This excellent couple are without children of their own, but they have taken to their bosoms two nieces and a nephew, the daughters and son of Mr. Morton's brother, whom they cherish as their own, and upon whom they lavish all those paternal endearments which, in the want of an object to rest upon, so often irritate and embitter the married life. The eldest of these young ladies is naturally of a good heart, I believe; but she has so many acquired faults, so many lady-artifices and studied pretti

nesses, that I never know when she is thoroughly interested or earnestly moved. She is a polite adorer of literature and the draina, and follows the stage more like a religion than a light and occasional amusement. From certain connexion's she has become intimate with some of the performers, and the consequence is, that a morning visit from any tragedian is a sure forerunner of seriousness for the day, a support and a stay to her pensive looks, which she leans upon with a most dignified reserve. Miss Prudence Morton (she was the first of an intended series of the cardinal virtues, which, to her mother's deep disappointment, was broken in upon by the perverse arrival of two brothers into this breathing world) Miss Prudence Morton, I repeat her name, is a decided Blue, at least as far as youth and its established foibles will permit her to be. She is tall, and has dark earnest eyes, which at evening parties go through and through you in search of literary information. She loves to secure to her own reading the person and the attention of some young gentleman in the sonnet line, and to extract all the sweets from his brain as store for the cells of her own pericranium. She sits at him. She so disposes her attitude, that his bodily retreat is rendered impracticable. Her eyes are levelled against him, and she steadily fires down upon his helpless ears the twenty-pounders of her heavy interrogatories. "Have you seen Campbell's song in the last New Monthly, and is it not charming?Not seen it! I own I wonder at that.

Mr.- (naming some literary name) copied it out for me before it was in; and I like it amazingly.-O! and are those your lines in the LONDON? I know they are-but why do you use that

signature? Not but that I could always detect you! Not yours! dear me! Well I thought them not quite pensive enough.-But I don't believe you.-O! What is Lord Byron about? Mr. (naming another literary name) tells me that he is writing a tragedy. I think Marino Faliero, horrid! Mr. (naming an actor) assures me it would never get up! Have you read Don Juan? I have not: but I think it abounds with beautiful passages, though it is a sad wicked book. O! what do you think of's prose? Is it not flowery and beautiful? You never know whether it is poetry or prose, which is so vastly delightful."-This is a slight and meagre sketch of the style of Prudence's conversation, which I must, as usual, leave to the powers which you possess of making a miserable description opulent. She has great goodnature, the eternal palliative of all disagreeable qualities, and can at a quiet fireside make herself amusing and intelligent, but a stranger at tea, or an extra wax candle in the sconce, is the never-failing destroyer of all her natural freedom. And she straightway exalts herself into the wary, the wise, the literary Prudence. Some of her sayings are remembered, but considering the plentiful crop of her conversation it is wonderful that a few scanty ears only are preserved. When her form is at its height she, like the lovely Marcia, "towers above her sex,' and that considerably, and I shall not easily forget the prodigious step and grasp with which she wheeled me down the stone-staircase of Mr. Morton's house the other day at dinner.

Agnes Morton, younger than either her brother or sister, is one of those sweet little fairy creatures which we seem to recognize as the realization of some dim poetic dream, or favourite beauty of the fancy. Her light blue eyes, softening beneath the shadowy yet even tracery of her eye-brows, gleam upon you with a modesty and tenderness almost unearthly:-and the airy figure, ever simply attired, seems framed only to be lighted about by such gently radiant eyes. very motion has feeling in it: and her voice is quite Shakspearian, being low and sweet, an excellent thing in woman. Indeed her elf-like shape, melo

Her

dious tones, and retired looks, seem contrived by nature as contrasts to the gigantic figure, vehement voice, and vampire gaze of Miss Prudence. Agnes, worthy owner of that innocent appellation, hath the sweetest and simplest wisdom in the world: Agnes with her lamb-like heart, and "those dove's eyes," by gentleness carries all before her. She rules all hearts, as by some fairy spell. Her soft exclamations of attachment, disregard, or wonderment, are potent as acts of parliament, or wills of princes. You must not imagine, Russell, that I am heart-stricken more than becomes a respectful friend, though I fear my description rather borders on the style of the last new novel :my affections are, as you know, wedded to books and life, and I see no very great probability of my ever deviating into the lover. Besides, the times are ill, my prospects are bounded, and Mr. Vansittart has set his face decidedly against Cupid.

