of retirement. When your are all well and in good spirits, she will add to your gaiety and pleasure: in the hours of sickness, she will alleviate pain by tender attentions. My amiable Miss G has made me know how much pleasure and comfort may be derived from a near connexion with a person, who adds to the various agrémens of youth, the discretion, and sober, and solid merit of a mature character. The seasons of life have been often compared to the seasons of the year, and each have their comforts. I think the calm autumn of life, as well as of the year, has many advantages. Both have a peculiar serenity, a gentle tranquillity. We are less busy and agita-ted, because the hopes of the spring, and the vivid delights of the summer, are over; but these tranquil seasons have their appropriate enjoy ments; and a well regulated mind sees every thing beautiful that is in the order of nature. I hope your Lordship received my acknowledgements and thanks for your excellent sentiments on religious education. To errours, defects, and faults, in the first training up, we may often ascribe the irre ligion of many persons; for, philosophically speaking, man is a religious animal. Sensible of his weakness, he is ever desirous of obtaining the assistance of a superiour Being. The most ignorant are sensible, that great power and intelligence must kave combined to form all they see in the creation: they wish for the protection and favour of this Great Being. Man must be much perverted, before he can wish to disbelieve a God and providence. His interest must be misrepresented to him, or he would never reject the means of fered by Divine Revelation to make the Omnipotent his friend. The unsophisticated man is never an atheist. But when either erroneous impress ions have been made upon the youthful mind, as where the Deity has been held forth as a wrathful being, clothed in terrours; or where he has observed, that those with whom he has lived, have not acted with any reference to a Superiour Power, be is casily made the disciple of those who call themselves Freethinkers. Our Bishops are now in their dioceses. When they return to town, I will not fail to communicate what you sent me. I cannot imagine it is calculated to give the slightest offence. Beyond the regions of human knowledge, human authority can not form establishments of doctrine. I shall always be glad to find excuses to write to you. I passed the summer in Berkshire, but removed to London the first week in November. No augur ever paid more regard to the flight of birds than I do. I take a hint from the swallows to leave the country. To what region_they repair, I do not know enough of their constitutions and taste to say; but I will pronounce, that for a human creature, of flimsy materials of mind and body, a capital city is the best situation. The weather has less power there; the blank and silence of the vegetable and animal world is less perceived, and there are great resources in society to prevent our feeling our own insignificance and weakness. My new house affords me many comforts; but it has lost at present its best ornament. My amiable Miss G is now making a visit to her family at Edinburgh; but I flatter myself she will return to me some time in the next month. In the mean while I reflect with satisfaction on the happiness she is enjoying in her friends and they in her. My best and most affectionate regards attend all at Blair-Drummond. And I am, with the greatest esteem, &c. ELIZ. MONTAGUA The Honourable FISHER AMES, the ornament of the bar, the delight of his friends, and the boast of his country, died at the early age of fifty years, on the fourth day of July last, the anniversary of American Independence, which he had spent his life to support and perpetuate. The following character from one, who knew him well, will be read as the tribute of justice rather than the fond exaggeration of eulogy. ED. ANTH.] To say that Mr. Ames was a great and good man, though rarely said with more justice, is not sufficiently discriminative. The greatness of his mind has such distinguishing lines, such peculiar features, as form a very distinct, individual picture. Few men, in this, or any country, have possessed what may be truly called genius, in a more eminent degree than Mr. Ames. If we regard his understanding, so acute and profound does it appear, that it would seem nature had intended him for a logician: if we regard his imagination, it would seem that nature had intended him for a poet, so ductile, so excursive, so brilliant does it appear. He was indeed both, for there was no subject so complex, or subtle that he could not comprehend, analyze and embellish it. His thoughts were ingenious, original and profound; now abounding with points and contrasts, now sportively diffused, and now vigorously condensed. In his use of figurative language, there was sometimes such a brilliancy of colouring, such an excess of light, as almost to confuse ordinary perceptions. Hence it sometimes happened, that he was regarded as a man of fine imagination merely, when in truth, the imagery, that excited so much admiration, was not mere decoration, but pictured the sentiment and thought itself. Such was the versatility of his mind, that he could, and often did, when the occasion required it, reason in a close and dry manner; but his arguments were more frequently attended with such vivid illustrations, as to take away the im pression of a logical deduction, though they displayed all its truth and certainty. So copious was his mind, that his thoughts flowed like a perennial spring, always full, always pressing for utterance; such the multitude of his ideas, that no variety of discussion seemed to diminish them; and so rapid were his associations, that to some he appeared to wander from his subject, while he was only placing it in new lights, or pursuing it in a new manner. His knowledge of human nature was so thorough, that, like Shakespeare, he needed not to consult it "through the spectacles of books." His knowledge of books, however, was very general, and his acquaintance with history, in particular, was minute and extensive; yet his learn ing rarely ever appeared as such, s incorporated was it with his habits of thinking, so subservient at all times to his purpose, that it seemed to spring spontaneously from his mind to give authority to sentiments. Thus gifted by nature, and thus furnished with knowledge, politicks, so complex, so refined, and yet so interesting, almost absorbed those faculties, that, employed in any work of ethicks or general literature, would have given him a preeminent name. The causes and consequences of revolutions, the principles on which free governments can be supported, the nature and kind of those dangers, to which they are exposed from within and without, were often the theme of his discourse, and often employed his pen. The combined and multiform operations of the interests and passions of men in states, or of governments in the more extended circle of coalitions were equally within the reach