son; mine attend both my amiable and well beloved cousins; I hope one of them drinks Spa water, and the other Helicon. I am, Sir,

Your most affectionate cousin, and ohliged, and faithful humble Servant,

E. MONTAGU.

To the Same.

Sandleford, the 17th of Dec. 1751,

My good cousin was so obliging as to desire to hear from me as soon as I was settled at Sandleford, but ill as I am at present, I should not trouble him with a letter, if I did not earnestly desire to hear of his health.* I had flattered myself you would pass the winter without any complaint, and that health would make

* Mr. West and Mrs. Montagu being both invalids, their letters, especially Mr. West's, are too much filled ** with mutual enquiries on the subject of health.'

you amends for the time my cousin and you sacrificed to me at Tunbridge. I should be very ungrateful, if I did not wish you a temporary benefit, from what I hope will prove for me a lasting advantage:* this authorises me to say, that if you measure my concern for your welfare, by the obligations I have to you, you will excuse my giving you the trouble to inform me of your state of health, and also of Mrs. West's, who seemed recovering her happy and agreeable spirits, if your indisposition has not again depressed them; and all this may be brought into the compass of one line, though written in capital letters. Pray have you made a good Protestant of Mr. Hooke ? If you cure heresy and schism, should you not have your doctor's degree in divinity rather than law? I cannot give you a

* Mr. West's conversation had a great influence on Mrs. Montagu in regard to religion.

† Hooke, the author of the Roman History, was a Mystic, and a Quietist, and a warm disciple of Fenelon. He brought a Catholic priest to Pope on his death bed.

good account of my time; I have scarcely been able to read at all, but perhaps sickness gives as good lessons as may be had from books, and better a great deal than we may expect from Lord Bolingbroke, who, I hear, will leave behind him a new system of morality, which is to comprehend all speculative and practical things, and to reconcile all that in the moral system, seems to shock and surprise; but, I believe, my friend, it is not in mere philosophy to justify the ways of God to man. As to the rules of conduct to be given by this noble writer, I hope they will not be such as have governed him; for should they make us what they have left him, virtue would be no great gainer; none of the boisterous passions of his youth restrained; none of the peevish or mischievous ones of his old age mitigated or allayed: envy, ambition, and anger, gnawing and burning in his heart to the last. May this find you all in health; on that subject, only do you put your friends to the expence of a wish, or pain of a solicitude; a mind like yours

has every other felicity in the sweet peace that goodness bosoms ever.

I am Sir, with the highest esteem, your most affectionate cousin, obliged and faithful friend,

I WAS informed by Mrs. Isted, that you intended to return to town in the middle of this week, so I imagine that by this time you are in the empire of China. The leafless trees, and barren soil of my landscape, will very ill bear a comparison with the shady oaks and beautiful verdure

*This letter is addressed to Mr. West, at Mrs. Montagu's house in Hill -street, where he was residing at the time, for the purpose of attending the privy council, to which he had been recently appointed clerk. She was then fitting up a room in the Chinese taste.

of South Lodge, and the grinning mandarins still worse supply the place of a British statesman: but as you can improve every society and place into which you enter, I expect such hints from you as will set off the figures, and enliven the landscape into rural beauty. I grieved at the rain, from an apprehension that it might interfere wish your pleasure at South Lodge; I hope it did not, but that you saw the place with the leisure and attention it deserves; if you give me an account of the parts of it which charmed you most, or of the whole, you will lead my imagination to a very fine place in very good company, and I shall walk over it with great pleasure. I imagine you would feel some poetic enthusiasm in the temple of Pan, and hope it produced a hymn or ode, in which we shall see him, "knit with the Graces, and the "Hours in dance lead on the eternal

spring," through groves of your unfading bays. I hope you do not attribute

*Then the residence of Mr. Pitt,