Usk, 1819.

YOUR letter came to me, covered all over with post-marks and directions; but a letter gives a fillip to one's spirits, even though the news in it be six weeks old. I don't know when I shall be in London again—perhaps never. I always hated leaving any place with a consciousness that I must, at a given time, come back again. Thank Heaven, there is now no living creature to whom my moments are of much consequence! East, west, north, or south-to death, or to present enjoyment—I am free to take my course. Í may push right on without injuring any one to the very extremity of this world; and there are almost as few whom it would concern materially, if I were to drop over into the next.

I am here will you understand why?-hiding my light under a bushel. A simple, unpretending, well-dressed, captain of cavalry, with half-pay, and two horses, and one servant for all. I have my gun, and my flute, and my fishing-rod; and (to play with) my German pipe; and poor Venus, who makes love to all the women, and so introduces her master.-Poor Venus! A dog is a being that there is no safe providing for. I hope she'll die before me-for I can't make her a ward of Chancery; and, though there is no cruelty in extinguishing life, I should not like the kindness of having her killed.

Straying, for the last month, through Oxfordshire, and Herefordshire, and Somersetshire-revisiting localities in leisure and independence, which I had beheld under circumstances of danger or privation. In some places I sought for objects that had ceased to exist. I walked (as I thought) towards a particular house in Oxford; and the very street had disappeared. Where the views still remained, my new medium did not help the prospect. Eight years has made a change in the remains of Ludlow Castle, or in the remains of Charles Edwards. I rode past the gate of Leamington barracks.-Do you recollect anything, Fletcher, here?—I saw the old stables, in which I had fagged over a splashed troop horse for many a weary hour. And the "post," VOL. XVI.

at the commandant's door, where I had often stood sentry, and been as hungry as a wolf. And the school, in which I had drawn tears and curses from many a raw Irish recruit, when I was a "rough-rider." I felt almost as if I had a sort of affection for the place; and yet, Heaven knows, I had little cause to have any !-But there was one house which I did not care to see, (when it came to the point,) although I thought I had come to Leamington for little other purpose!-Is it not strange, when a man feels that he cannot live either with a particular woman or without her? And yet such an infernal sensation did come over me as I approached the cottage that was Levine's, that I wheeled short up the back lane that leads to the river-how many times I had rode up it, to water, with the troop! and almost stumbled over a little creature, (a soldier's wife,) who had been kind to me when kindness was an object!—I threw some money down, and galloped off, for I thought, by her eye, that she knew me.-If she did-what a tale there was, within ten minutes, through every washerwoman's in Leamington ! —Do you remember when I ❝ drew,” in the open market-place, and rescued our roast meat from the militiamen!

Heighho!-Your letter came in excellent season. It is a rainy afternoon. No trout-fishing-which serves to keep me walking, at least; and the views about the deep valley of the Usk, here, are delicious.

Why, it is not so fine a stream, to be sure, as the Suir between Carrick' and Clonmel ; but you ought to relish liberty anywhere. And I should be the better of a companion, if he were such a one as I could converse with. I am as free as the veriest American savage! and have the advantage of civilization all round me at the same time. I live in inns, and avoid large towns; and find a welcome and a real one-wherever I come. And I have just got the right calibre too, as regards station and equipage, about

me.

Sufficient to make me the equal of a Duke; and yet not enough to raise me out of the reach of a reason

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able being. I have been here three days. I rode away in a vile fit of spleen from Abergavenny. The place was getting what people call "full"-attorneys of fashion coming in to bathe; and citizens over from Bristel to drink buttermilk. It was nine at night when I abandoned-a moonlight worth all the day! So bright that theeye travelled for miles-across-to the very horizonover river, mountain, and meadow, all clear, and cold, and in deep stillness! One cannot see in the sunshine, for the noise and business that the world seems in. This was like looking at objects in a picture. Like looking through a lens, or into a bed of deep, clear, glassy water. It reminded me of the bright nights in which I had sailed upon an Atlantic sea. When the calm was perfect-neither breath nor swell upon the water. The sails flapping gently, to and fro, against the mast. And the dolphins, in such dazzling blue, as puts even the king-fisher to shame, playing, and plunging, and chasing each other round the vessel! Each new comer to the sports detected, while still at half-mile distance-not by the fiery train which marks his progress in a gale, when your ship dashes, head on, ten knots an hour through the foam, and he curvets, and bounds, and repasses, before your prow, like a Danish harlequin dog be fore the state carriage of a duchessbut by his own bold graceful figure, seen to fifty fathoms depth, and shining like a huge image of silver, strangely chased and painted! It reminded me of my West India service, and of my night guards in that beautiful St Lucie; when I used to leave the segars, and the mosquitoes, and the yellow ladies, and the Sangaree, to run along in a canoe over reefs as green as a May field, all living with shells and weeds, and "parrot" fishes and " tree," and through water so bright, as, in the moonshine, to be invisible !Drawing six inches, where there was ten feet, you seemed to rake the bottom every moment!-I rode along living upon the view and the sensation -as slow as foot could fall. Getting, by degrees, into a delicious calmness, recollecting, and thinking, acutely, and yet not painfully. Half willing to be in kindness with myself, and almost dreaming about it with the world.—I thought of the times, and almost came back to the "good spirits," in which

