she said, had never been suffered to go out of the house on the Sabbath, except to meetings.

My grandfather did not marry till he was fortyfive; probably he could not have maintained a family before he was settled upon his uncle's farm. His wife's name was Joan Mullens. They had three sons, John, Robert (who was my father), and Thomas, and two daughters, Hannah and Mary, all born at Halford. The boys received what in those days was thought a good education. The elder, being designed for the law (in which his name and family connections would assist him), learnt a little Latin; he lived more with Cannon Southey than with his parents, both in his boyhood and youth, as his sister Mary did with Madam Periam or Madam Lethbridge (this was in the time when that title was in common use in the West of England), being always with one or the other as long as they lived. But Cannon Southey's House was a bad school for him. He was looked upon as the probable heir of the family after the birth of young Somerville, who was always a weakly child. The two younger brothers were qualified for trade. My father had preserved his cyphering book, and I would have preserved it too, as carefully as any of my own manuscripts, if it had not been lost at the household wreck at his bankruptcy. If you will look in that little treatise of mine upon the "Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education," you will find a passage at pp. 85, 86, written in remembrance of this cyphering-book, and of the effects which it produced upon me in early boy

hood.

When my uncle John was about to begin business as an attorney in Taunton, Cannon Southey, who was then the head of the family, lent him 1007. to start with. "That hundred pounds," he used to say, with a sort of surly pride, "I repaid, with interest, in six months, and that is the only favour for which I was ever obliged to my relations." Cannon Southey, however, though not very liberal to his kin, had a just regard to their legal rights, and left his property in trust for his great nephew, John Southey Somerville and his issue, with the intention that if he, who was then a child, should die without issue, the estates should descend to the Southeys; and, that the whole property might go together, he willed his leasehold estates (which would else have been divided among the next of kin) in remainder upon the same contingency to my uncle John and his two brothers, and to the sons of each in succession, as the former branch. might fail.

Robert, my father, was passionately fond of the country and of country sports. The fields should have been his station, instead of the shop. He was placed with a kinsman in London, who, I believe, was a grocer somewhere in the city, one of the eleven tribes that went out from Wellington. I have heard him say, that as he was one day standing at this person's door, a porter went by carrying a hare, and this brought his favourite sport so forcibly to mind, that he could not help crying at the sight. This anecdote in Wordsworth's hands would be worth as much as the Reverie of poor Susan. Before my father had been twelvemonths in London his master

died. Upon which he was removed to Bristol, and placed with William Britton, a linendraper in Wine Street. The business at that time was a profitable one, and Britton's the best shop of its kind in the town, which is as much as saying that there was not a better in the West of England. This must have been about the end of George the Second's reign. Shop-windows were then as little used in this country, as they are now in most of the continental towns. I remember Britton's shop still open to the weather, long after all the neighbours had glazed theirs; and I remember him, from being the first tradesman in his line, fallen to decay in his old age, and sunk in sottishness, still keeping on a business which had dwindled almost to nothing. My father, I think, was not apprenticed to him; because if he had served a regular apprenticeship, it would have entitled him to the freedom of the city, and I know that he was not a freeman he lived with him, however, twelve or fourteen years. Among the acquaintance with whom he became intimate during that time, was my half uncle Edward Tyler, then employed in a Coventry Warehouse, in Broad Street, belonging to the Troughtons. This introduced him to my grandmother's house.

LETTER II.

THE HILLS. -THE BRADFORDS. WILLIAM TYLER.-ANECDOTE OF HIM. HIS GRANDFATHER'S DEATH.

Tuesday, August 1st, 1820.

MRS. HILL, my grandmother, was, at the time of which I am now writing, a widow; her maiden name was Bradford. I know nothing more of her father than that he was a Herefordshire man, and must have been of respectable property and connections, as appears by his having married into one of the best families in the county, and sending a son to college. His wife's name was Mrs. Margaret Croft. -I have it written in gold letters, with the date 1704, in a copy of Nelson's Festivals and Fasts, which descended as a favourite devotional book to my mother. They had three children; Herbert, so named after the Croft family,- another son (William, I think, by name), who was deaf and dumb, and just lived to grow up, and my grandmother Margaret.

My grandmother was very handsome: little Georgiana Hill, my uncle says, reminds him strongly of her; and I remember her enough to recognise a likeness in the shape of the face, and in the large, full, clear, bright brown eyes. Her first husband, Mr. Tyler, was of a good family in Herefordshire, nearly related I know he was, and nephew, I think, to one of that name who was Bishop of Hereford. He lived at Pembridge. The seat of the family was at

Dilwyn, where his elder brother lived, who either was not married, or left no issue. I have hardly heard any thing of him, except that on his wedding day he sung a song after dinner, which could not be thought very complimentary to his bride; for, though it began by saying,

"Ye gods who gave to me a wife

Out of your grace and favour,
To be the comfort of my life,

And I was glad to have her,"

(thus much I remember of the rhymes,) it ended with saying that, whenever they might think fit, he was ready to resign her. It happened, however, that the resignation was to be on the wife's part. He died in the prime of life, leaving four children, Elizabeth, John, William, and Edward; and his widow, after no very long interval, married Edward Hill of Bedminster, in the county of Somersetshire, near Bristol, and was transplanted with her children to that place.

Edward Hill was the seventh in succession of that name. His fathers had lived and died respectably and contentedly upon their own lands in the beautiful vale of Ashton, the place of all others which I remember with most feeling. You see it from Clifton, on the other side of the river Avon; Warton has well characterized it in one of his odes as Ashton's elmy Vale. The Hills are called gentlemen upon their tombstones in Ashton churchyard, where my father, two of my brothers, my three sisters, and my poor dear cousin Margaret, are deposited with them. Edward Hill, the seventh, was a lawyer and a widower;