When my uncle John was about to begin business as an attorney in Taunton, Cannon Southey, who was then the head of the family, lent him 1007. to start with. "That hundred pounds," he used to say, with a sort of surly pride, "I repaid, with interest, in six months, and that is the only favour for which I was ever obliged to my relations." Cannon Southey, however, though not very liberal to his kin, had a just regard to their legal rights, and left his property in trust for his great nephew, John Southey Somerville and his issue, with the intention that if he, who was then a child, should die without issue, the estates should descend to the Southeys; and, that the whole property might go together, he willed his leasehold estates (which would else have been divided among the next of kin) in remainder upon the same contingency to my uncle John and his two brothers, and to the sons of each in succession, as the former branch might fail.

Robert, my father, was passionately fond of the country and of country sports. The fields should have been his station, instead of the shop. He was placed with a kinsman in London, who, I believe, was a grocer somewhere in the city, -one of the eleven tribes that went out from Wellington. I have heard him say, that as he was one day standing at this person's door, a porter went by carrying a hare, and this brought his favourite sport so forcibly to mind, that he could not help crying at the sight. This anecdote in Wordsworth's hands would be worth as much as the Reverie of poor Susan. Before my father had been twelvemonths in London his master

died. Upon which he was removed to Bristol, and placed with William Britton, a linendraper in Wine Street. The business at that time was a profitable one, and Britton's the best shop of its kind in the town, which is as much as saying that there was not a better in the West of England. This must have been about the end of George the Second's reign. Shop-windows were then as little used in this country, as they are now in most of the continental towns. I remember Britton's shop still open to the weather, long after all the neighbours had glazed theirs; and I remember him, from being the first tradesman in his line, fallen to decay in his old age, and sunk in sottishness, still keeping on a business which had dwindled almost to nothing. My father, I think, was not apprenticed to him; because if he had served a regular apprenticeship, it would have entitled him to the freedom of the city, and I know that he was not a freeman he lived with him, however, twelve or fourteen years. Among the acquaintance with whom he became intimate during that time, was my half uncle Edward Tyler, then employed in a Coventry Warehouse, in Broad Street, belonging to the Troughtons. This introduced him to my grandmother's house.

LETTER II.

THE HILLS. -THE BRADFORDS. WILLIAM TYLER.-ANECDOTE OF HIM. HIS GRANDFATHER'S DEATH.

Tuesday, August 1st, 1820.

MRS. HILL, my grandmother, was, at the time of which I am now writing, a widow; her maiden name was Bradford. I know nothing more of her father than that he was a Herefordshire man, and must have been of respectable property and connections, as appears by his having married into one of the best families in the county, and sending a son to college. His wife's name was Mrs. Margaret Croft. -I have it written in gold letters, with the date 1704, in a copy of Nelson's Festivals and Fasts, which descended as a favourite devotional book to my mother. They had three children; Herbert, so named after the Croft family,- another son (William, I think, by name), who was deaf and dumb, and just lived to grow up, and my grandmother Margaret.

My grandmother was very handsome: little Georgiana Hill, my uncle says, reminds him strongly of her; and I remember her enough to recognise a likeness in the shape of the face, and in the large, full, clear, bright brown eyes. Her first husband, Mr. Tyler, was of a good family in Herefordshire, nearly related I know he was, and nephew, I think, to one of that name who was Bishop of Hereford. He lived at Pembridge. The seat of the family was at

Dilwyn, where his elder brother lived, who either was not married, or left no issue. I have hardly heard any thing of him, except that on his wedding day he sung a song after dinner, which could not be thought very complimentary to his bride; for, though it began by saying,

(thus much I remember of the rhymes,) it ended with saying that, whenever they might think fit, he was ready to resign her. It happened, however, that the resignation was to be on the wife's part. He died in the prime of life, leaving four children, Elizabeth, John, William, and Edward; and his widow, after no very long interval, married Edward Hill of Bedminster, in the county of Somersetshire, near Bristol, and was transplanted with her children to that place.

Edward Hill was the seventh in succession of that name. His fathers had lived and died respectably and contentedly upon their own lands in the beautiful vale of Ashton, the place of all others which I remember with most feeling. You see it from Clifton, on the other side of the river Avon; Warton has well characterized it in one of his odes as Ashton's elmy Vale. The Hills are called gentlemen upon their tombstones in Ashton churchyard, where my father, two of my brothers, my three sisters, and my poor dear cousin Margaret, are deposited with them. Edward Hill, the seventh, was a lawyer and a widower;

he had two children by his first marriage, a son, Edward the eighth, and a daughter, old enough I believe at the time of his second marriage for the daughter to be married, and the son very soon to hold a commission in the marines. He was a fine handsome man, of considerable talents, and of a convivial temper. I have heard him spoken of with admiration by persons who were intimate with him in their youth. He could make verses, too, after the fashion of that age. I have somewhere a poem of his, in his own writing, which came to my mother after her mother's death, and, in like manner, descended into my possession: it is not therefore without a mournful feeling that I recall to mind the time when it was first shown me, and the amusement which it then afforded me. It was a love poem, addressed to my grandmother during the days of courtship; it intimated some jealousy of a rival, who was called Strephon, and there was a note at the bottom of the page upon this name, explaining that it meant "the young Justice."

William Tyler, the second brother, was a remarkable person. Owing to some defect in his faculties, so anomalous in its kind that I never heard of a similar case, he could never be taught to read; the letters he could tell separately, but was utterly incapable of combining them, and taking in their meaning by the eye. He could write, and copy in a fair hand any thing that was set before him, whether in writing or in print; but it was done letter by letter without understanding a single word. As to self-government he was entirely incompetent, so much so that I think