sea

you and I had ridden, (when we had only them to "feed and clothe" us,) so many night marches through the Peninsula-in front-in the rear-asideany way to escape the turmoil and uproar of the division. And my Spanish servant, enjoying the scene almost as much as I did myself. Humming "The Fight of Ronscevalles," and puffing white paper for a segar !—A man is entitled to be luxurious in the minor arrangements of life; and really, a foreign servant is one of the luxuries of domestic detail. I can talk to José, and let him talk to me, without the danger of a mistake. The rogue has a tact-an intuitive perception-a mode of his own, of arriving at one's meaning. A foreigner manages to be perfectly familiar, and yet, at the same time, perfectly respectful-a point at which you Englishmen (though with more brains, perhaps) never, by any chance, arrive. Many a hen has this very José stolen for me--and cooked when he had done! And with a manner, too-an absence of grossiereté—a view of the correct mode in which the thing should be done!-Not like my great two-handed Thomas-shall you ever forget him?-that went out to steal turkeys; and that we met, in broad day, with a live one under each arm, pursued by a whole village !— But we rode along, I tell you, as gently as horse's foot could step-past farmhouses, and cottages, and apple orchards, (even the dogs all asleep!) not having the most distant determination when, or where, we should stop; and so came into Usk about one o'clock in the morning. Pavement being no part of the parish arrangements, our arrival disturbed nobody. It was as light as it could have been at noon, and yet not even a stray cat was in motion. The white muslin curtains were drawn at the low bed-chamber windows; shutters did not seem to be thought necessary anywhere ;-things looked as though you might carry off the whole village, if you were strong enough to take it up, and walk away with it. I should have ridden on to Chepstow ; but—“ Great events," you know!-the door of the inn stood ajar; and yet not a creature was moving near it. I dismounted; entered on tiptoe; walked through three apartments without seeing a soul; and at last found a party of a dozen—all women but three-seated, the snug

MAN; and looked to what he could get, rather than to what he could wish for. Fine a man five pounds, and perhaps he may pay it; fine the same man fifty, and you only perhaps send him to prison. Are there not steps in the scale of moral, as well as of political offence? A larceny is less mischievous to society than a burglary; a burglary without personal outrage, better than a burglary with personal outrage; a robbery on the highway bad, but better than a "cutting and maiming," or a murder. And why should we look nowhere but in the Old Bailey, at redeeming the circumstances of crime? Mark, when you hear any act of very outrageous baseness or folly-when a man is a town jest for his mummeries; a published dupe to courtesans and black-legs; a rioter in the streets par excellence; a brute, or, in other words, a "choice spirit"-Mark if he be not some parvenu, or halftrained lad broke loose from school. Why! up to the last moment before a man starts in life, is not the world so described to him, that he must find it rather anything than the thing it has been represented? The grand fault of our moral instruction, is the high tone in which it is conveyed. Sin, we are told, is death; and there the teacher leaves us. The restraint is peremptorily insisted upon, and even the advantages of it are not half explained. We are not only command ed to be angels, and, if we cannot be angels, left to be anything we please; but really little or no pains are taken to shew us why we should be angels if we could.

Say that a thoughtless lad, just launched from college into a society like your present circle, seduces a girl of decent family, and abandons her, like a scoundrel, to her fate.-You and I must not talk about such cases "not occurring;" we know that they do occur, and that men are damned for them, if men are damned at all.This booby has been told that seduction is a high crime;" and he sees many "high crimes," hourly, in very respectable commission. He has heard that punishment for such offences will follow in "another world," and he believes that "other world" to be a very long way off. What would be the effect upon thieves of twenty, if a law were to enact, that present highwaymen (bating repentance)

should be hanged at the age of eighty years? Has any creature, friend, or relative, pointed out to this silly boy the immediate consequences (which pass repentance) of the crime which he has committed? Has any one asked-will he sell his favourite horse to be whipped to death in a sand cart?-or his spaniel to be worried and fought by butchers?-or on what principle is it that he is dooming a creature, for whom he has once felt affection-to rum, insult, want, and public infamy? He hears nothing at all of this from his associates-and yours. They congratulate him upon his triumph. He is a "fine fellow"

he has "bonne fortune"-the world will "hear of him"-the women find him "irresistible!" Is it not so?-Has any one said to a wretched unthinking blockhead like this-who-what-are these people to whose commendation you are listening? They are "friends."Ay-as you have been-" friends," to their own gratification.-Friends! Why-you are boon companions→→→ sworn brothers-every one of you !— When the last of the club was carried to prison, who came forward to give bail for him?-When the bankrupt, last week, destroyed himself-one less -Was it not so ?-sat down to table. Is there a man among these, your

friends," in whom you even think you can confide? Is there one who (if you were in want) you believe would help you with a shilling?Their talents, or their worth-Come!

which is it you would first bear witness to? Is it the gentleman who packed the "fight" at Moulsey, that you love best; or he who poisoned the "favourite" at Newmarket ;—he who fled yesterday (this was your "dear friend”) from his ball; or he who, the day before," gave" the Insolvent act to his creditors? Nay, answer-for these "friends" are all complimenting you upon your "success" -except the one who whispers (and lies) that he was acquainted with the lady before you are you most proud of the gentleman's applause who appears in the long skirted coat, or of his who has pinned his character in life, to the short jacket? Is it he who was thrashed (last) by the "boxer, that immortalizes you; or he who backed "the bull dog" to eat "the monkey" in "four minutes ?"-Come! look at your triumph-'tis as noble at least