George the Third's, there were persons in Bristol, who, from political scruples of conscience, refused to take King William's halfpence, and these persons were so numerous that the magistrates thought it necessary to interfere, because of the inconvenience which they occasioned in the common dealings of trade and of the markets. William's copper money was then in common currency, and indeed I myself remember it, having, between the years 1786 and 1790, laid by some half dozen of his halfpence with the single or double head, among the foreign pieces and others of rare occurrence which came within my reach.

Devoid as his Miscellanies are of any merit, Parson Collins, as he was called (not in honour of the cloth), had some humour. In repairing the public road, the labourers came so near his garden wall, that they injured the foundations, and down it fell. He complained to the way wardens, and demanded reparation, which they would have evaded if they could, telling him it was but an old wall, and in a state of decay. "Gentlemen," he replied, "old as the wall was it served my purpose. But, however, I have not the smallest objection to your putting up a second-hand one in its place." This anecdote I heard full fiveand-thirty years ago from one of my school-masters, who had been a rival of Collins, and was satirized by him in the Miscellanies. His school failed him, not because he was deficient in learning, of which he seems to have had a full share for his station, but because of his gross and scandalous misconduct. He afterwards kept something so like an alehouse, that he got into a scrape with his superiors.

One of his daughters kept a village shop at Chew Magna in Somersetshire, and dealt with my father for such things as were in his way. She used to dine with us whenever she came to Bristol, and was always a welcome guest for her blunt honest manners, and her comical oddity. Her face was broad and coarse, like a Tartar's, but with quick dark eyes and a fierce expression. She was one of those persons who could say, quidlibet cuilibet de quolibet.

I perceive that I should make an excellent correspondent for Mr. Urban, and begin to suspect that I have mistaken my talent, and been writing histories and poems when I ought to have been following the rich veins of gossip and garrulity. All this, however, is not foreign to my purpose. For I wish not only to begin ab ovo, but to describe every thing relating to the nest. And he who paints a bird's-nest ought not to represent it nakedly per se, but in situ, in its place, and with as many of its natural accompaniments as the canvas will admit. It is not manners and fashions alone that change and are perpetually changing with us. The very constitution of society is unstable; it may, and in all probability will, undergo as great alterations, in the course of the next two or three centuries, as it has undergone in the last. The transitions are likely to be more violent, and far more rapid. At no very distant time, these letters, if they escape the earthquake and the volcano, may derive no small part of their interest and value from the faithful sketches which they contain of a stage of society which has already passed away, and of a state of things which shall then have ceased to exist.

LETTER IV.

HIS MOTHER'S BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.—HER MARRIAGE. — HIS OWN BIRTH.

My mother was born in 1752. She was a remarkably beautiful infant, till, when she was between one and two years old, an abominable nursemaid carried her, of all places in the world, to Newgate (as was afterwards discovered); and there she took the smallpox in its most malignant form. It seemed almost miraculous that she escaped with life and eyesight, so dreadfully severe was the disease; but her eyebrows were almost destroyed, and the whole face seamed with scars. While she was a mere child, she had a paralytic affection, which deadened one side from the hip downward, and crippled her for about twelvemonths. Some person advised that she should be placed out of doors in the sunshine as much as possible; and one day, when she had been carried out as usual into the fore-court, in her little armchair, and left there to see her brothers at play, she rose from her seat to the astonishment of the family, and walked into the house. The recovery from that time was complete. The fact is worthy of notice, because some persons may derive hope from it in similar cases, and because it is by no means improbable that the sunshine really effected the cure. The manner by which I should explain this, would lead to a theory somewhat akin to that of Bishop Berkeley upon the virtues of tar-water.

There are two portraits of my mother, both taken by Robert Hancock in 1798. My brother Tom has the one; the other hangs opposite me where I am now seated in my usual position at my desk. Neither of these would convey to a stranger a just idea of her countenance. That in my possession is very much the best: it represents her as she then was, with features care-worn and fallen away, and with an air of melancholy which was not natural to her; for never was any human being blest with a sweeter temper, or a happier disposition. She had an excellent understanding, and a readiness of apprehension, which I have rarely known surpassed. In quickness of capacity, in the kindness of her nature, and in that kind of moral magnetism which wins the affections of all within its sphere, I never knew her equal. To strangers she must probably have appeared much disfigured by the smallpox. I, of course, could not be sensible of this. Her complexion was very good, and nothing could be more expressive than her fine clear hazel eyes.

Female education was not much regarded in her childhood. The ladies who kept boarding-schools in those days did not consider it necessary to possess any other knowledge themselves than that of ornamental needlework. Two sisters, who had been mistresses of the most fashionable school in Herefordshire, fifty years ago, used to say when they spoke of a former pupil, "Her went to school to we: and the mistress of which, some ten years later, was thought the best school near Bristol (where Mrs. Siddons sent her daughter), spoke, to my perfect

recollection, much such English as this. My mother, I believe, never went to any but a dancing-school, and her state was the more gracious. But her halfsister, Miss Tyler, was placed at one in the neighbourhood under a Mrs. whom I mention because her history is characteristic of those times. Her husband carried on the agreeable business of a butcher in Bristol, while she managed a school for young ladies about a mile out of the town. His business would not necessarily have disqualified her for this occupation (though it would be no recommendation), Kirke White's mother, a truly admirable woman, being in this respect just under like circumstances. But Mrs. might, with more propriety, have been a blacksmith's wife; as, in that case, Vulcan might have served for a type of her husband in his fate, but not in the complacency with which he submitted to it, horns sitting as easily on his head as upon the beasts which he slaughtered. She was

a handsome woman, and her children were, like the Harleian Miscellany, by different authors. This was notorious; yet her school flourished notwithstanding, and she retired from it at last with a competent fortune, and was visited as long as she lived by her former pupils. This may serve to show a great improvement in the morals of middle life.

Two things concerning my mother's childhood and youth may be worthy of mention. One is, that she had for a fellow-scholar at the dancing-school Mary Darby (I think her name was), then in her beauty and innocence, soon afterwards notorious as the Prince of Wales's Perdita, and to be remembered

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