eats, are very perfect; the inside was painted in the same colour with the private houses, and great part cased with white marble. They have found, anong other things, some fine statues, some human bones, some rice, medals, and a few paintings, extremely fine. These latter are preferred to all the ancient paintings that have ever been discovered. We have not seen them yet, as they are kept in the king's apartment, whither all these curiosities are transplanted; and 'tis difficult to see them; but we shall. I forgot to tell you that in several places the beams of the houses remain, but burnt to charcoal; so little damaged that they retain visibly the grain of the wood, but, upon touching, crumble to ashes. What is remarkable, there are no other marks or appearances of fire but what are visible on these beams.

There might certainly be collected great light from this reservoir of antiquities, if a man of learning had the inspection of it; if he directed the working, and would make a journal of the discoveries. But I believe there is no judicious choice made of directors. There is nothing of the kind known in the world: I mean a Roman city entire of that age, and that has not been corrupted with modern repairs.* Besides scrutinizing this very carefully, should be inclined to search for the remains of the other towns that were partners with this in the general ruin. 'Tis certainly an advantage to the learned world that this has been laid up so long. Most of the discoveries in Rome were made in a barbarous age, where they only ransacked the ruins in quest of treasure, and had no regard to the form and being of the building, or to

* Pompeii was not then discovered.

any circumstances that might give light into its use and history. I shall finish this long account with a passage which Gray has observed in Statius, and which directly pictures out this latent city:

Hæc ego Chalcidicis ad te, Marcelle, sonabam
Littoribus, fractas ubi Vestius egerit iras,
Emula Trinacriis volvens incendia flammis.
Mira fides! credetne virum ventura propago,
Cum segetes iterum, cum jam hæc deserta virebunt,
Infra urbes populosque premi?*
Sylv. lib. iv. epist. 4.

Adieu, my dear West, and believe me yours ever.
H. WALPOLE.

Lady Mary W. Montague to the Lady R.

Hanover, Oct. 1, 0. S. 1716.

I AM very glad, my dear Lady Rthat you have been so well pleased, as you tell me, at the report of my returning to England; though, like other pleasures, I can assure you it has no real foundation. I hope you know me enough to take my word against any report concerning me. It is true, as to distance of place, I am much nearer to London than I was some weeks ago; but as to the thoughts of a return, I never was farther off in my life. I own, I could with great joy indulge the pleasing hopes of seeing you and the very few others that share my esteem; but while Mr. W

is determined to proceed in his design, I am determined to follow him. I am running on upon my own affairs-that is to say, I am going to write

* These things I sung to you, Marcellus, on the Chalcidian shores, where Vesuvius, in its wrath, emulates the fires of Etna. Will the future race of men, when these forest-fields shall again be green with corn, believe that cities and their inhabitants are buried beneath them?

very dully, as most people do when they write of themselves. I will make haste to change the disagreeable subject, by telling you that I am now got into the region of beauty. All the women have, literally, rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eyebrows, and scarlet lips, to which they generally add coal-black hair. Those per. fections never leave them till the hour of their deaths, and have a fine effect by candle-light; but I could wish they were handsome with a little more variety. They resemble one another as much as Mrs. Salmon's Court of Great Britain, and are in as much danger of melting away by too near approaching the fire, which they, for that reason, carefully avoid, though it is now such excessive cold weather that I believe they suffer extremely by that piece of self-denial. The snow is already very deep, and the people begin to slide about in their traineaus. This is a favourite diversion all over Germany. They are little machines fixed upon a sledge that holds a lady and a gentleman, and are drawn by one horse. The gentleman has the honour of driving, and they move with a prodigious swiftness. The lady, the horse, and the traineau, are all as fine as they can be made; and when there are many of them together, it is a very agreeable show. At Vienna, where all pieces of magnificence are carried to excess, there are some. times machines of this kind that cost five or six hundred pounds English. The Duke of Wolfenbuttle is now at this court: you know he is nearly related to our king, and uncle to the reigning em. press, who is, I believe, the most beautiful princess upon earth. I took my leave of her the day before I left Vienna, and she began to speak to me with so much grief and tenderness of the death of the

archduke, I had much ado to withhold my tears. You know that I am not at all partial to people for their titles; but I own that I love that charming princess (if I may use so familiar an expression); and if I had not, I should have been very much moved at the tragical end of an only son, born after being so long desired, and at length killed by the want of good management. Adieu, dear Lady R-; continue to write to me, and believe none of your goodness is lost upon your, &c.

M. W. MONTAGUE.

Sir William Jones to Lady Spencer.-Visit to the residence of Milton.

MADAM,

September 7, 1769.

THE necessary trouble of correcting the first sheets of my history,* prevented me to-day from paying respect to the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee. But I was resolved to do all the honour in my power to as great a poet; and I set out in the morning, in company with a friend, to visit a place where Milton spent some part of his life, and where, in all probability, he composed several of his earliest productions. It is a small village, situated on a pleasant hill, about three miles from Oxford, called Forest Hill, because it formerly lay contiguous to a forest, which has since been cut down. The poet chose this place of retirement after his first marriage, and he describes the beauties of his retreat in that fine passage of his "L'Allegro:"

*His translation, from the Persian, of the Life of Nidar Shah.

'Sometimes walking, not unseen,

By hedge-row elms on hillocks green,

*

*

When the ploughman, near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his sithe;
And ev'ry shepherd tells his tale,
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landscape round it measures:
Russet lawns and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The lab'ring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees,
Bosom'd high in tufted trees.

*

* * * * * Hard by, a cottage-chimney smokes From betwixt two aged oaks," &c.

It was neither the proper season of the year nor the time of the day to hear all the rural sounds and to see all the objects mentioned in this description; but, by a pleasing concurrence of circumstances, we were saluted on our approach to the village with the music of the mower and his sithe; we saw the ploughman intent upon his labour, and the milkmaid returning from her country employment.

sure.

As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave us the highest pleaAt length we reached the spot whence Milton, undoubtedly, took most of his images: it is on the top of the hill, from which there is a most extensive prospect on all sides. The distant moun tains that seemed to support the clor ds; the vil lages and turrets, partly shaded with trees of the