frequently to the plays and sometimes to balls, &c. They have a very pretty house at Bath for the winter, and one at Bath Easton for the summer; their houses are adorned by the ingenuity of the owners, but as their income is small, they deny themselves unnecessary expenses. My sister seems very happy, it has pleased God to lead her to truth, by the road of affliction; but what draws the sting of death and triumphs over the grave, cannot fail of healing the wounds of disappointment. Lady Bab Montagu concurs with her in all these things, and their convent, for by its regularity it resembles one, is really a very chearful place. They wanted me very much to stay with them till the meeting of the Parliament, that I might avoid the shock of seeing poor Travile's death, and the melancholy her illness had cast over this place; I could not prevail on myself to give poor Travile such an intimation she was burthensome.

*

* Mrs. Scott's Novel of Millennium Hall, presents a picture of a sort of conventual family of ladies, united for benevolent and social purposes.

Mrs. Anstey generously intends to come into this melancholy house, to stay with me till we go to town for the meeting of the Parliament. I do not find that Mr. Montagu intends going sooner. He is never in a hurry to change place; for my own part I am thoroughly tired of the country, and should be glad to leave it as soon as poor Travile is released; but as I can endure this sort of life without being out of humour or out of spirits, I shall acquiesce very quietly. Perhaps you will think this arises from stupid insensibility; but I assure you, I have a lively and tender self-love, very sensible to what regards my pleasure; but as Mr. Montagu has an undoubted right to choose what place he shall be in, I feel it most fit and proper to sit here to listen to the winter's - wind all day, and the hooting of owls all the evening. I have lately acquired the constant society of a screech-owl, who has taken up its residence under my dressing room window, and utters such a number of melancholy notes, I have been tempted to ask it, whether it stays

in the country against its inclination. When Miss Anstey arrives, she will interrupt my tête-à-tête with the screechowl, which now lasts several hours every evening.

I am, &c. &c.

ELIZ. MONTAGU.

Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Gilbert West, says, " he was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham Lyttelton received that conviction, which produced his Dissertation on St. Paul.

"These two illustrious friends for a while listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West's book was published, it was bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of new objections against Christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a methodist. Mr. West's income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported, that the education of the young prince was offered to him, but that he required a more extensive power of superintendance, than it was thought proper to allow him.

"In time, however, his revenue was increased; he fived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the Privy Council, 1752; and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to make him Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital.

"He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life; he lost (1755) his only son; and the year after, March 26th, a stroke of the palsy brought to the grave, one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrors."