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 perfections 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 empress, 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 resi. dence 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,
Rosom'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.

As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave us the highest pleasure. At 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 clouds; the villages and turrets, partly shaded with trees of the

finest verdure, and partly raised above the groves that surrounded them; the dark plains and meadows of a grayish colour, where the sheep were feeding at large; in short, the view of the streams and rivers, convinced us that there was not a single useless or idle word in the above-mentioned description; but that it was a most exact and lively representation of nature. Thus will this fine passage, which has always been admired for its elegance, receive an additional beauty for its exactness. After we had walked, with a kind of poetical enthusiasm, over this enchanted ground, we returned to the village.

The poet's house was close to the church: the greatest part of it has been pulled down, and what remains belongs to an adjacent farm. I am in. formed that several papers, in Milton's own hand, were found by the gentleman who was last in possession of the estate. The tradition of his having lived there is current among the villagers: one of them showed us a ruinous wall that made part of his chamber; and I was much pleased with another, who had forgotten the name of Milton, but recollected him by the title of "The Poet."

It must not be omitted that the groves near this village are famous for nightingales, which are so elegantly described in "II Pensieroso." Most of the cottage-windows are overgrown with sweetbriers, vines, and honeysuckles; and that Milton's habitation had the same rustic ornament, we may conclude from his description of the lark bidding him good-morrow:

Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;

for it is evident that he meant a sort of honey suckle by the eglantine, though that word is com.

monly used for the sweet-brier, which he could not mention twice in the same couplet.

If I ever pass a month or six weeks at Oxford in the summer, I shall be inclined to hire and repair this venerable mansion, and to make a festival for a circle of friends in honour of Milton, the greatest scholar, as well as the sublimest poet, that our country ever produced. Such an honour will be less splendid, but more sincere and respectful, than all the pomp and ceremony on the banks of the Avon.

I have the honour to be, &c.

WILLIAM JONES.

DESCRIPTIVE LETTERS.

The Hon. Horace Walpole to G. Montagu, Esq. Strawberry Hill, June 15, 1768. No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it requires ten years to dig you out again when you once begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you, but tell me first, when do your duke and duchess travel to the north. I know he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see their house comfort. ably when they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you, before it reached us. It began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry thread