Timber, bricks and tiles &c. used in improvements, should have been exempted from taxation. The house-tax and windowtax should have been increased on town houses, and lessened on those of gentlemen residing on their own property. For in fact your country gentlemen are the nerves and ligatures of your political body, and they enable you to enforce laws which could not be executed by the mere power of Government, and often preserve the public peace better than a regiment of soldiers.

London is the gangrene of our body politic, and the bad humours it generates corrupt the whole mass. Through the medium of the great clubs &c. one set of opinions, manners, modes of living are diffused through a vast mass of the higher orders.

Domestic restraints, and family economy, and order are voted bores, while, from the nature of our constitution, aided by the increasing wealth and the prevailing sentiments of the age, whatever ways of thinking, speaking, and acting become popular in the higher classes, soon spread through every order. Hence respect for our nobility, and even for the King himself, instead of being regarded as a Christian duty, is deemed an antiquated prejudice. Your Lordship's obliged and faithful

W. WILBERFORCE.

CCXXIX.

A volume of letters from Mary Wollstonecraft to Captain Gilbert Imlay, with a prefatory memoir of the writer, by Mr. C. Kegan Paul, throws a flood of light on the character of a remarkable woman whose chief claim to public notice seems, until recently, to have been that she was the wife of the philosopher Godwin, and the mother of Shelley's wife. Although the exceptional views on social questions so boldly asserted by this lady, will be held as extravagant and outré now as they were in the last century, Mr. C. Kegan Paul, in hallowing the memory of a pure, impassioned, and refined being through a life of toil and sorrow has nevertheless succeeded in painting so complete a picture of Mary Wollstonecraft that our just sympathy is excited for her as fully as these letters excite our disgust for the scoundrel Imlay who first stole her heart and then deserted her.

Mary Wollstonecraft to Captain Imlay.

Paris: September 22, 1794.

I have just written two letters, that are going by other conveyances, and which I reckon on your receiving long before this.

I therefore merely write, because I know I should be disappointed at seeing anyone who had left you if you did not send a letter, were it ever so short, to tell me why you did not write a longer, and you will want to be told, over and over again, that our little Hercules is quite recovered. Besides looking at me, there are three other things which delight her; to ride in a coach, to look at a scarlet waistcoat, and hear loud music-yesterday, at the fête, she enjoyed the two latter; but, to honour J. J. Rousseau, I intend to give her a sash, the first she has ever had round her-and why not?-for I have always been half in love with him.

Well, this you will say is trifling-shall I talk about alum or soap? There is nothing picturesque in your present pursuits; my imagination, then, rather chooses to ramble back to the Barrier with you, or to see you coming to meet me, and my basket of grapes. With what pleasure do I recollect your looks and words, when I have been sitting on the window, regarding the waving corn! Believe me, sage sir, you have not sufficient respect for the imagination. I could prove to you in a trice that it is the mother of sentiment, the great distinction of our nature, the only purifier of the passions -animals have a portion of reason, and equal, if not more exquisite senses; but no trace of imagination, or her offspring taste, appears in any of their actions. The impulse of the senses, passions, if you will, and the conclusions of reason, draw men together; but the imagination is the true fire, stolen from heaven, to animate this cold creature of clay, producing all those fine sympathies that lead to rapture, rendering men social by expanding their hearts, instead of leaving them leisure to calculate how many comforts society affords. If you call these observations romantic, a phrase in this place which would be tantamount to nonsensical, I shall be apt to retort, that you are embruted by trade and the vulgar enjoyments of life. Bring me then back your barrier face, or you shall have nothing to say to my barrier girl; and I shall fly from you, to cherish the remembrances that will ever be dear to me; for I am yours truly,

MARY.

CCXXX.

In the foregoing as well as in the following letter the writer refers to her child. Mary Wollstonecraft had given her heart to Imlay and considered herself Imlay's wife. To quote Mr. C. Kegan Paul: 'Her view was that a common affection was marriage, and that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love should die.'

Mary Wollstonecraft to Captain Imlay.

January 9, 1795.

I just now received one of your hasty notes; for business so entirely occupies you, that you have not time, or sufficient command of thought, to write letters. Beware! you seem to be got into a world of projects and schemes, which are drawing you into a gulf, that, if it do not absorb your happiness, will infallibly destroy mine.

Fatigued during my youth by the most arduous struggles, not only to obtain independence, but to render myself useful, not merely pleasure, for which I had the most lively taste,—I mean the simple pleasures that flow from passion and affection,-escaped me, but the most melancholy views of life were impressed by a disappointed heart on my mind. Since I knew you I have been endeavouring to go back to my former nature, and have allowed some time to glide away, winged with the delight which only spontaneous enjoyment can give. Why have you so soon dissolved the

charm?

