on that theme appear? I asked you this question in my last. Answer me, naughty boy! Can't you speak when a gentlewoman asks you a civil question?

I am charmed that Mrs Piozzi likes me well enough to dream that I have beauty; and I feel happy in having contributed, in the slightest degree, to her wishes.

After poetic fame, I confess I often feel very ardent aspirations; yet are they but a short-lived blaze, and fade away into embers, that scarcely gleam. No fuel more potent can be given them, than your seeming interested that I should publish what I have written. It is needful enough to prevent the very embers from being extinguished by the stupidity or venality, the malice or ignorance of the public critics, and by the oppressive complication of my various employments. Uniting with the constant attention my father's weak and precarious state demands, they do not leave me an hour in a week for transcribing and correcting those materials, whose sometime publication I meditate, and perhaps shall never do more than meditate.

My witty and volatile correspondent, Mr Hardinge, has lately sent me very agreeable letters from his friend and correspondent, Lord Camelford, now on the Continent. There is one de

scribing Vaucluse, of which I have taken a copy, and, in return, sent Mr H. your so much more full, and more animated description of the same scene, made after your second visit to the consecrated valley, and its fountain; when its waters, in their large cavern, were rushing in torrents over its brim *.

The landscape, by Lord Camelford, is interesting; but the view is single, and many objects are omitted, which so much heighten the interest in your description. The colouring also is comparatively cold ;-behold it :

"From Avignon we went to Vaucluse. The intervening country is every where dry and stony, with mountains at a distance, and the plain dotted with olive-trees, resembling our withies; and that is all the green now in view, except here and there a patch of wheat.

"At length we reach a small and narrow valley, with some little meadows, and a few olivetrees, by the side of a pretty clear stream, and some houses, which constitute the village of Vaucluse. A rock rises immediately behind it, crown

This collection contains two descriptions by Mr Whalley of this valley and fountain, a winter and summer scene: The first will be found in a letter to Mr Hayley, dated March 15, 1785: The second, in a Letter, addressed to Mr Hardinge, and dated November 21, 1787.-S.

ed with a ruined castle. A small path leads beyond the village amongst the rocks, by the side of a stream, which forms itself from a variety of little springs issuing out of the foot of the mountain, till a dry channel appears, rising steep, with uncouth fragments interspersed in it. Here the valley narrows, and leads into a recess, where nothing but huge masses of stone and rock surround you, with, here and there, a bush of wild fig or olive growing out of the chinks of the craggy cliff.

Opposite is a perpendicular mountain of stone, about six hundred feet high, like an immense quarry. The ground slopes considerably from our feet to its base, which opens into a large cavern, filled, as far as the eye can discern, with the purest water in the world. In April and May, this spring rises above the cavern, so as to fill the whole bason, which is surrounded with cliffs, except in the front, where it tumbles down the rocky channel, with loud and tumultuous violence, and is broken into a thousand cascades. The whole of the scene is majestic and imposing, but not, to my feelings, such as would fill the mind with images for amorous sonnets. If Dante, if Ossian, had frequented the retreat, I should have understood them better than I do Petrarch, who

would have been more in his place in the quiet vales of Boconoli."

And thus Lord Camelford.-I have, within this past week, looked into Mrs Dobson's Petrarch, which you told me is an abridgement of the Abbé de Sade's Life of that Poet. Mrs Dobson describes the Valley of Vaucluse as luxuriantly sylvan, and of incomparable beauty. There is no saying what devastations time may not have made; but I wonder her original did not supply her with reflections upon its present contrasting appearance, so rude and barren; that she did not inform herself, from recent visitants to a scene so remarkable, that it was shorn of its woods, and that not a leaf of the love-planted laurels remained. Equally strange, that she should make no mention of the Castle de Sommane, where Laura always resided during the summer months, and which remains to this day the property of her direct descendents. The desire of Petrarch to be near his mistress, accounts for the time which he habitually passed in that valley, and for his local devotion.

If Lord Camelford had known to whom that ruined castle once, nay, to whom it yet belongs, he had surely not expressed his wonder at Petrarch's choice of retreat, nor fancied he could

have been more in his place in any other valley, however superior in scenic beauty.

Pray mention this subject when you write next, and account to me, if you can, for Mrs Dobson's omissions, and for the false description she gives of this scene. No romantic exaggeration should, in all policy, have been used in descanting upon a situation so known. With what delight, were it in my power, should I visit Vaucluse, and pay homage at its watery shrine !

LETTER LXXXVI.

MISS HELEN WILLIAMS.

Lichfield, Dec. 25, 1787.

I AM glad you like my friend Colonel Barry. He has genius, literature, and an high sense of military honour. The laurel and the bays are entwined around his brow. It is singular that he should have succeeded Major André as AdjutantGeneral to our armies in America; and that both these young soldiers should, at different times, have found the charms of Honora Sueyd so tran