Man, who harassed, baffled, shrinking, God in Heaven marks thine anguish, Sees each struggle, hears each moan, And upon thy pain-wrung forehead Soon will set a starry crown, When thou hast passed through the grave's dark porta Into the Life of the Immortal. Widowed Queen! most desolate Will not unheeded let thee mourn, Those whom He loves He chasteneth; And by this fiery anguish tried, Strengthened, ennobled, purified, Thou shalt live for aye by thy loved one's side So in all time of agony, And in all time of fear, Cry unto Him, and though low thy cry Far up above the bright blue sky, Yet He is ever near, For He the Lord hath sworn to be L. F. VI.-MRS. DELANY.* The THERE is such a charm in truth, and in all which bears a veracious impress of human character, that the second series of Lady Llanover's work, though it only gives us quiet family letters of a group of people, in which two old ladies of seventy were the principal figures, will be read with unflagging interest by those who care for biographical history. The chequered life of Mary Granville, Mrs. Pendarves, had subsided into quietness long before the epoch at which this series of letters commences. Dean of Down, her second husband, appears as an aged man, nearly eighty years old; and her dear sister, Mrs. Dewes, is dead. The date is 1761-a century and one year ago; and Mrs. Delany's letters are written from Delville, near Dublin, to her brother, Mr. Bernard Granville, and to her niece and nephews, Mary, Court, and John Dewes. Now that her sister is dead, her strongest affections centre on Mary Dewes, whose portrait is given, engraved from an enamel by Zincke, in possession of Madame de Bunsen; a fair young girl, with fine delicate features, and curly hair combed back from her forehead. The Aunt's letters are so pretty, so tender, that one feels them to be all alive with the life of love, though writer and reader have been long in their graves. Numerous letters from the * "The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, with interesting reminiscences of King George III. and Queen Charlotte." Edited by the Right Hon. Lady Llanover. Series 2nd, Vol. III. Bentley.. Countess Cowper to the same young girl are also given. This lady was a Granville by birth, and was also godmother to Mary Dewes; she must have been a sprightly woman, not unlike "Lady G." in Sir Charles Grandison. She was warmly attached to her godchild, and writes loving, dashing epistles, more like those of one playfellow to another than of elder to younger. Mary Dewes is indeed the heroine of the first thick volume, and the occasion of most of the wise and witty things that were said. Her Aunt writes to her, in 1762, that " our Governor " (Lord Halifax) is leaving Ireland, and that the young ladies, his daughters, mourn, "for they are so very young as to think a round of hurrying pleasures is happiness; not considering what a loss of time it is to devote all their hours to amusements. I don't mean any reflection on the Lady M-'s, for their station here has required them to lead the life they have done, and they have acquitted themselves with a great deal of civility and good humour; but I only condemn the choice of spending every day in a public place, though I don't fear this disposition in you, my dear child, because you have early had great advantages and the good seed that has been sown will spring up, and you will reap the advantage of it; reading and thinking requires leisure, and without it the mind will be dissipated, and always trifling. Our business in this world, my dear, is preparing for another; and in order to make that exchange a happy one, we must act up to the name we have taken upon us, of Christianity. The rules are plain and easy, if indolence or luxury do not interfere and blind us, and a habit of doing our duty regularly is the best guard against the evils and temptations that beset us, and by accustoming ourselves to that regularity, we shall find no manner of difficulty, but rather be uneasy at any omission. think your judgment very right of 'Lady Julia,' &c. (a fashionable novel of the day). I was so much pleased with the beginning of it, that the conclusion quite provoked me, for I think it spoils the whole. You are raised to the highest admiration of the hero of the piece, who is made worthy and amiable, and then ends his life like a Lovelace, and not one moral to be drawn from the rash and sad catastrophe. How differently has Mr. Richardson done by his good characters! Every suffering and calamity they endure are the means of making them noble examples of Christianity, which is not so much as hinted at by the author of 'Lady J. Mandeville.'” I In another letter, she tells her niece of a wedding, at which the Dean of Down gave away the bride, Miss Chapone; and how in the morning he presented the bridegroom, Dr. Sandford, with a pair of gold buttons and a verse of poetry, which might be worse, from a stately old Dean of one hundred years ago. ""Tis an emblem of marriage, of two I make one, Then may yours, like to mine, for ever remain For a specimen of the letters Mary Dewes received from her lively godmama, here is one, dated July 5th, 1766: "I am sure my dear girl will be impatient to hear how I got here. I sat out at six o'clock on Monday morning from sweet Richmond, breakfasted with Lady Frances Bulkeley, delivered your letter to Lady Mary Mordaunt, who was pleased with the caul, dined at Bugden, and lay at Stilton; should have reached Stamford that night, but had tired horses one post; breakfasted there on Tuesday. I