I have still
The present

my feelings,

I am really unable to bear the continual inquietude which your and 's never-ending plans produce. This you may term want of firmness, but you are mistaken; sufficient firmness to pursue my principle of action. misery, I cannot find a softer word to do justice to appears to me unnecessary, and therefore I have not firmness to support it as you may think I ought. I should have been content, and still wish, to retire with you to a farm. My God! anything but these continual anxieties, anything but commerce, which debases the mind, and roots out affection from the heart.

I do not mean to complain of subordinate inconveniences; yet I will simply observe, that, led to expect you every week, I did

not make the arrangements required by the present circumstances, to procure the necessaries of life. In order to have them, a servant, for that purpose only, is indispensable. The want of wood has made me catch the most violent cold I ever had; and my head is so disturbed by continual coughing, that I am unable to write without stopping frequently to recollect myself. This however, is one of the common evils which must be borne with-bodily pain does not touch the heart, though it fatigues the spirits.

Still, as you talk of your return, even in February, doubtingly, I have determined, the moment the weather changes, to wean my child. It is too soon for her to begin to divide sorrow! And as one has well said, despair is a freeman, we will go and seek our fortune together. This is not a caprice of the moment, for your absence has given new weight to some conclusions that I was very reluctantly forming before you left me. I do not choose to be a secondary object. If your feelings were in unison with mine, you would not sacrifice so much to visionary prospects of future advantage.

CCXXXI.

This is the letter that made Tom Moore 'unhappy for days;' but he was not the only person who envied the literary veteran Samuel Rogers, who with an ample fortune was retiring from the field of literature full of honours and full of health, to devote the remainder of a long life to the luxury of travel abroad and to the enjoyment of the most refined and amusing society at home. The first part of his 'Italy' appeared in 1822, and the complete edition, delayed on account of the illustrations, and produced at an expense of 10,000l., was published a few years afterwards. There was a good margin of time for repose between this, his last work, and his death, which occurred in the year 1855, at the age of ninety-three.

Samuel Rogers to Thomas Moore.

Venice: October 17, 1814.

My dear Moore,-Last night in my gondola I made a vow I would write you a letter if it was only to beg you would write to me at Rome. Like the great Marco Polo, however, whose tomb I saw to-day, I have a secret wish to astonish you with my travels, and would take you with me, as you would not go willingly, from London to Paris, and from Paris to the Lake of Geneva, and so on

to this city of romantic adventure, the place from which he started. I set out in August last, with my sister and Mackintosh. He parted with us in Switzerland, since which time we have travelled on together, and happy should we have been could you and Psyche have made a quartett of it. I hope all her predictions have long ago been fulfilled to your mind, and that she, and you, and the bambini are all as snug and as happy as you can wish to be. By the way, I forgot one of your family, who, I hope, is still under your roof. I mean one of nine sisters-the one I have more than once made love to. With another of them, too, all the world knows your good fortune. Apropos of love, and such things, is Lord Byron to be married to Miss Milbanke, at last? I have heard it. But to proceed to business; Chamouny, and the Mer de Glace, Voltaire's chamber at Ferney, Gibbon's terrace at Lausanne, Rousseau's Isle of St. Pierre, the Lake of Lucerne, and the little Cantons, the passage over the Alps, the Lago Maggiore, Milan, Verona, Padua, Venice—what shall I begin with? but I believe I must refer you to my three Quartos on the subject, whenever they choose to appear. The most wonderful thing we have seen is Bonaparte's road over the Alps-as smooth as that in Hyde Park, and not steeper than St. James's Street. We left Savoy at seven in the morning, and slept at Domo d'Ossola in Italy that night. For twenty miles we descended through a mountain-pass, as rocky, and often narrower, than the narrowest part of Dovedale; the road being sometimes cut out of the mountain, and three times carried through it, leaving the torrent (and such a torrent!) to work its way by itself. The passages or galleries, as I believe the French engineers call them, were so long as to require large openings here and there for light, and the roof was hung with icicles, which the carriage shattered as it passed along, and which fell to the ground with a shrill sound. We were eight hours in climbing to the top and only three in descending. Our wheel was never locked, and our horses were almost always in a gallop. But I must talk to you a little about Venice. I cannot tell you what I felt, when the postillion turned gaily round, and, pointing with his whip, cried out, Venezia !' For there it was, sure enough, with its long line of domes and turrets glittering in the sun. I walk about here all day long in a dream. Is that the Rialto, I say to myself? Is this St. Mark's Place? Do I see the Adriatic? I think if you