), and kindness. . . .

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XXXVIII. TO MRS. R. MANT.

....

Downend, Dec. 14, 1801.

THE sight of frost and snow occasions me a mortifying recollection, that so the earth was clad when I last wrote to you, and that therefore almost a whole year has intervened. I feel it very shameful, and am utterly at a loss for apology; indeed apology, when the most plausible, is a very shabby substitute for propriety of action. If, however, you could see into my soul, you would perceive the regard I have always felt to remain undiminished. My father and mother, and each of my very few other friends, have the same accusation to make, and to them I am reduced to the same style of penitential confession. I say very few friends," correctly, for I have not added one to the list since I saw you. I have but little ambition this way, for there is a kind of convergency in my feelings, which makes it quite impossible for me to be much attached to many. With wonder I hear some people talk of one dear friend, and another most intimate friend, and a third very particular friend, and twenty, or twenty hundred charming friends, all of whom they are equally attached to, and every one of whom they are so infinitely glad to see; you would suppose their hearts were large enough to fill the globe. At the same time, I by no means vote for the total dedication of affections to one object; this always appears to me misanthropic, and therefore immoral. It is absurd too to imagine, that any one person can possess such a supreme monopoly of excellence, that the claims of all other beings are annihilated. I am pleased to find or believe that there is some good in every one, and sorry to find that no one is without some fault; and when I consider how many faults I have myself, I scarcely venture to flatter myself that any one can ever be very deeply or very long attached to me. I have the sincerest value for affection, but am unwilling to take the pains to deserve it; and it were ridiculous to expect it to come gratuitously.

I have been, since I wrote to you last, just the same kind of being I was before, and just similarly employed. I have been wishing for innumerable things I have made no effort to obtain; as, for instance, to be very learned, to be very wise, to be very eloquent, to be very pleasing, to improve very fast, to do some little good, to gain a decisive selfgovernment, to get rid of a number of infamous bad habits, which have long been and still remain desperately attached to me, &c.; but all this will not come down, like gentle April showers, from the sky; all these things require that a man set about conjuring might and main, and—1 am no conjurer.

Imagination has often placed before me, since I saw it, your corner of Chichester; but chiefly that little quiet house in which I have passed so many interesting hours. I am willing to believe your health is at least as tolerable as when I saw you. It was then winter. You were to walk out a great deal when the spring and summer came; did you do your duty? Sweet verdure, meads, trees, flowers, birds, and the spirit of health did not fail to invite you; did you? is it possible, thus courted, that you could refuse? Yes, my friend, I know you so well as to be afraid, even though I know that no one has a more animated taste for these pleasures, that you did refuse. I shall never forget the rural beauty that so often regaled my solitary musings in your neighborhood. I shall never forget that Watery Lane, and the adjacent delicious meadows. My present locality is, in this respect, by no means so charming. . . . . If your county partook of the same bounty of nature as other parts, it must have been a delicious year. I am persuaded you find in religious felicities the best compensation for defects of satisfaction from the world, and even from friends. The supreme Friend is always accessible, and always infinitely kind. Let us endeavor, my dear friend, to embrace this truth, as if it were a benignant angel, to our hearts, and it will pour the energy of a divine consolation into the soul. The habitual melancholy of my spirits increases each year. I am not fit for life. My eyes are not much worse, but no better than when I saw you.

...

XXXIX. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Downend, March 9, 1802.

I was so much ashamed of my negligence when I wrote before, and am so very much delighted to hear from you again, that I feel myself quite compelled to sit down and write to you immediately. You may, my friend, be assured that, writing or silent, I retain the same sincere and friendly regard which I have ever felt, and I think it cannot die away till memory fail. Your virtues and your kindness often return on my remembrance with a very grateful influence, something like what I have felt this morning in observing the first symptoms of approaching spring. I always deem you one of the persons most eminently deserving to be happy that I have known; and I am persuaded, I am certain, you will be happy, and sublimely so. I cannot be sanguine in painting for you scenes of pleasure in this world,-alas, hope as long ceased to be sanguine for myself;—but, what will soon signify this world to us? we are passing away with all the speed of time; let us look forward to the grand vision beyond the shades of Death! There is our country; there is the sweet paradise of peace and ever-blooming delights; there is our Father's house. I have been thinking for some time past, with more than usual clearness and seriousness of thought, of the vanity of all things in this life. It has not been a vain specula

tion, just adapted to be uttered in so many sentences, to be soon for gotten both by the speaker and those that hear, but a cogent, convincing and, in some degree, influential train of thought. The effect of it has been, in a measure, to make me more fervent in supplicating the final felicity of the soul, be the present life what it may; to make me more resigned to the determinations of Providence, and more concerned to fulfil the duties of this transient period, whatever become of its pleasures. We have passed a large, a very large part of our life-soon the end will come; and when we look back from the region of immortality, how trivial will appear all the present sorrows and cares-trivial, except in point of utility, in which point they may have been most important and advantageous. "These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, shall work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

