' are
wafting to distant lands the produce of this commercial nation. Thus all
the mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most
effulgent colouring of an ardent imagination. Borne on her soaring
pinions, I wing my flight to the time when Heaven shall have crowned my
labours with success and opulence. I see sumptuous palaces rising to
receive me; I see orphans, and widows, and painters, and fidlers, and
poets, and builders, protected and encouraged; and when the fabrick is
pretty nearly finished by my shattered pericranium, I cast my eyes
around, and find John Andre by a small coal-fire in a gloomy
compting-house in Warnford Court, nothing so little as what he has been
making himself, and in all probability never to be much more than he is
at present. But, oh! my dear Honora! it is for thy sake only I wish for
wealth.--You say she was somewhat better at the time you wrote last. I
must flatter myself that she will soon be without any remains of this
threatening disease.

"It is seven o'clock.--You and Honora, with two or three more select
friends, are now probably encircling your dressing-room fireplace. What
would I not give to enlarge that circle! The idea of a clean hearth, and
a snug circle round it, formed by a few select friends, transports me.
You seem combined together against the inclemency of the weather, the
hurry, bustle, ceremony, censoriousness, and envy of the world. The
purity, the warmth, the kindly influence of fire, to all for whom it is
kindled, is a good emblem of the friendship of such amiable minds as
Julia's and her Honora's. Since I cannot be there in reality, pray,
imagine me with you; admit me to your _conversationes_:--Think how I
wish for the blessing of joining them!--and be persuaded that I take
part in all your pleasures, in the dear hope, that, ere it be very long,
your blazing hearth will burn again for me. Pray, keep me a place; let
the poker, tongs, or shovel represent me:--But you have Dutch tiles,
which are infinitely better; so let Moses, or Aaron, or Balaam's ass be
my representative.

"But time calls me to Clapton. I quit you abruptly till to-morrow: when,
if I do not tear the nonsense I have been writing, I may perhaps
increase its quantity. Signora Cynthia is in clouded majesty. Silvered
with her beams, I am about to jog to Clapton upon my own stumps; musing,
as I homeward plod my way.--Ah! need I name the subject of my
contemplations?

"_Thursday_.

"I had