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 a sweet walk home last night, and found the Claptonians, with their fair guest, a Miss Mourgue, very well.  My sisters send their amities, and will write in a few days.

“This morning I returned to town.  It has been the finest day imaginable; a solemn mildness was diffused throughout the blue horizon; its light was clear and distinct rather than dazzling; the serene beams of an autumnal sun!  Gilded hills, variegated woods, glittering spires, ruminating herds, bounding flocks, all combined to enchant the eyes, expand the heart, and ‘chase all sorrows but despair.’