did not climb trees, but I was very near swimming at Carlton, the waters being out. I asked the post-boy whether the water was deep; he said, 'No, only a slop;' but it proved such a 'slop' as half filled my chaise! I caught up my feet so quick that my shoes were not wet through, but my petticoats were, and I was obliged to sit in them, but was so lucky as not to catch cold. After the water was ladled out of the chaise [this carriage would now be called a chariot, and was not understood to mean a hack chaise, as was the case in the present century] I got some dry straw and laid at the bottom of the chaise, which was not dry when I got here, and when I arrived at the next stage got out and had hot napkins pinned to my petticoats whilst I dined, and lay at Doncaster that night. At supper, the landlord told me 'my lads' were so much fatigued they were gone to bed, and the next day Cartwright was so knocked up I was forced to treat him with postchaises for four posts. Mrs. Godwin, [Lady C's maid,] I called up every morning upon the road, though she slept great part of the way, and often tumbled upon me in the chaise! I read going up the hills, and was neither fatigued nor sleepy, and arrived here fresh enough for ball, (had not my dancing days been over) by twelve at noon on Thursday. In all my difficulties I remembered you, and thought it might have been worse, and was quite a philosopher." Then come quaint letters from M. Rousseau, who was intimate with Mr. Bernard Granville, and who reappears occasionally in these volumes, sending polite messages to Mary Dewes in the character of " un vieux berger." Mrs. Delany, however, does not appear ever to have seen Rousseau, of whose opinions she entertained considerable dread, and she writes to her niece, in 1776, that she "always takes alarm when virtue in general terms is the idol without the support of religion, the only foundation that can be our security to rest upon; that great plausibility and pomp of expression is deluding, and requires great accuracy of judgment not to be imposed upon by it." The italics are the wise old lady's own; but the whole sentence, though somewhat stiffly expressed, strikes the ear as equally applicable to various theories of the present day. In May, 1768, the Dean of Down died, at the age of eighty-four, and this event caused the remainder of his wife's days to be spent in England. She passed a great deal of her time with the Duchess of Portland, at Bulstrode, a delightful old woman, always deep in VOL. IX. D botany and the natural sciences. The Duchess goes to the Peak to get plants, and M. Rousseau with her, who calls himself l'herboriste de Madame la Duchesse de Portland; she has quite a museum at Bulstrode, has birds, gold and silver fish, shells, fossils, and fungi. Mrs. Delany records in every letter some instance of the Duchess's vivacious delight in science. "It is pleasant to see how she enjoys all her own possessions, and at the same time is so ready to give every other place its due . . . Mr. Elliot is here, and she is very busy in adding to her English herbal; she has been transported at the discovery of a new wild plant, a Helleboria." Her Grace at one time fills her breakfast room so full with sieves, pans, and platters, being apparently immersed in the study of water-plants, that, notwithstanding twelve chairs and a couch, it becomes difficult to find a seat. She naturally consorts with men of science, and the pair of aged friends go to "Mr. Bank's house in New Burlington Street," to see the wonderful plants he has brought from Otaheite, and the remarkable dress worn by the savages who killed Captain Cook. Occasionally we have glimpses of Court life, of which Mrs. Delany reports the hearsay to her niece, as, for instance, of a ball at the Queen's house, where the Queen danced, besides minuets, four country dances with the King of Denmark. The King danced all night, changing partners, as the rest did, every two dances, and finished with Lady Mary Lowther and the Hemp-dressers, that lasts two hours. The eight bars of this exciting melody are given as described by Walsh in 1718, with directions for dancing it, which are far from complicated. Delicious old picture of King George III. in his youth! One wonders whether Lady Mary Lowther did not get a little tired before the two hours were out! But we must not linger over the endless suggestions of the various correspondences, for we have to see Miss Mary Dewes through her courtship and marriage to one Mr. Port of Ilam, a gentleman of ancient family and good estate, with whom, nevertheless, the course of true love did not run perfectly smooth, for the fair lady's uncle, Mr. Bernard Granville, was for some unexplained reason opposed to the match, and contrived to make everybody very uncomfortable. The following singular love-letter, if such it may be called, written by Miss Dewes to Mr. Port during the cloudy period, shows a mixture of ideas in the young lady's mind, a devotion to grammar and moonlight, a prudential hint regarding the uncle, and an anxiety as to the matching of the furniture in her new home, if ever she became its mistress, which is very quaint and amusing: MY DEAR MR. PORT, Richmond, Saturday, June 9th, 1770. I sent you such a strange and, I fear, almost unintelligible scrawl last Thursday, that I fear you could scarce make it out, but I was so much straitened in time, that had I not been pretty expeditious, I could not have written at all, which I hope will plead my excuse, otherwise, I am sure, there are many wanted. |