Thomas Morton, the nephew, or Tom, as he is more familiarly and affectionately called by his near acquaintance and friends, (and I always think that pleasant monosyllabic appellation is a species of short-hand for kind-heartedness), is the life, delight, and perplexity of the household; -spirited, volatile, effervescing in health, and twenty years of age; he is at once the source of mirth, affection, and disorder. When you enter the house he, like Latimer's peculiar bishop, "is never idle;" either the foil is in his hand, and he is pinking away at an old portrait of a great great uncle, whose canvas countenance he has already converted into a frightful rival of the nutmeg-grater; or with muffles on his knuckles, he is dipping away scientifically at the day-lights of a pier glass, or getting considerably the best of a corner-cupboard. One while you shall leave him reading one of Plutarch's lives, or burying his brain in the dark soil of Bishop Andrewes' Divinity; but leave the room for ten minutes, and you will find him on your return trying the latest quadrille with six chairs and a plate warmer; or exercising his legal powers of oratory, and convincing a green baize table of the strength of his talents and his hand, and the inveterate justice of his cause. He has a

fine manly person, which, however, he a little distorts by the decisive cut of his coat, and the Corinthian roundness of his collar, but it is not at all unpleasant to behold his light lithe person disdaining the restraint and imprisonment of dress, and dancing about under the Merino and the buckram with all the loose liberty of a boy at school. His spirits, when excited, run riot, and trample upon fashion in their freedom. Buttons, stay-tape, and button-holes are set at defiance; and the natural man bursts through all his envious clouds, and asserts his untameable glory. Tom is intended for the law, if it shall please his volatile spirits to suffer such intention to run its unshackled course; but there is no vouching for so heedless and unreliable a mind, which at a moment's warning, or even none at all, might waste its sweets behind a grocer's counter, or inspire crossed-legs and a thimble on a raised board under a dim sky-light. He reads poetry to please Prudence; but he occasionally tries her patience by the vehemence and sameness of his quotations. He has an ill knack of wrenching a profound or romantic passage from its original beauty and meaning, and of applying it to some unlucky and ludicrous circumstance, to the utter dismay of his elder and more inspired sister. She looks upon him with her tragic eyes, a look of learned remonstrance; and he receives her rebuke with a burst of triumphant laughter, which sinks him only deeper in Miss Prudence's displeasure. To Agnes, Tom is all that is respectful, gentle, and sincere, recognizing her unobtrusive manner and exquisite softness of heart with all the generous and sensitive regard of his nature. The affectations and enormities of Prudence sit uneasily upon him; but the pretty manners and engaging looks of Agnes disarm his ridicule and tame his heedlessness. Mrs. Morton is continually annoyed at the follies and bursts of rash gaiety in Tom, but her inimitable discernment into character makes her perceive a virtue under all, which will yet surmount its present impediments. Prudence, with all her temporary afflictions, sets a proper value upon his services at theatres and parties,-Agnes loves him for his marked and unceasing gentleness and

affection, and oldMr. Morton silently delights to see how fine spirited a lad Tom is, and though often worn with his noisy mirth, and suffering in his furniture from Tom's turbulent exercises, still he never fails to take a pride in the boy, and to say "Aye, aye, let him be young-we were all young ourselves, and have all had our troublesome days. I myself, (he will sometimes continue, to the regular astonishment of Agnes) I myself was once dangerous to the glasses, and had my boisterous propensities. Tom is a kind nephew." And Tom is kind. He is kind even to me, Russell, who sometimes venture to sift advice over his fleeting failings: and his readiness to fly any where in my service, or accompany me on any of my extravagant wanderings, is so lively and pleasurable, that I should hate my self if I thought I had written one word which would in reality prejudice his frank character in your eyes.-There, I have given you a picture of the Mortons, and it is not "done in little," I think, but manufactured after the style of poor Dr. Primrose's family group, huge, awkward, and unsatisfactory. Tell me, when you write to me, whether you detect in my poor language Mr. Morton from Mrs. Morton, or Tom from Agnes. I own I pique myself on Prudence.

