set out with; and the sight of my friend's country seat and beautiful grounds, which I reached on the third evening, did not belie it. How it has improved by my stay there, you shall judge by a short sketch of the country life people lead at L Hall.

The party there, which my relation had told me was to be a select one, and which made him doubly urgent in his desire to have me there this autumn, consisted of an elderly dowager of rank and fortune, and her two unmarried daughters; a member of parliament, and his brother, a clergyman from England; and two young officers of family, companions of Mr. L's eldest son, who has been about a year in the army. These, with your humble servant, in addition to Mr. L's own family, made up the standing establishment of the house. There were besides, every day, numerous occasional visiters from the neighborhood; Mr. L representing the county in parliament, and receiving the instructions of his constituents at this time of the year only.

The night of my arrival, I took the liberty of retiring before the rest of the company, being a good deal fatigued with my journey. Next morning, however, I got up betimes to enjoy the beauties of the season, and of the calm clear landscape around me. But when I would have gone out, I found the house door locked. After various unsuccessful attempts to discover the retreat of the servants, I met a ragged little fellow, who told me he was boy to the porter's man, and the only creature besides myself stirring in the house, for that Mr. L's gentleman had given a supper to the servants who had lately arrived from town, and they had all sat up at cards till five in the morning. By the interest of this young friend, I at last procured the key, and was let out. I strolled the way to the stables, of which I found the entry much easier than the exit from the house, the door being left very conveniently open. The horses from town had not been quite so well entertained as the servants; for they were standing with empty mangers, and the dirt of the day before hardened on their skins. But this was not much to be wondered at, as a pack of cards certainly affords a much pleasanter occupation than a currycomb.

Having rubbed down a favorite poney, which I had brought to the country for an occasional ride, and locked the stable door, I turned down a little path that led to the shrubbery; but I was afraid to enter any of the walks, as it was notified, by very legible inscriptions, that there were man traps, and steel guns, for the reception of intruders. I was forced therefore to restrict myself to a walk amidst the dust of the high road till ten, when on my return to the house, I found no less dust within doors, and I was obliged to take refuge in my bedroom till the break

fasting parlor was put in order. By one of the servants, whom, from his surly look, I supposed to be a loser of the preceding night, I was informed that breakfast for some of the company would be ready by eleven.

At eleven I found some of the company assembled accordingly. The dowager did not appear, nor Mrs. L——— herself, but had chocolate in their different apartments: it seems they could not be made up, as one of the young ladies expressed it, so early their daughters seemed to have been made up in haste, for they came down in rumpled night caps, and their hair in a brown paste upon their shoulders. The young gentlemen joined with us the second teapot; their heads were in disorder too, but of a different kind; they had drank, as they told us, three bowls of gin toddy after the rest of the company had gone to bed. The master of the house entered the room when breakfast was nearly over: he asked pardon of his brother senator and the clergyman for being so late; but he had been detained, he said, looking over his farm; for he is a great improver of the value as well as the beauty of his estate. "Did you ride or walk, Sir?" said I. Mr. L- smiled. "I walked only to the easy chair in my library: I always view my farm upon paper: Mr. Capability, my governor in these matters, drives through it in his phaeton, and lays down every thing so accurately, that I have no occasion to go near it."

66

Breakfast ended about one. The young gentlemen talked of going out a-shooting; but the weather was such as to scare any but hardy sportsmen; so they agreed to play billiards and cards within doors, in which they were joined by all the senior gentlemen except myself. I proposed to betake myself to the library; but I found an unwillingness in our host to let me take down any of the books, which were so elegantly bound and gilt, and ranged in such beautiful order, that it seemed contrary to the etiquette of the house to remove any of them from the shelves; but there was a particular selection in the parlor, which the company was at liberty to peruse; it was made up of Hoyle's Games, the List of the Army, two Almanacs, the Royal Register, a file of the Morning Herald, Boswell's Tour, the Fashionable Magazine, the Trial of the Brighton Tailor, and an odd volume of the last collection of farces.

Mrs. L, and her friend the dowager, made their appearance about two. As I was neither of the billiard or the whist party, and had finished my studies in the parlor, they did me the honor to admit me of their conversazione. It consisted chiefly of a dissertation on some damask and chintz furniture Mrs. L- had lately bespoke from the metropolis, and a dispute about the age of a sulky set of china she had bought last winter,

at a sale of Lord Squanderfield's. In one of the pauses of the debate, the day having cleared up beautifully, I ventured to ask the two ladies, if they ever walked in the country. The dowager said, she never walked on account of her corns; Mrs. Ltold me, she had not walked since she caught a sore throat in one of the cold evenings of the year 1782.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the young ladies, with half a score of packing boxes, just received by a ship from London. These changed the current of the discourse to the subject of dress, to caps, feathers, hats, and riding habits. The military men now joined us, and made a very valuable addition to this board of inquiry, by their commentaries on walking boots, riding slippers, clubs, buckles, and buttons. We had, not long after, an opportunity of judging of the practice, as well as theory, of those branches of the fine arts. Dinner was half cold, waiting for the dowager's eldest daughter, and the major. They had spent about two hours at their toilets; yet the hurry of the major appeared, by his having forgot to put in the false strap to his buckles; and of the young lady, from one cheek being at least half a shade redder than the other. The ladies went to tea at nine o'clock, and we joined them at eleven, after having discussed the prices of different sets of boroughs at one end of the table, and the qualities of several racehorses and gamecocks at the other.

