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re is not come to town. You may be sure I am glad that Caesar is baffled; I neither honour nor esteem him. If he is preferring his nephew to his brother, it is using the latter as ill as the rest of the world. Mrs. Damer is again set out for the Continent to-day, to avoid the winter, which is already begun severely; we have had snow twice. Till last year, I never knew snow in October since I can remember; which is no short time. Mrs. Damer has taken with her her cousin Miss Campbell, daughter of poor Lady William, whom you knew, and who died last year. Miss Campbell has always lived with Lady Aylesbury, and is a very great favourite and a very sensible girl. I believe they will proceed to Italy, but it is not certain. If they come to Florence, the Grand Duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful one in the world, next to the Ponte di Trinita, and was principally designed by her father, General Conway. Lady Spencer draws--incorrectly indeed, but has great expression. Italy probably will stimulate her, and improve her attention. You see we blossom in ruin! Poetry, painting, statuary, architecture, music, linger here, on this sea-encircled coast (GRAY), as if they knew not whither to retreat farther for shelter, and would not trust to the despotic patronage of the Attilas, Alarics, Amalasuntas of the North! They leave such heroic scourges to be decorated by the Voltaires and D'Alemberts of the Gauls, or wait till by the improvement of balloons they may be transported to some of those millions of worlds that Herschel[1] is discovering every day; for this new Columbus has thrown open the great gates of astronomy, and neither Spanish inquisitors nor English Nabobs will be able to torture and ransack the new regions and their inhabitants. Adieu! [Footnote 1: Herschel, having constructed the largest telescope that at that time had ever been seen, in 1781 had given proof of its value by the discovery of the _Georgium sidus_.] _MRS. YEARSLEY--MADAME PIOZZI--GIBBON--"LE MARIAGE DE FIGARO."_ TO MISS HANNAH MORE.[1] [Footnote 1: Miss H. More was a remarkable woman. She was the daughter of the village schoolmaster of Stapleton, near Bristol. But though she had no higher
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