Many of my days, my dear Russell, are passed, as you will readily conjecture, in the society of this excellent family; and one or other of them generally accompanies me on my excursions in search of the picturesque, as it may be called, of this mighty city. At evening, we discuss the wonders we have seen, and many and various are the observations we make-each admiring, or severely commenting upon, the events of the day, after his or her own peculiar turn of mind. I remember the Coronation was food for many candle-light hours, for though I then was not so familiar with the Mortons, I saw them, and spoke to them, at that august ceremony. Mrs. Morton described the felicitous effect of the grouping and the colour of the scene, and thus opened to me the mystery of the beauty that delighted me; and I will say, that if I have been at all successful in describing any part of that magnificent procession, it is to Mrs. Morton that I am indebted

for the learning, eloquence, and discernment she displayed in her account of it. Mr. Morton was not present, as he did not think that the pleasure compensated for the danger of attempting to be there; but he cheerfully used his interest and his purse in procuring tickets "for the girls,” and listened, and still listens, with one of his own quiet smiles, to the unravelling of the brilliant and tangled threads of the subject, so perseveringly taken in hand by the rest of his family.

We were all sitting one afternoon over our fruit,-sipping it might be a temperate glass of Mr. Morton's particular, which leapt into the glass "with all its sun-set glow," ever at the same interval, and ever in the same moderate quantities; our discourse was at its meridian, and we sat basking in the warmth of bright talk, and could have been satisfied to have ever so sunned ourselves. Mrs. Morton was in the full plumage of wisdom,-Miss Prudence had laid aside those two dilating eyes, so wont to expand over a whole company,Agnes sat with her little white hand in Mr. Morton's, and smoothing with the other the scanty silken hair which scarcely shadowed his forehead. Tom was cutting out an orange into a sick alderman, and finding in his labours their own exceeding great reward; for he could procure no one to eulogize his sculpture in fruitage-all present having often been treated with a sight of the same specimen of the ideal in art. I had my forefinger of my right hand pertinaciously hooked round the stem of my glass, in which bloomed that purple flower which I have gathered ever since I was no higher than a wine glass. We were all peculiarly happy, alternately talking, alternately listening,— when the perfect blue of the sky, and the intense lustre of the sun, carried our thoughts to the country, and I know not how it was that they travelled to Greenwich. One ignorant question of mine led on to one sweet remembrance of the ladies, and another, another and my mind became excited in the narration I heard

and curiosity led to uttered desires-and desires grew to projected realizations, till in due course of scheming, we arrived at a deter

mination to visit Greenwich Hospital on the following day. Mrs. Morton would fain have gone that very afternoon, that her best half (in her estimation) might partake of the pleasure; but Mr. Morton protested against it, declaring that he had seen the building many years ago, and that the evening damps were much against the journey home. The visit accordingly was postponed until the morrow; and the evening subsided into a quiet tea, and a patient rubber, in the course of which I led a small diamond that forced Mr. Morton's king of trumps, and crowned my misfortune by omitting to lead through the honour, which lost us the game, and which abducted from Mr. Morton a kindly and monitory moaning, till I left the house for the night. But on shaking my hand at parting, he told me that he believed we could not have won the game; and he begged I would not think more about it, although indeed any card would have been better than the diamond.

I wish I could begin this paragraph with the explosion of some such eloquent gun as commences the deep tragedy in the Critic; and thus convey to you a perfect and an instantaneous idea of the rich "saffron morning," without the usual flourish of sun and clouds, and all the established finery of blue firmament, and "gilding the eastern hemisphere," and singing birds and fresh zephyrs; but I have no way of breaking all this splendour to you, Russell, without having recourse to these popular terms: you will therefore have the kindness to imagine one of the brightest days that ever shone in the first chapter of a novel, and you will approach within thirty degrees of that admirable morning on which it was our fate to visit Greenwich Hospital. Our company fell off rather in the morning. Mr. Morton, as usual, came down to breakfast (I was invited to that meal, and was punctual) in his easy slippers, but otherwise neatly armed in cleanliness for his City duties. He shook my hand, and slightly recurred to our misfortunes the night before by hoping that I had thought no more of the diamond, as it was really not worth caring about. He VOL. IV.