I often sympathize with the desolate feelings which you suffer while surrounded by of whom, on this very account, it is impossible for me not to entertain a very mean opinion. But be comforted; you have had very sufficient evidence that their habits, feelings, thoughts, and tastes, are by no means adapted to mingle with yours, and therefore you are left solitary. Shall you be sorry that your mind is too serious, too thoughtful, and too religious, to suit their society? Could you be willing, in these important points, to humble yourself down to a complacent agreement with their levity or their oddity? You ought to feel your superiority, and dismiss the anxious wish for a companionship which you have amply found you cannot purchase but by descending to their level; a level where you would never feel happy, if you did descend to it. Is not this fair consolation? . . . . And oh! above all, think of your great Father in heaven, whose friendship can be gained, and daily enjoyed, and kept for ever! This grand idea often flashes on my mind like lightning from the sky, while I am musing over my desolate feelings, something like yourself, and regretting the want of those tender connexions which sometimes seem as if they would give life so much more interest and value. The more totally we are devoted to God, my friend, the more independent we shall be for pleasure on all other beings. What a sublime consolation! if we can not have the creatures, we can have the Creator. And then, ere long, we shall see and love, and be loved by the noblest of his creatures, the great inhabitants of that superior world, where none of the imperfections of vain and fickle mortals can intrude.

...

XL. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Downend, Feb. 1, 1803

My memory is, in general, sufficiently defective to fulfil all its duties of forgetting-with the most laudable punctuality; but on this occasion

I have charging and enjoining it to be peculiarly faithful in its task of Oblivion; I mean in respect of the time when I wrote last, and when you replied. I well remember the contents of your letter, but I do not remember the date, and I dare not open it just now for fear of seeing that date.

My remembrance of you does not depend on particular dates of months and days, nor on any other thing foreign to that internal mind in which it faithfully and permanently resides. There it would always exist without any external object to awaken it or keep it alive, and always connected with a very cordial friendly feeling. Yet sometimes this remembrance is forcibly recalled by anything that resembles any part of your house, your furniture, your vine, or any of the scenes in the vicinit of Chichester. This association of ideas is a very curious thing; here is an instance of it-the elegant little drawing which you gave me has been out of sight a considerable time, in one of my boxes, whence I just now took it out. No sooner did it appear than a swarm of recollections got about me, presenting, as with a hundred tiny fairy hands, a hundred other miniature pictures to my fancy; as, for instance, portraits of you, of Mr. De, of Miss W and many other persons; the pictures

in the little room which I once occupied, and a sight of your vine; but here imagination was to produce a double effect at the same time; for 1 would not see it fruitless and leafless, but made it appear in a green and tantalizing form, with several such good-natured clusters bending almost within the casement for me to take 'em, but in vain! But how often this very object has been before me in reality, and not as a vision of imagination. Yes, I think of it, and ask myself with a kind of wonder. "Have I really been very often in that very place, where these objects are real?" I feel it difficult fully to grasp the idea, that this person-I —am the same that have been a long time in that place, and am now in this place, so far removed. Did I really once live at Chichester? I really do believe I did. I certainly either did, or have dreamed that I did; and I seem to have the images before me even now of many things and persons which I saw there, and something very like recollection of things that I did and said there. I seem to recollect a neat meetinghouse in which methinks I used to walk till I wore one of the aisles so much as to alarm some of the good people for the safety of the place. There was a long, solitary, rural lane, called "Watery Lane," in which I verily think I used sometimes to muse; and I seem to recollect even now some of the sentiments that I felt there, and some of the objects which I saw. Would you believe that I recollect an incomparably beautiful reflection of the sky in a small piece of water there; a grasshopper of very great size; an adventure with an ox; a pair of magnificent butterflies; and a most beautiful rainbow scene, which I at the time anxiously charged my imagination to retain for ever: not to mention all the apparitions and horrid visions that I conversed with in the place? It is very gratifying thus to be able to retain the images of some objects