others. How much more natural, as well as more proper, would it be, to have our flowers christened after those beautiful females, to whom, in all probability, they really owed their peculiar beauty? We might have Lady Flora, Lady Violet, Miss Lily, Miss Rose, and all the beauties of our remembrance, renovated to our admiring eyes. "I am much inclined to believe, that the improvement I am here suggesting was known to and practised by the ancients, particularly by the Greeks and Romans; for we read in their poets of Narcissus, Cyax, Smilax, and Crocus, Hyacinthus, Adonis, and Minthe, being after their deaths metamorphosed into flowers; and of the sisters of Phaëton, Pyramus and Thisbe, Baucis and Philemon, Daphne, Cyparissus, and Myrrha, and many more, being converted into trees. Now these stories, Mr. MIRROR, when stripped of their poetical ornaments, can, in my opinion, bear no other interpretation than that the ashes of those people were applied to such useful purposes as I am now proposing. "You will here observe, Mr. MIRROR, that, besides the great utility of the scheme, there will be much room for the imagination to delight itself in tracing out analogies, and refining upon the general hint I have thrown out. Your Bath Toyman would have many very ingenious conceits upon the occasion, and would exercise his genius in devising fanciful applications of the different manures he would make it his business to procure. He would have a plot of rue and wormwood raised by old maidens; he would apply the ashes of martyrs in love to his pine-trees; the dust of aldermen and rich citizens might be used in the culture of plums and gooseberries; a set of fine gentlemen would be laid aside for the culture of cockscombs, none-so-prettys, and narcissuses; the clergy and church-officers would be manure for the holly and elder; and the posthumous productions of poets would furnish bays and laurels for their successors. But I tire you, Mr. MIRROR, with these trifling fancies: the utility of my plan is what I value myself upon, and desire your opinion of. Q "I am, Sir, "Your most obedient humble servant, No. 53. TUESDAY, JULY 27, 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. "Soon after my Lady's visit at our 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 to commit to ink, but to set down in lemon juice.-I wander from my story, 6 Mr. MIRROR; but I cannot help fondly recalling, as Emilia in the novel says, those halcyon days of friendship and felicity.' "When her Ladyship's answer arrived, I found her clearly of opinion that I ought to accept of my aunt's invitation. She was very jocular on the manners which she supposed I should find in that lady's family; but she said I might take the opportunity of making some acquirements, which, though London alone could perfect, Edinburgh might, in some degree, communicate. She concluded her letter with requesting the continuation of my correspondence, and a narrative of every thing that was passing in town, especially with regard to some ladies and gentlemen of her acquaintance, whom she pointed out to my particular observation. "To Edinburgh, therefore, I accompanied my aunt, and found a family very much disposed to make me happy. In this they might, perhaps, have succeeded more completely, had I not acquired from the instructions of Lady , and the company I saw at her house, certain notions of polite life with which I did not find any thing at Mr. -'s correspond. It was often, indeed, their good humour which offended me as coarse, and their happiness that struck me as vulgar. There was not such a thing as hip or low spirits among them, a sort of finery which, at I found a person of fashion could not possibly be without. They were at great pains to show me any sights that were to be seen, with some of which I was really little pleased, and with others I thought it would look like ignorance to seem pleased. They took me to the play-house, where there was little company, and very little attention. I was carried to the concert, where the case was exactly the same. I found great fault with both; for though I had not much skill, I had got words enough for finding fault from my friend Lady -; upon which they made an apology for our entertainment, by telling me, that the play-house was, at that time, managed by a fiddler, and the concert was allowed to manage itself. "Our parties at home were agreeable enough. I found Mr. -'s and my aunt's visitors very different from what I had been made to expect, and not at all the cocknies my Lady and some of her humorous guests, used to describe. They were not, indeed, so polite as the fashionable company I had met at her Ladyship's, but they were much more civil. Among the rest was my uncle-in-law's partner, a good-looking young man, who, from the first, was so particularly attentive to me, that my cousins jokingly called him my lover; and even my aunt sometimes told me she believed he had a serious attachment to me; but I took care not to give him any encouragement, as I had always heard my friend Lady talk of the wife of a bourgeois as the most contemptible creature in the world. "The season at last arrived in which I was told the town would appear in its gaiety, a great deal of good company being expected at the races. For the races I looked with anxiety, for another reason: my dear Lady. was to be here at that period. Of this I was informed by a letter from my sister. From her Ladyship I had not heard for a considerable time, as she had been engaged in a round of visits to her acquaintance in the country. "The very morning after her arrival, for I was on the watch to get intelligence of her, I called at her lodgings. When the servant appeared, he seemed doubtful about letting me in; at last he ushered me into a little darkish parlour, where, after waiting about half an hour, he brought me word, that his |