LADY EMILY.

DEAR, EMILY,--Business of great importance to the country has, prevented
my writing to you before. I hope you have continued well since I heard
from you last, and that you do all you can to preserve that retrenchment
of unnecessary expenses, and observe that attention to a prudent
economy, which is no less incumbent upon individuals than nations.

Thinking that you must be dull at E------, and ever anxious both to
entertain and to improve you, I send you an excellent publication by Mr.
Tooke, together with my own two last speeches, corrected by myself.

Trusting to hear from you soon, I am, with best love to Henry,

Very affectionately yours,

JOHN MANDEVILLE.

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.

Well, Monkton, I have been to E-----; that important event in my
monastic life has been concluded. Lady Margaret was as talkative as
usual; and a Mrs. Dalton, who, I find, is an acquaintance of yours,
asked very tenderly after your poodle and yourself. But Lady Emily!
Ay, Monkton, I know not well how to describe her to you. Her beauty
interests not less than it dazzles. There is that deep and eloquent
softness in her every word and action, which, of all charms, is the most
dangerous. Yet she is rather of a playful than of the melancholy and
pensive nature which generally accompanies such gentleness of manner;
but there is no levity in her character; nor is that playfulness of
spirit ever carried into the exhilaration of what we call "mirth." She
seems, if I may use the antithesis, at once too feeling to be gay, and
too innocent to be sad. I remember having frequently met her husband.
Cold and pompous, without anything to interest the imagination, or
engage the affections, I am not able to conceive a person less congenial
to his beautiful and romantic wife. But she must have been exceedingly
young when she married him; and she, probably, knows not yet that she is
to be pitied, because she has not yet learned that she can love.

Le veggio in fronte amor come in suo seggio
Sul crin, negli occhi--su le labra amore
Sol d'intorno al suo cuore amor non veggio.

I have been twice to her house since my first admission there. I love to
listen to that soft and enchanting voice, and to escape from the gloom
of my own reflections to the brightness, yet simplicity, of hers. In my
earlier days this comfort would have been attended with danger; but we
grow callous fro