consecration,
with all its tributary sighs! Too happy were the days and weeks
which I passed beneath its roof, and in its beautiful and sublime
environs, to permit such revisitation from me.

"It would break my heart amid its present consciousness, spread over
with a dark and impervious pall, which can never be drawn away.

"Dear, and amiable Miss Ponsonby, farewell."

From Lichfield, October 31st, 1805, we have another letter to Miss
Ponsonby, with the following tremendous opening:--

"Nothing, my dear Madam, is so common as hypocrisy and treachery
where property is concerned; but a greater excess of them never
poured their dark currents from the vulgar heart, than in those
circumstances which your last letter narrates.

"Thus ever be extortionate villany baffled--and long unclouded be the
peace which succeeds to that attempted injury. I cannot express how
much I am obliged that you took the kind trouble of retracing the
road of peril, which had so nearly engulfed a scene, whose beauties
rise perpetually in my sleeping and waking dreams."

What ever could have happened at Plas Newydd to excite so grand a burst
of tragic passion: here _is_ matter for curious speculation! Then Miss
Seward runs into a not very wise dissertation on politics; then reverts
to literary subjects, of which Horace Walpole's genius is the chief
topic; bemoans her own dizziness of the head; has another touch at Mr.
Pitt; and finally ejaculates "Adieu, dearest Madam! Your beloved Lady
Eleanor will accept my affectionate devoirs!" Why did not Miss Seward go
to Llangollen, to end her days in peace?

In the lively Memoirs of that celebrated Comedian, the late Mr. Charles
Matthews, we have the following humourous letters, descriptive of the
"Ladies of Llangollen:"--

"Oswestry, Sept. 4th. 1820.

"The dear inseparable inimitables, Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby,
were in the boxes here on Friday. They came twelve miles from
Llangollen, and returned, as they never sleep from home. Oh, such
curiosities! I was nearly convulsed. I could scarcely get on for
the first ten minutes after my eye caught them. Though I had never
seen them, I instantaneously knew them. As they are seated, there is
not one point to distinguish them from men: the dressing and
powdering of the hair; their well-starched neckcloths;