Such, Sir, is the detail of one day at the rural retirement of my friend Mr. L―, which may serve for the history of most of those I spent there. We had, however, our sabbath-day's employment, and our sabbath-day's guest, as well as your godmother. The first Sunday after my arrival being a rainy one, Mrs. L, and most of our party accompanying her, went to the parish church. The English clergyman would not consent to so wicked a thing as going to a Presbyterian place of worship, and therefore staid at home, to look over a party at picquet in the dowager's dressing-room, between her and his brother. I went with the churchgoing people for that one time, but shall never do so profane a thing again. The young folks nodded and laughed all the time of the service, and during the sermon drew back their chairs from the front of the gallery, ate nuts, and pelted the shells. The major only was more seriously employed, in drawing caricatures of the congregation below, for which, it must be confessed, some of them afforded no unfavorable subjects.

The parson of the parish, like your old lady's, was always a Sunday visiter at L hall. He had been tutor to the heir and his second brother, and had the honor of inspiring them both with a most sovereign contempt and detestation of learning.

He, too, like your godmother's clergyman, communicated information; to the ladies, he related the little scandalous anecdotes of the parish, and gave his former pupils intelligence of several coveys of partridges. Himself afforded them game within doors, being what is commonly called a butt to the unfledged arrows of the young gentlemen's wit. To their father he was extremely useful in drawing corks, and putting him in mind where the toast stood. In short, he seemed a favorite with all the branches of the family. As to religion, it fared with that as with the literature he had been employed to instil into his pupils he contrived to make all the house think it a very ridiculous thing.

About a fortnight after I went to L- hall, the arrival of an elderly baronet from town, an old club companion of Mr. L's, added one other rural idea to the stock we were already in possession of; I mean that of eating, in which our new guest, Sir William Harrico, was a remarkable adept. Every morning at breakfast we had a dissertation on dinner, the bill of fare being brought up for the revisal of Sir William. He taught us a new way of dressing mushrooms, oversaw the composition of the grouse soup in person, and gave the venison a reprieve to a certain distant day, when it should acquire the exactly proper fumet for the palate of a connoisseur.

Such, Mr. Lounger, is the train of "rural sentiment" which I have cultivated during my autumn abode at L― hall. I think I might, without leaving town, have acquired the receipt for the mushroom ragout, and have eat stinking venison there as well as in the country. I could have played cards or billiards at noonday with as much satisfaction in a crowded street, as in view of Mr. L's woods and mountains. The warehouse in Prince's street might have afforded me information as to chintz and damask chair covers; and your ingenious correspondent, Mr. Jenkin, could have shown me a model of the newest fashioned buckle on the foot of some of his little scarlet beaux, or of a rouged cheek on one of the miniature ladies of his window. In short, I am inclined to believe that folly, affectation, ignorance, and irreligion, might have been met with in town, notwithstanding the labors of the Lounger; that I might have saved myself three days' journey, the expense of a postchaise, and a six weeks' loss of time; and, what was perhaps more material than all the rest, I might have preserved that happy enthusiasm for country pleasures which you seem still to enjoy, and which, in the less informed days of my youth, I also was fortunate enough to possess. I am, &c.

URBANUS.

[No. 90. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1786.]

To the Author of the Lounger:

SIR-Though, from my rank in life, being a tradesman's daughter, left an orphan at six years old, I had little title to know any thing about sensibility or feeling; yet having been very kindly taken into a family, where there were several young ladies who were great readers, I had opportunities of hearing a good deal about these things. By the same young ladies I was made acquainted with your paper, and it was a favorite employment of mine to read the Lounger to them every Saturday morning. In one of the numbers, published some time ago, we met with Mrs. Alice Heartly's account of an old lady with whom she lives; and from the experience of our own feelings, could not help pitying the connexion with one so destitute of all tender sentiments as my Lady Bidmore. I had soon after occasion to congratulate myself on a very different sort of establishment, having been recommended by my young patronesses to a lady, who used frequently to visit at their house, whom we all knew (indeed it was her pride, she used to say, to acknowledge her weakness on that side) to be a perfect pattern, or, according to her own phrase, a perfect martyr, of the most acute and delicate sensibility. At our house I saw her once in the greatest distress imaginable, from the accidental drowning of a fly in the creampot; and got great credit with her myself, for my tenderness about a goldfinch belonging to one of our young ladies, which I had taught to perch upon my shoulder, and pick little crumbs out of my mouth. I shall never forget Mrs. Sensitive's crying out, "Oh! how I envy her the sweet little creature's kisses!" It made me blush to hear her speak so; for I had never thought of kisses in the matter.

That little circumstance, however, procured me her favor so much, that on being told of my situation, she begged I might, as she was kind enough to express it, be placed under her protection. As I had heard so much of her tender-heartedness and her feeling; as she was very rich, having been left a widow, with the disposal of her husband's whole fortune; as she had nobody but herself in family, so that it promised to be an easy place; all these things made me very happy to accept of her offer; and I agreed to go home to her house immediately, her last attendant having left her somewhat suddenly. I heard indeed, the very morning after I went thither, that her servants