key in its season, or a basket of pork. As to entertainment, or any matter of information, which I might estimate at the value of the postage, I have absolutely none for what interest would it afford to you, my dear Madam, or my friend Halhed, to be told that our favorite cow has calved twins, and that we mean to rear one of them upon principles of philosophic inquiry, to see whether it will turn out a free-martin? Or how will you be edified by the anecdote of a twin lamb being clad with the skin of a dead lamb, and passed upon the poor mother of the latter for her own? These events never happen, I know, in Pall Mall; and I only allude to them now, to prove how barren of intellect a man must necessarily be, who lives wholly in the country, and having no stock of his own within him, possesses only the poor resource of a farm yard, or a hog sty.

"But as I have, unhappily, no better, I will tell you the story of a twin lamb, from a principle which I borrow from Sarah Webb, the superintendent of our poultry, who seduces her hens to lay, when they are obstinate, and will not, by putting into their nests ill-formed lumps of chalk, designed to represent eggs. And they do lay; for they are not incorrigible. The story shall be related on a separate piece of paper. The event to which it alludes, as well as its record, happened about the time of the battle of Marengo, either before, or after it, I forgot which; but I verily believe, before. The exactness of the chronology is of consequence, and I am sorry that I have forgotten it. Mrs. Hastings desired me to add much that in her own expression was kinder and more affectionate than I can make it appear in mine, both to you and Mr. Halhed, in every sentiment of which, as in most others, my heart is in unison with her's. She has also charged me with a playful message, which must be the ingredient of another letter, either from herself, or from me for I can laugh upon other subjects; but not cheerfully, or naturally at this time, upon any in which she is either the principal, or a party. Besides, I have received my commission so late, and have executed it with such a shameful waste of time, that I have hardly a sufficiency left for the task which I have imposed upon myself. Adieu, my dear Madam and believe me to be ever, Your sincere and affectionate friend, WARREN HASTINGS."

"Diseas'd, and worried, and of life bereft,
Far from the flock a lamb deserted lay :
Last of its downy coat despoil'd, and left
With rot to moulder, or to kites a prey.

An alien lamb, clad in the borrow'd hide,
With surreptitious claim the mother press'd.
She, well deceived, her milky store supplied,
And the base nursling as her own caress'd.

The scene (for I beheld it) deep impress'd,
As in a mirror, my reflective thought;

And by the visions of my fancy drest,
This strange, but moral composition wrought.

I saw a potent state, of ancient frame;
Of numbers countless; o'er the nations round
Pre-eminent in greatness, wealth and fame;
With science, arts, and martial glory crown'd.

Next I beheld, high seated on a throne,
That adamantine stood, or seem'd to stand,
A manly form majestic: round him shone,
The guards and emblems of supreme command

A magic robe his graceful limbs attir'd;
(Some saint had wove the talismanic spell)
Which who beheld, with awe and love inspir'd,
Low at his feet in adoration fell.

Sudden an earthquake shook the hallow'd ground;
And the throne trembled to its deep-laid base :

Wolves howl'd, and vultures soar'd with screams around,
Peace fled, and civil rage usurp'd her place.

From the scar'd pageant, in the foul debate,
The regal mantle fell: the bloody crew,

Their former love by madness chang'd to hate,
The living idol of their worship slew.

New scenes of war and rapine now disclose,
(The march of years abridg'd by rapid flight;
For time and space in dreams their measure lose,)
Successive horrors to my mental sight.

One issuing from the tumult, where it fell,
The regal mantle, yet distain'd with blood,

Seiz'd, round his body pass'd, and (strange to tell,)
With all its sovereign pow'rs invested stood.

The crew, the murd'rers of their legal lord,
Low at his feet their adoration pay;

In thought behold their long-lov'd rule restor'd,
And distant regions trembling, own its sway.

Here darkness clos'd the scene. In wonder lost
I pass'd its mystic movements in review,
Doubtful of what it seem'd portentous most,
The state of France, or my deluded ewe.”

Mr. Halhed by return of post capped these lines of Mr. Hastings, but though reluctant to omit them, it behoves us to hus

band our space as best we can, where materials are so abundant. A letter nominally from Mrs. Halhed, and in her hand writing, has reference to Mrs. Hastings' illness from fever. It is full of versified passages, of course, from her husband's ready pen. yearns for the country, after Virgil, thus

"This gloomy town's a fish-pond in my sight,
For knaves to angle in, and fools to bite :
If neither, like an out of water fish I am,
O Rus, Rus! quando ego te aspiciam!"

In fact it would seem that he longed to be at Daylesford.
"Far from the busy hum of men,
The poet guides in peace his pen,
And paints ambition's bloody scheme,
Brim full of horrors, as a dream.
But shackled in this noisy cage,
Mid cheats of every rank and age,
This magic lanthorn for the mind,
Where bustling forms and colours gay,
Their thin significance display.
Forlorn he snuffs the well known smoke,
Too dull to think, too sad to joke :-

His fancy flags, his tongue grows dumb-
His life and ev'n his verse a hum."

He

Here is Mr. Hastings' reply, with some original verses from his own hand.

"Daylesford House, 31st March, 1808.