of his comprehensive and perspicacious mind. Hence many of his political speculations on the passing events of his own and other countries have all the authority of predictions fulfilled, and now fulfilling. His imagination was that faculty of his mind, which excited most surprise. It appeared to be an attending spirit, that accompanied and assisted in the operations of his intellect; sometimes assembling the most pleasing images, from nature and art, and spreading over them all the colours of heaven; at others, rising in the storm, wielding the elements, or flashing with the most awful splendours. It has been often said, that genfus is allied to that eccentrick and wayward conduct, to those vices and imperfections, which spring from strong passions and quick sensibilises; and many are disposed to claim exemption for it from the observance of the sober duties, the ordinary virtues and customary forms of life. But who, let me ask, ever more strongly felt the inspirations of genius than Mr. Ames? Yet who was more temperate, moral or stable in his habits? Or who possessed a truer discernment of all the proprieties of polished life, or observed them with more unaffected ease ? Non vixit sibi-was never more truly applied, for he was a patriot in truth and in deed. Patriotism had its seat in his heart, and to use his own language, was "twisted into its minutest filaments." It was in him a virtue of the highest order; it was almost exalted into piety; it had all the ardour, which infamed the best men of Greece or Rome, tempered and guided by the solid convictions of a christian. It forsook him only with his life. It is not for me to speak of his disinterested zeal, the long continued labours of his pen; these I trust will appear in due season, the just pride of his country, and his own best eulogy. The loss of such a man, in any times, and especially in such as the present, cannot easily be calculated. The impulse he gave to publick opinion, the light he imparted to it, by his speeches, his writings, and his conversations, extended like circles on the smooth surface of the water far beyond our sight, and continued long after the cause had ceased to operate. Who or what can fill the chasm his death has made? Alas, our hopes seem buried with him in the tomb! In vain our sorrows linger there. The lustre of his eye that once shone the clear mirrour of his fervid mind is obscured! That eloquence which once carried dismay and trembling through the ranks of opposition is dumb forever! on some errand of good will. His wit was brilliant and almost incessant, but it never made one "honest man his foe." Assured of his delicate regard to the feelings of others, we could behold the play of his fancy and wit without uneasiness; for in his most relaxed moments he seemed to have some object of util That vigorous and pervading mind, that so often displayed our dangers and their remedies, is gone into another state of being; but we thank God, that such monuments of its wisdom remain to direct us in the right course, and that such an example is left us to pursue it. That luminary, which so often threw its beams across the darkness and con-ity in view. Few, very few" idle fusion of the publick mind,has gradually and serenely sunk from our sight to appear in another hemisphere arrayed in new splendours. In his conversation and manners there was something so sincere, so frank, so affable, and so cheerful, that his political enemies, and he had no others, were conciliated into a regard for the man ; but when he appeared among his friends and acquaintance, they felt an elevation of sentiment, a serene delight, like what would be experienced if a su- ` periour intelligence should visit us, words" escaped his lips, and we can with equal truth and consolation say, that his "ten talents were well employed." I cannot dwell on the unobserved offices of his friendly heart, on his private and domestick virtues; there was something in them so pure, so elevated, and so tender, that those, who have never known or felt them, cannot be made to understand them, and those, who have, cherish their memory with something of a sacred regard. thought with Shakspeare, though we could almost swear that both were original. As the following: Then all was well, over the same region of thought, and the difference may be seen between nervous simplicity, and harsh conciseness and often swelling obscurity. The aim of Young and of Sound was the body, and the soul serene, Blair was probably the same, and Like two sweet instruments, ne'er out of These coincidencies are casual, but in general, as has been well observed, Blair wrote, not exactly as Shakspeare has written, but as he would have written on the same subject. His poem is short, and therefore did not admit of a very methodical plan. We may observe, however, that, beginning with the description of his immediate subject, the Grave, with all its sombre pomp and circumstance, he is led to lament the separations it occasions, to paint the sorrows of parted love, and to recal with pathetick enthusiasm the delights of former friendship. Then launching forth into a description of the triumphs of Death, he shows how little all our best perfections avail against his power, and describes the various classes, who have been compelled to submit to his order. The natural succession of thought in a christian mind suggests the sweet consolation of a future existence, and gives a joyful conclusion to his sombre poem. This plan affords sufficient regularity to the arrangement, and assigns a sufficiently definite place to every descrip tion. The qualities of Blair's style, as was observed above, are strength and boldness: compare it with that of Young, whose subject led him no two authors can more fairly be put in comparison; but the single jewel of the latter has more increased the treasures of poetry, than the overflowing coffers of the former with all their riches; for rich they undoubtedly are in valuable thought, in elegant illustration, and often in the best style of nervous conciseness. There is in some authors a felicity of expression, that art can never acquire, and which, if not immediately natural, must be the fruit of an exquisite quickness, and delicacy of taste. This felicity has been applauded in Horace it has been often remarked, and as often denied in Gray. None however ever refused the praise of it to Shakspeare, and impartial posterity will be equally unanimous in allowing it to Blair. In criticism assertion is nothing without example, but, unless I am much deceived, the following expressions, among many others, are sufficient proofs. Dark night, Dark as was Chaos, ere the infant sun Was rolled together, or had tried his beams Athwart the gloom profound.— Who made even thicklipped, musing Melancholy To gather up her face into a smile, Before she was aware.— And the following at once of felicity and tenderness; There the warm lover, leaving the cool shade, The tell tale echo, and the bubbling stream, Time out of mind the favourite seats of love, |