long valued,) my heart sympathizes with you in the mournful sense of privation resulting from the total dissolution of the filial ties. Mine yet subsist; but it is by so attenuated a thread, that I live in hourly apprehension of shedding hopeless tears for the loss of one of the sweetest and most interesting satisfactions which the human bosom can feel.

I shall be glad to learn that a new situation, new cares, new duties, have combined to occupy your mind, and to leave it less leisure for unavailing regrets. I dare assure myself that Mr. Taylor will make you a kind husband. His fine understanding and strict piety are guarantees for your future peace. His temper had severe trials in the sacrifices you made of his happiness to the surely unreasonable opposition of a parent. Your health has doubtless suffered much from the conflicts you endured; and from their cessation, we may hope for a great amendment in that important source of comfort. The doubts you have felt and expressed for your happiness as a wife, increase my trust on that head. Disappointment is a prime source of the woes of wedlock. Dangerous are those partial hopes and dependences which frail mortality can so seldom fulfil.

No, dear miss Scott, I shall not be in London for a long time. There is no leaving my dearest father; and should I soon lose him, I could not quit Lichfield till I had settled my little household in a habitation better suited to my fortune and my singleness, which would be much out of their place in a palace. But never can any other home be dear to me as this. No local attachment can be more passionate than mine to these walls and bowers, that seem to wear the resemblance, and breathe the spirit, of all whom I have loved.

Adieu !

Anna Seward

LETTER V.

To miss Helen Maria Williams.

Lichfield, April 21, 1790.

Much and various is the kindness for which I have to thank you, my dear miss Williams: for your consoling sympathy; for the desire you express for our speedy meeting in town; and for your acceptable pre

sent.

It is true, that the existence of my father, whose death yet sits heavy on my heart, had been long destitute of all corporeal and intellectual energy: but it is a state of severe suffering alone, which, thank God, his was not, that can banish the yearning regrets of affection, for the loss of even the most faded and imperfect resemblance of what once was.

I am, however, most thankful, that the heart-dear gratifications of protecting, comforting, and caressing that desolated form, so long were mine; since the desolation, though almost total, was not to himself drear. Pain seldom visited his weak and torpid frame, and never his mind, during several past years; one period of about two years excepted, in which his failing memory made him perpetually fancy that he had no property, and was become poor. Except in that interval, his life had been happy above the common lot. No unpleasing circumstances ever dwelt upon his joyous imagination.

The pleasure he took in my attendance and caresses, survived till within the three last months, amidst the general wreck of sensibility. His reply to my inquiries after his health, was always, "Pretty well, my darling;" and when I gave him his food and his wine, "That's my darling," with a smile of comfort and delight, inex

pressibly dear to my heart. I often used to ask him if he loved me; his almost constant answer was:

love my own eyes?"

"Do I

These pleasures are passed, dear miss Williams; and their recollection is yet too mournfully impressed, to admit an idea of mixing soon with the gay and busy world.

Adieu! Yours faithfully,

LETTER VI.

Anna Seward.

To Thomas Christie, esq.

Lichfield, July 1, 1790.

Yes, my kind friend, Heaven has at length deprived me of that dear parent to whom I was ever most tenderly attached; and whose infirmities, exciting my hourly pity, increased the pangs of final separation. It is in vain that my reason reproached the selfishness of my sorrow.

I cannot receive, as my due, the praise you lavish upon my filial attentions. Too passionate was my affection to have had any merit in devoting myself to its duties. I made no sacrifices; for pleasure lost its nature and its name, when I was absent from my father. I studied his ease and comfort, because I delighted to see him cheerful; and, when every energy of spirit was sunk in languor, to see him tranquil. It was my assiduous endeavour to guard him from every pain, and every danger, because his sufferings gave me misery, and the thoughts of losing him, anguish.

And thus did strong affection leave nothing to be performed by the sense of duty. I hope it would have produced the same attentions on my part; but I am not entitled to say that it would, or to accept of commendation for tenderness so involuntary.

It gives me pleasure that your prospects are so bright. A liberal and extended commerce may be as favourable to the expansion of superior abilities as any other profession; and it is certainly a much more cheerful employment than that of medicine. The humane physician must have his quiet perpetually invaded by the sorrows of those who look anxiously up to him for relief, which no human art can, perhaps, administer.

You are very good to wish to see me in London; but I have no near view of going thither. You will be sorry to hear that I have lost my health; and that I am oppressed with symptoms of an hereditary and a dangerous disease.

Lichfield has been my home since I was seven years old: this house since I was thirteen; for I am still in the palace, and I do not think of moving at present. It is certainly much too large for my wants, and for my income; yet is my attachment so strong to the scene, that, if I recover, I am tempted to try, what strict economy, in other respects, will do towards enabling me to remain in a mansion, endeared to me as the tablet on which the pleasures of my youth are impressed, and the images of those that are everlastingly absent.

Adieu! Yours &c.

Anna Seward.

LETTER VII.

To Mrs. Short.

Scarborough, July 29, 1793.

It was only a few days since, and at this place, that I heard of the death of dear Mrs. Stow*. How deeply your affectionate heart has felt the pains of this separation, I know from experience; and I feel a

Mrs. Short's mother-in-law.

keen sympathy with those pains, which can perhaps result alone from having felt them.

The long cherished, the long beloved, of your heart, is no more. She falls, ripe fruit, into the lap of our general mother. I know that though she did not give you birth, you will often recall her image; and weep that the venerable form is now with you only in ideal presence.

I fear that your deeply injured constitution will suffer yet further from this event: but sweet is the consoling consciousness, so plenteously yours, of having, during many years, administered with unwearied care and tenderness, those comforts to her declining age, which not only cheered it, but undoubtedly prolonged its date.

I think and talk of you frequently, though our mutual avocations estrange our pens from each other; and never does your idea present itself to my mind, unaccompanied by the warmest wishes for the restoration of your health: but your friend, Mr. Barber, from whom I learned last week your recent loss, could not afford me satisfaction on that interesting theme.

It is in pursuit of health that I have travelled thus far. The excursion has shown me some engaging characters, amidst the large mass of folly, vanity, and pride, which are continually exhibiting their withering effect upon the social pleasures. Some of the sweetest of those pleasures, which I have tasted since I left home, arose from my renewed intercourse with the Westella family, unbeheld through so many years. I passed three delightful days on my way hither, where formerly many an animated week had, at different periods, speeded away. Miss Sykes* is a very charming woman, elegant and

* Married, in 1796, to Henry Thornton, esq.