LETTER VI

NORTH RUNCTON,

August 5, 1798.

NOTWITHSTANDING my enthusiastic love

of nature's beauty, whether blooming over the earth in flowers, expanding in billows on the sea, dimpling in streams, or breathing along the valleys, you are not now to be told that all these are subordinate, in my scale of things estimable, to the beauty of the human mind: neither the graces, nor the glories of vegetation, nor the skies by which they are canopied; nor even the blessed orb, in whose rays they all rejoice, can furnish so rich a harvest as this, where the soil is naturally good, and has been well cultivated.

Let this sentiment prepare you for a gleaning of mental excellence, the object of which has presented itself since my last.

Previously to taking a wider range, and while I am yet stationary at the smiling abode of my friends, excursing in morning rides or evening walks, permit me to shew you objects, which not only rapid travellers, but many who have their dwellings amongst them, pass over unnoticed; either because they are too near their eyes, or because, having seen them so often, they now cease to see them at all. It will form part of my pleasure also, and I cannot but think it will make an ingredient in yours, to draw for you, occasionally, as our pausing-places may allow, some of the intellectual features of my country; without which you can catch no real likeness of it: mind, being the vital part of every just portrait. That of England, from my pencil, can be but a sketch. I have promised, however, to make it a true one. The light delicacy, indeed, which finishes while it seems but to sketch, is the point to be endeavoured; and this I will attempt. At present I wish to make you partaker of as Arcadian an evening as ever could have graced the Utopian dominions, had they really been on the map of the world.

You already know, from my former report, that this villa is in the midst of a garden; yet the happiness which last night sat as a guest within, derived little of its charm from that circumstance, and little from the unnumbered sweets that embalmed the air, and carried fragrance into every apartment that was opened to receive it. No, my friend, it was of a kind, that had the dwelling been situated on a barren heath, and offered no better accommodation than is to be found in the hut of an unpoetical modern shepherd, it would have elevated your mind, your feelings, above the influence of external circumstance; nay, it would have exalted to a felicitous height every mind not meaner than the hut, not more steril than the heathground. This interesting enjoyment was derived from the innocent effusions, and unfoldings of nature, in one of her fairest and best works: the mind of a lovely girl just old enough to be yet called truly a work of nature, pure as the flowrets that sprang around her cottage.

The party was composed of six persons, most of whom are known to you. The worthy,

*

unassuming Fanny R*****, whom neither indulgence or affection could ever spoil, nor rigour or ingratitude alienate. My worthy friend and his wife, who offer to their guests, besides the good things which hospitality provides, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" a French emigrant general officer, whose private virtues, even had they not been endeared by misfortune, are sufficiently numerous counterbalance the injury done, to us by his professional bravery, when duty raised his sword against that nation which is now his shield: to him must be added your correspondent, and the blooming hope of my host and hostess, the interesting Sophia.

As the last mentioned of these furnished the intellectual part of the evening's entertainment, you will receive with pleasure a sketch of her person. And yet, I know you are such a champion for general symmetry in the works of nature, that were I to delineate only the mind

* Le Baron de PUJOL.

of Sophia you would give the correspondent form and features; averring, that to be in natural harmony, a well-organized mind must be placed in a well-organized body. And, perhaps, you would not be very far from the truth; for, although it occasionally happens that the mental gem is enclosed in a sorry casket, and 80 vice versa, there is much more frequently a due proportion and symmetry of the interior and exterior of the human ceconomy; and that, independent on all modes of education and habits of life. But admitting the full influence of these, when I tell you that the custom of Sophia from her earliest age, in her little rambles through the garden or fields, has been to stray from her servants, or mother, in order to cull such flowers, weeds, shells or pebbles, as were remarkable either in the tint, colouring or texture, for a certain delicacy; when I observe to you, that she would select these from innumerable others more shewy, more generally 'attracting, and which would have been the choice of most children: if, for instance, roses were to form part of her collection, they would