purpose. At this season of general and laudable exertion, I am persuaded such a scheme cannot fail of patronage and success. The benevolence of this country requires not argument to awaken it; yet the pleasures of its exertion must be increased by the thought, that pity to such objects is patriotism; that, here, private compassion becomes public virtue. Bounties for the encouragement of recruits to our fleets and armies, are highly meritorious donations. These, however, may sometimes bribe the covetous, and allure the needy; but that charity which gives support and protection to the families they leave behind, addresses more generous feelings; feelings which have always been held congenial to bravery and to heroism. It endears to them that home which their swords are to defend, and strengthens those ties which should ever bind the soldier of a free state to his country.

Nor will such a provision be of less advantage to posterity than to the present times. It will save to the state

many useful subjects, which those families, thus supported, may produce; whose lives have formerly been often nurtured by penury to vice, and rendered not only useless, but baneful to the community; that community which, under a more kindly influence, they might, like their fathers, have enriched by their industry, and protected by their valour.

No. 53. TUESDAY, July 26, 1779.

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE MIRROR.

SIR,

I AM one of the young women mentioned in two letters which you published in your 12th and 25th Numbers, though I did not know till very lately that our family had been put into print in the Mirror. Since it is so, I think I too may venture to write you a letter, which, if it be not quite so well written as my father's, (though I am no great admirer of his style neither,) will at least be as true.

-'s visit at our

Soon after my Lady house, of which the last of my father's letters informed you, a sister of his, who is married to a man of business here in Edinburgh, came with her husband to see

us in the country; and, though my sister Mary and I soon discovered many vulgar things about them, yet, as they were both very good-humoured sort of people, and took great pains to make themselves agreeable, we could not help looking with regret to the time of their departure. When that drew near, they surprised us, by an invitation to me, to come and spend some months with my cousins in town, saying, that my mother could not miss my company at home, while she had so good a companion and assistant in the family as her daughter Mary.

To me there were not so many allurements in this journey as might have been imagined. I had lately been taught to look on London as the only capital worth visiting; besides that, I did not expect the highest satisfaction from the society I should meet with at my aunt's, which, I confess, I was apt to suppose none of the most genteel. I contrived to keep the

matter in suspense, (for it was left entirely to my own determination,) till I should write for the opinion of my friend Lady

on the subject; for, ever since our first acquaintance, we had kept up a constant and regular correspondence. In our letters, which were always written in a style of the warmest affection, we were in the way of talking with the greatest freedom of every body of our acquaintance. It was delightful, as her ladyship expressed it," to unfold one's feelings in the bosom of friendship;" and she accordingly was wont to send me the most natural and lively pictures of the company who resorted to; and I, in return, transmitted her many anecdotes of those persons which chance, or a greater intimacy, gave me an opportunity of learning. To prevent discovery, we corresponded under the signatures of Hortensia and Leonora; and some very particular intelligence her ladyship taught me not