rejoiced in the fineness of our day, and begged me to admire particularly Sir James Thornhill's paintings at Greenwich Hospital, which he remembered were very blue and very beautiful; and he then wondered whether this Sir James Thornhill was any relation of the Baronet in the Vicar of Wakefield, for he never lost the impression, made in youth, that this tale was a true one, and that all its characters had lived precisely as Goldsmith has so exquisitely described them. When we were all assembled at the breakfast table, Prudence broke the ice of an apology, by hinting that she doubt, ed whether the day "would last;" and, indeed, that she took no peculiar delight in seeing a great old building, full of lame uncultivated old men; and that, indeed, she expected Miss would call with the lines; and, indeed, that she could not altogether think herself well, for she had heard the clock strike two, and could not see very clearly with her eyes in the morning, giving them at the same moment a profound roll, as though they were revolving like satellites around her head, to convince us that her sight was affected. Mrs. Morton, foreseeing no great advantage from Miss Prudence's society under her then state of mind, very wisely begged her not to think of venturing in so dire a state of health; and Miss Prudence, with a sigh that seemed to shatter all her bulk, and end her being," consented to give up the pleasure of Mr. Herbert's company, with the same species of reluctance that Richard displayed to receive the crown at the hands of the pertinacious Lord Mayor. Agnes looked pale, and was evidently af fected with a head ache, though she made no complaints, and was anxious to assure us that it would be removed by the ride and the fresh air. Tom would have accompanied us, but he had some other engagement, which I guessed, by his shrewd winks and nods, was not of that order that, in the opinion of ladies, ought to supersede a visit to so noble a building as Greenwich Hospital. He wished he could make one with Herbert, but (squaring with his clenched hands, and scientifically touching at the tea-urn) he had business in hand 2Q

that must be taken by the forelock. He took an opportunity, while the ladies were gone up to attire, to let me into the secret of "a bull bait down the Edgeware Road, near the four mile slab," which would be worth whole pailfuls of pensioners, and he was desirous of fleshing a young ring-tailed and tulip-eared puppy, of which he had the most extravagant expectations; not but that I should be entertained where I was going. In less than a quarter of an hour from the period of this assurance our breakfast party had separated; Mrs. Morton, Agnes, and myself, were seated in the carriage, rattling through the stony-hearted streets. Mr. Morton was steadily walking towards his counting-house, with a placid heart, and an umbrella under his arm, (for he never was betrayed by a fine morning into an abatement of this salutary provision against the malice of the clouds). Miss Prudence had arranged herself over a volume of Wordsworth, and a lace-frill, and sat like Lydia Languish over the tears of sensibility, ready for any one that should come: while Tom, with a blue neckerchief, and a white hat, was shaking his way down the Edgeware Road, in the taxed cart of one of the cognoscenti, discussing the breed of pied and brindled, and sitting with his two hands round the lugs of his little tulip-eared puppy, which sat up in restless state between his legs.

I shall not detain you, Russell, over the common adventures of the road; you will know that the principal incidents were the paying of turnpikes, a tax which those who prize smooth roads and easy riding seldom think an evil. We passed Charing Cross, a part of the world that echoes the word "Greenwich" unceasingly, and is kindly sending coaches there every quarter of an hour of the day. We passed over Westminster Bridge-we passed Astley's Theatre-we passed the Asylum

-we passed the Elephant and Castle -we passed the Bricklayer's Arms -we passed the Robin Hood-we passed the Canal-the Three Compasses the Seven Stars-all buildings and places very uninteresting to you, excepting so far as they show, being the leading objects of a given

road out of London, that public houses, in proportion to other houses, are as about four to one-extravagant odds! as Tom would say.

How shall I give you an idea of the beauty of the far-famed Hospital of Greenwich, rising with its fair domes and stately walls, by the side of one of the noblest rivers in Europe?-In no way, I fear, save by sending you the "perspective view," sold by the boatswain in the painted Hall, done in a very masterly manner by some one, if I recollect rightly, connected with the Hospital. The beautiful park rises grandly on the larboard side of the building, to speak professionally, and seems to protect it from all rude storms, and tempests; as it, in turn, shields its old glorious inmates from the blasts and billows of the world. There are four divisions, all stately and majestic; and the court yards and kingly statue speak, like an English history, of the reign of George the Second. The very dress of the pensioner appears a sober record of the fashion of that day, and removes the wearer from the modern manners and look of the foolish mankind of this round-hatted generation. Every old sailor appears coeval with the foundation of the charity, and walks the deck of the building under his three cornered beaver, more like a formal gentleman out of one of Sir James Thornhill's pictures, than the living hulk of a man of war, laid up in the blessed harbour of his country. All the arrangements of this admirable charity are so well ordered that the sailor has his life embalmed in comfort, and preserved as much in its original shape and appearance as possible. The watches are set-the food is portioned out-the cooks are of the crew-the lieutenants preside-the bed-rooms are like cabins -the wainscotting is of oak-the very cloth of the dress is blue. It is life in a stone ship,-on an untrou bled sea,-with no end to fresh meat and water,-a naval romance! There is no more to do than to take care of their munificent vessel; and I will do them the justice to say, that they are ever washing the decks. You can hardly go over the rooms without finding one man at his Bibleanother at a sea voyage-another