Mrs. Damer is again set out for the Continent to-day, to avoid the winter, which is already begun severely; we have had snow twice.  Till last year, I never knew snow in October since I can remember; which is no short time.  Mrs. Damer has taken with her her cousin Miss Campbell, daughter of poor Lady William, whom you knew, and who died last year.  Miss Campbell has always lived with Lady Aylesbury, and is a very great favourite and a very sensible girl.  I believe they will proceed to Italy, but it is not certain.  If they come to Florence, the Grand Duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters.  She has executed several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful one in the world, next to the Ponte di Trinita, and was principally designed by her father, General Conway.  Lady Spencer draws—­incorrectly indeed, but has great expression.  Italy probably will stimulate her, and improve her attention.  You see we blossom in ruin!  Poetry, painting, statuary, architecture, music, linger here,

    on this sea-encircled coast (GRAY),

as if they knew not whither to retreat farther for shelter, and would not trust to the despotic patronage of the Attilas, Alarics, Amalasuntas of the North!  They leave such heroic scourges to be decorated by the Voltaires and D’Alemberts of the Gauls, or wait till by the improvement of balloons they may be transported to some of those millions of worlds that Herschel[1] is discovering every day; for this new Columbus has thrown open the great gates of astronomy, and neither Spanish inquisitors nor English Nabobs will be able to torture and ransack the new regions and their inhabitants.  Adieu!

[Footnote 1:  Herschel, having constructed the largest telescope that at that time had ever been seen, in 1781 had given proof of its value by the discovery of the Georgium sidus.]

MRS. YEARSLEY—­MADAME PIOZZI—­GIBBON—­“LE MARIAGE DE FIGARO."

TO MISS HANNAH MORE.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Miss H. More was a remarkable woman.  She was the daughter of the village schoolmaster of Stapleton, near Bristol.  But though she had no higher education than he could give her, she soon began to show a considerable literary talent.  Her first compositions were dramas, one of which, “Percy,” Garrick accepted for the stage, where for a season it had fair success.  But she soon quitted that line for works of morality, intended to promote the religious improvement of society in her day.  The most celebrated of them was “Coelebs in Search of a Wife.”  But some of the tales which she published in “The Cheap Repository,” a series of stories for the common people, had a greater sale.  One, “The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,” was so popular that it is said that a million copies of it were sold.  Her talents led to her acquaintance being cultivated by such men as Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, and Bishop Porteus; and her exercise of them was so profitable, that though she gave large sums in charity, she left a fortune of L30,000.]