it, and cannot get any that is good. Mr. Montagu desires his compliments. I beg mine to the dear Mrs. Anstey and your brother. I shall stay here till the meeting of the Parliament. A letter from my friend will enliven my retirement. I am, dear Madam,

your most affectionate friend, and faithful and obliged humble servant, E. MONTAGU.

P.S. How goes on your feather screen? If you want grebe's, or any sort of dyed feathers, let me know when I am in town.

To Mrs. Donnellan.

Sandleford, the 30th of December, 1750.

I SHOULD have wrote to my dear Mrs. Donnellan sooner, but that I have had a great cold, which took such entire possession of my head and eyes that it disabled

Mr.

me in great measure for writing. Montagu had a cough, which began to alarm me; but, thank God, it is entirely gone off. Mrs. Medows came here the day after I arrived, and spent some days with us; so that while we had company I had not all the leisure I have at present. My situation now affords me leisure, which you busy mortals in London have no notion of. The great devoir of receiving and returning visits, the necessary resort to assemblies, the indispensible duties of seeing and being seen, reach not at such a distance from the glorious metropolis. I have hardly seen a tree or a distant hill; the fogs having hindered even my eyes from wandering abroad. I have neither been so drowsy as people who are quite idle, nor so alert those who are absolutely busy. The polite world has no way of driving away l'ennui but by pleasure, we country gentlefolks know it may be banished by occupation. With great submission to the excellent author of les Caracteres et Mœurs du Siecle, one should reverse his

as

maxim, and rather pass one's life à faire des riens, qu'à rien faire. Do but do something, the application to it will make it appear important, and the being the doer of it laudable; so that one is sure to be pleased oneself; to please others is a task so difficult one may never attain it, and perhaps not so necessary that one is obliged to attempt it. We have a loss in not having Dr. Pocock here this Christmas, as we expected. The conversation of a man of letters, and a traveller, is very agreeable in the country. Now I am out of the sphere of attraction of the great city of London, I am as well pleased to hear of some custom at Constantinople as of a new fashion at London; and the Nile is as much in my thoughts as the Thames. In retirement one lives equally to all time, and is a citizen of the world; in society the news, the business, the company of the day, by their nearness take off the attention from great, but distant events and objects, How wisely is this ordered by Providence; for if nearness did not magnify small matters,

and distance lessen great ones, a man might be thinking of the labours of Hercules when he should be shaving his beard or cutting his nails; or be cutting through the Alps with Hannibal when he should help himself to a slice of pudding. Is not the association of Quin and Mrs. Cibber of more importance to us than the union of the empires of the Medes and Persians? and the rules of brag than all the institutions of Lycurgus? But a hundred miles may be as powerful an interposition as a thousand years, and then each object is considered in its natural bulk and figure; then ancient Rome and mighty Babylon somewhat eclipse the present state of things, and heroes dead take more of our attention than living generals, and departed lawgivers than existing ministers. How necessary sometimes to withdraw ourselves to the distance from whence we can truly judge of the worth and importance of things! Every prudent purchaser considers the lots in an auction before the day of sale, lest the impetuosity of the bidders should

excite him to bid more for any commodity than it is worth. Riches and power may be set up at too high a price, and when we see so many bidding all their moral virtues for them, we are apt to be drawn away by example, unless armed by some previous valuation of them in our own minds. But I did not design to carry my reflections so far; you must make some allowance for my situation; it offers me nothing lively or new, it is the very blank of the year; not so much as a new-born butterfly or fresh blown rose to be met with. My rich neighbours are dull, and my poor ones are miserable. Your friend, dame Wood, is now in a miserable condition; not nursed, as Shakespear calls it, by base accommodations, she has no borrowed helps from the sheep, or the silk worm, subsists upon ætherial food, and sleeps under the canopy of heaven; indeed I never heard of such absolute wretchedness; she did not come here because she was entirely covered with the itch, so that till the other day, that beef was