acquainted with them. The men of whom I speak, could not have any long contests, for they were all hastening to the common goal of mortality, yet their disputes, although short, were sharp; early did they begin to bite, and, as soon as they gained strength, they devoured each other, if the expression may be allowed. According to the Scottish phrase," they quarrelled about the turning of a straw;" they vexed, tormented, and proscribed each other; nay, some assert, that they cut throats; but still they declared that they meant nothing personal, and, for a long while, they still retained the name of brothers.

If that singular people, so full of benevolence, quarrelled incessantly for any cause, or for no cause, how can it be expected that we should walk through life to the grave with the calm and inoffensive solemnity of mourners at an interment, especially when so few of us have time to

bestow our thoughts on the grave, and its consequences?

It is impossible to reconcile man to man; but it is possible to bring individuals of the human race to a better understanding with each other.

I might dilate this proposition in a feigned tale, or obscure it by an allegory; but I rather chuse to prove it in the course of a simple narrative of matter of fact.

While the Duchess of Marlborough enjoyed power little short of sovereign, she frequently felt the satirical lashes of Dr Swift; and, when disgraced, she could not but remember them; for she had a quick sense of injuries, and her nature was not much inclined to forgiveness.

Thwarted ambition, great wealth, and increasing years, rendered her more and more peevish: she hated courts over which she had no influence, and she became at length the most ferocious animal that is

suffered to go loose,-a violent party-wo

man.

Every one knows, that as her Grace was obliged to descend from the highest round of the ladder of ambition, so the Doctor was not allowed to mount the first step; and his disappointment produced the like effects on him, as lost empire had done on her.

Yet the Duchess of Marlborough became the passionate admirer of her satirist, and was even willing to forgive him. The perusal of Gulliver's Travels produced this moral revolution in her sentiments; and that which debased the author in the opinion of many of his friends, exalted him in the opinion of the Duchess of Marlborough.

There are now lying before me some original letters of that celebrated lady. "Dean Swift," says she, "gives the most exact account of kings, ministers, bishops, and the courts of justice, that is possible

to be writ.-I could not help wishing, since I read his books, that we had had his assistance in the opposition-for I could easily forgive him all the slaps he has given me and the Duke of Marlborough, and have thanked him heartily, whenever he would please to do good."

In another letter she says, "I most heartily wish that in this park I had some of the breed of those charming creatures Swift speaks of, and calls the Houyhnhnms, which I understand to be horses, so extremely polite, and which had all manner of good conversation and good principles, and that never told a lie, and charmed him so that he could not endure his own country when he returned: he says there is a sort of creature there called yahoos, and of the same species with us, only a good deal uglier, but they are kept tied up, and by that glorious creature the horse are not permitted to do any mischief. You will think that I am distracted with Dean

Swift, but I really have not been pleased so much a long time as with what he writes, and therefore I will end with one of his sentences,-that he mortally hates kings and ministers."

Thus the Duchess" became distracted with Dean Swift ;" and, on account of his libel against human nature, "graciously pardoned his libels against her own sacred person."

But Dr Swift knew not her favourable opinion of him; for he left in manuscript a severer invective against her than any that he had published in his lifetime. Pity that, for want of information, the misunderstanding should still have subsisted on his part! the good offices of a friend might easily have reconciled two persons so much connected with each other by the common ties of misanthropy. I am, &c.

ADELUS.