not so much for the fine sound of their names, as to raise up images of Leander, who was drowned in crossing the sea to kiss the hand of fair Hero. This were a destiny less to be lamented, than what we are told of the poor Jew, one of your interpreters, who was beheaded at Belgrade as a spy. I confess such a death would have been a great disappointment to me; and I believe Jacob Tonson will hardly venture to visit you, after this news.

You tell me, the pleasure of being nearer the sun has a great effect upon your health and spirits. You have turned my affections so far eastward, that I could almost be one of his worshippers: for I think the sun has more reason to be proud of raising your spirits, than of raising all the plants, and ripening all the minerals in the earth. It is my opinion, a reasonable man might gladly travel three or four thousand leagues, to see your nature, and your wit, in their full perfection. What may not we expect from a creature that went out the most perfect of this part of the world, and is every day improving by the sun in the other. If you do not now write and speak the finest things imaginable, you must be content to be involved in the same imputation with the rest of the east, and be concluded to have abandoned yourself to extreme effeminacy, laziness, and lewdness of life.

I make not the least question but you could give me great eclaircissements upon many passages in Homer, since you have been enlightened by the same sun that inspired the father of poetry. You

are now glowing under the climate that animated him; you may see his images rising more boldly about you, in the very scenes of his story and action; you may lay the immortal work on some broken column of a hero's sepulchre; and read the fall of Troy in the shade of a Trojan ruin. But if, to visit the tomb of so many heroes, you have not the heart to pass over that sea where once a lover perished; you may at least, at ease, in your own window, contemplate the fields of Asia, in such a dim and remote prospect, as you have of Homer in my translation.

I send you therefore with this, the third volume of the Iliad, and as many other things as fill a wooden box, directed to Mr. Wortley. Among the rest, you have all I am worth, that is, my works: there are few things in them but what you have already seen, except the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which you will find one passage, that I cannot tell whether to wish you should understand, or not.

For the news in London, I will sum it up in short; we have masquerades at the theatre in the Haymarket, of Mr. Heideker's institution; they are very frequent, yet the adventures are not so numerous but that of my Lady Mohun still makes the chief figure. Her marriage to young Mordant, and all its circumstances, I suppose you will have from Lady Rich or Miss Griffith. The political state is under great divisions, the parties of Walpole and Stanhope as violent as Whig and Tory.

The K. and P. continue two names; there is nothing like a coalition, but at the masquerade; however, the princess is a dissenter from it, and has a very small party in so unmodish a separation.

The last I received from your hands was from Peterwaradin: it gave me the joy of thinking you in good health and humour: one or two expressions in it are too generous ever to be forgotten by me. I writ a very melancholy one just before, which was sent to Mr. Stanyan, to be forwarded through Hungary. It would have informed you how meanly I thought of the pleasures of Italy, without the qualification of your company, and that mere statues and pictures are not more cold to me than I to them. I have had but four of your letters; I have sent several, and wish I knew how many you have received. For God's sake, madam, send to me as often as you can; in the dependance that there is no man breathing more constantly, or more anxiously mindful of you. Tell me that you are well, tell me that your little son is well, tell me that your very dog, (if you have one) is well. Defraud me of no one thing that pleases you: for whatever that is, it will please me better than any thing else can do.

I am always yours.

LETTER XIV.

FROM LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

Belgrade, Feb. 12, 1717.

I DID DID verily intend to write you a long letter from Péterwaradin, where I expected to stay three or four days, but the Bassa here was in such haste to see us, that he despatched the courier back (which Mr. W. had sent to know the time he would send the convoy to meet us) without suffering him to pull off his boots. My letters were not thought important enough to stop our journey, and we left Peterwaradin the next day, being waited on by the chief officers of the garrison, and a considerable convoy of Germans and Rascians. The emperor has several regiments of these people; but, to say the truth, they are rather plunderers than soldiers; having no pay, and being obliged to furnish their own arms and horses; they rather look like vagabond gipsies, or stout beggars, than regular troops. I cannot forbear speaking a word of this race of creatures, who are very numerous all over Hungary. They have a patriarch of their own at Grand Cairo, and are really of the Greek church, but their extreme ignorance gives their priests occasion to impose several new notions upon them. These fellows letting their hair and beard grow inviolate, make exactly the figure of the Indian Bramins. They

are heirs general to all the money of the laity; for which, in return, they give them formal passports signed and sealed for heaven; and the wives and children only inherit the house and cattle. In most other points they follow the Greek church.This little digression has interrupted my telling you we passed over the fields of Carlowitz, where the last great victory was obtained by Prince Eugene over the Turks. The marks of that glorious bloody day are yet recent, the field being yet strewed with the skulls and carcasses of unburied men, horses, and camels. I could not look without horror, on such numbers of mangled human bodies, nor without reflecting on the injustice of war, that makes murder, not only necessary, but meritorious. Nothing seems to be a plainer proof of the irrationality of mankind (whatever fine claims we pretend to reason) than the rage with which they contest for a small spot of ground, when such vast parts of fruitful earth lie quite uninhabited. It is true, custom has now made it unavoidable; but can there be a greater demonstration of want of reason, than a custom being firmly established, so plainly contrary to the interest of man in general? I am a good deal inclined to believe Mr. Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state of war; but thence I conclude human nature not rational, if the word reason means common sense, as I suppose it does. I have a great many admirable arguments to support this