"I cannot express, my dearest Madam, the pleasure with which my dear Mrs. Hastings and I read your first letter, nor the gratitude, and affection, and admiration, which by turns took possession of our bosoms on the perusal of the last. I might say perusals, for we read both more than once, and parts of both more than I kept count of. We both felt most the most elegant and moral lines on Mrs. Hastings' indisposition, myself in particular, as I hold their superior excellence to be a proof that they came warm from the heart. One line of them is perfectly original, and as true as it is poetical. The same character belongs to the sentiment conveyed in all the four lines with which it most happily closes. We were as much diverted, though we could not bestow on him the same warmth of heart, by "Showman Lucifer" and his gang; and yet more by your abuse of me for my philosophical experiment. The better version of my deluded ewe has produced upon me the effect of inspiration, and I give you the fruits of it in the inclosed fragment; which in its first formation, and yet more in its correction, and in the attempt to accommodate it to Mrs. Hastings' difficult, but accurate judgment, has cost me more labor than I ought, without shame, to own. Accept it, my amiable friend, as my last gift of the kind, from my pen, or head. If the heart had taken any part in it, you, my dear Madam, would have given it some of the

graces which it sadly wants; and I must tell you, that the first objection to it that struck my dear Mrs. Hastings, when I first read it to her, which I did with all the emphasis and pathos which could cheat her of her approbation, was, that I had said nothing in it of the beautiful address to her, and the prayer which concludes it. I said, I felt them as much (and perhaps more, as being more interested in the subject,) as she did; but that I could not do more without a call. Adieu, my dear Madam. Our joint love attends you both. Our joint Vows for your health were offered up yesterday with the last glasses of our dinner. I hope you felt them.

"Alas! It has this moment struck my recollection that to-morrow will be the first day of April, and I am half inclined to keep back this letter and its inclosure for a later and less inauspicious package, if this may not be postponed. Permit me, however, to take the occasion of this remembrance, to ask Mr. Halhed whether this strange mode of giving an anniversary sanctity to the day may not have been derived from the Hooly, or both from one common origin.

"I am, my dear Madam, with sentiments of the warmest and equal affection, both for yourself and your good and respected husband, which are those also of Mrs. Hastings,

Your sincere and faithful friend,
WARREN HASTINGS."

"I have the great satisfaction to announce Mrs. Hastings much better."

"O for a nose of proof, whose potent sense
Might penetrate through all external fence,
(Like the fam'd priests, which Grecian poets tell
Smelt ruin latent in a horse's belly,

Or thine, great James, which from the lobby floor
Could snuff up treason through the cellar door)
Through coat and doublet truth authentic scan,
And separate the semblance from the man!
Then on Detection's active wings I'd hie
To town,-if e'er Detection taught to fly,-
For Hyde park corner soar, a bustling scene,
And scent the fragrant haunts of men between;
(Forbid by her, to whose imperious sway
Pleas'd I submit, and all she will obey,
The road of Uxbridge, else the better way,
To pass the gate by decent verse unnam'd,
And busy Bond-street of her sons asham'd)
Thence down Pall Mall; but for a moment stint
My flight, and stop at Halhed's for a hint:
Last to the holy fanes of palace-yard;
For these, religion, law and freedom guard:
Where patriot bands assemble, lords in suits
Of sober cost, and commoners in boots;
Whose pores in diverse congregated streams
Waft their rich odor's down the silver Thames :

ye,

There take my station; or on William's roof;
Or Margret's spire, if reformation-proof;
Or from St. Peter's tow'rs my nose expand,
And snuff the special virtues of the land:
But let me, warn'd to fly the wrath to come,
Shun, holy Stephen, thy pestiferous dome,
Where once the glasses of corruption flew,
And in their way three printer's devils slew.

"Ah! vain the dream. No borrow'd wings have I,
To bear me buoyant through the vacant sky;
Nor could my genius an excursion bear
Far from the precincts of my elbow chair.
To this confin'd in dosing mood I sit;
Or wake, to strain at imitative wit;

For hard-earn'd rhymes my torpid fancy pose;
To sneeze the sole employment of my nose.
And well its pow'rs, and mine of flight, are lost,
By the vile east-wind in their purpose crost:
Though sped from India, which first gave it birth,
By me the land the best belov'd of earth,
Let not its breath approach my sense too near.
There Minto sweats, and I can smell him here.

"Enough. To thee, my friend, I now consign.
Th' unfinish'd theme. Its origin was thine.
Thy nose from rheum, thy wit from fog is free;
And ev'ry sense can prove a muse to thee."

"Pall Mall, April, 1808.

"HONOURED SIR,-I received your most kind and excellent letter frank'd by a very excellent member, whose name I do not recollect in Stockdale's Parliamentary list, but he is I presume a descendant of Lord Bacon, and Mr. H. tells me, must be in high fashion in Aperil. While we rejoiced to hear of Mrs. Hastings' amended health, for which we offer our most hearty congratulations, we were not a little concerned to find the interruption of your's, momentary, I hope we may call it, and that your nose has by this time recovered its serenity, or only disturbed by the imaginary purgatory provided for it by your all-creative brain, and not by the teazing defluxion of a cold. And that it may continue proof against all obstacles both from within and from without in future, is our most ardent wish! You urge a continuation of the original and yet fertile topic you have so successfully broached but you know it is a delicate subject for a stranger to meddle with, and sometimes is not handled with impunity, besides there is some latent ambiguity in your expressions, which time, that discloses all things, will doubtless develop. You allude to my letters, as if I had written two; whereas I have positively written but one, and sent but one, in which I do not recollect that I mentioned smelling, but as connected with smoke. Now it is very true that