have translated several of them, and
shall proceed in my translations, till I have filled a Lilliputian
paper-book I happen to have by me, which, when filled, I shall present
to Mr. Bull. He is her passionate admirer, rode twenty miles to see
her picture in the house of a stranger, which stranger politely
insisted on his acceptance of it, and it now hangs over his parlour
chimney. It is a striking portrait, too characteristic not to be a
strong resemblance, and were it encompassed with a glory, instead of
being dressed, in a nun's hood, might pass for the face of an angel.

"Our meadows are covered with a winter-flood in August; the rushes with
which our bottomless chairs were to have been bottomed, and much hay,
which was not carried, are gone down the river on a voyage to Ely, and
it is even uncertain whether they will ever return. Sic transit gloria
mundi!

"I am glad you have found a curate, may he answer! Am happy in Mrs.
Bouverie's continued approbation; it is worth while to write for such a
reader. Yours,

"W. C."

The power of imparting interest to commonplace incidents is so great
that we read with a sort of excitement a minute account of the
conversion of an old card-table into a writing and dining-table, with
the causes and consequences of that momentous event, curiosity having
been first cunningly aroused by the suggestion that the clerical friend
to whom the letter is addressed might, if the mystery were not
explained, be haunted by it when he was getting into his pulpit, at
which time, as he had told Cowper, perplexing questions were apt to
come into his mind.

A man who lived by himself could have little but himself to write
about. Yet in these letters there is hardly a touch of offensive
egotism. Nor is there any querulousness, except that of religious
despondency. From those weaknesses Cowper was free. Of his proneness
to self-revelation we have had a specimen already.

The minor antiquities of the generations immediately preceding ours are
becoming rare, as compared with those of remote ages, because nobody
thinks it worth while to preserve them. It is almost as easy to get a
personal memento of Priam or Nimrod as it is to get a harpsichord, a
spinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch-back. An Egyptian wig is
attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is hardly so, much less a tie of
the Regency. So it is with the scenes of common life a century or two
ago. They are being lost, bec