I think Miss Clements is a good sort of young woman: but I imagined she would have been one of those nuns at large, who need not make vows of living and dying aunt Eleanors, or Lady Gertrudes; all three of them good honest souls! Chaste, pious, and plain. It is a charming situation, when a woman is arrived at such a height of perfection, as to be above giving or receiving temptation. Sweet inno-cents! They have my reverence, if not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity J I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing. Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much. One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature: but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in a boast of her quondam beauty?

How I run on! I think I ought to be ashamed of myself.

‘ Very true, Charlotte.’

And so it is, Harriet. I have done Adieu! Lord G. will be silly again, 1 doubt; but I am prepared. I wish he had half my patience.

‘ Be quiet, Lord G.! what a fool you are!’ The man, my dear, under pretence of being friends, run his sharp nose in my eye. No bearing his fondness: it is worse than insolence. How my eye waters! I can tell him But I will tell him, and not you. Adieu, once more.

CHARLOTTE G.

Letter XXXIX.

Mr. Lowther to John Arnold, Esq. (His Bro-Ther-In-Law) In London.

Bologna, May 5–16. I will now, my dear brother, give you a circum-stantial account of our short, but flying journey. The 20th of April, O. S. early in the morning, we left Paris, and reached Lyons the 24th, at night.

Resting but a few hours, we set out for Pont Beauvoisin, where we arrived the following evening: there we bid adieu to France, and found ourselves in Savoy, equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains. Indeed it was a total change of the scene. We had left behind us a blooming spring, which enlivened with its verdure the trees and hedges on the road we passed, and the meadows already smiled with flowers. The cheerful inhabitants were busy in adjusting their limits, lopping their trees, pruning their vines, tilling their fields; but when we entered Savoy, nature wore a very different face; and I must own, that my spirits were great sufferers by the change. Here we began to view on the nearer mountains, covered with ice and snow, not-withstanding the advanced season, the rigid winter, in frozen majesty, still preserving its domains: and arriving at St. Jean Maurienne the night of the 26th, the snow seemed as if it would dispute with us our passage: and horrible was the force of the boisterous winds, which sat full in our faces.