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 218 reputation that we find them diligently sought for, years after they were penned. Fancy admiring groups of men and women listening to Miss Seward's celebrated epistles to Miss Rogers and Miss Weston, one of which begins:—

"Soothing and welcome to me, dear Sophia, is the regret you express for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we have recently passed together in this ancient and embowered mansion. I had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which you vanished. How prone are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly coercion of employment, at the very instant in which it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy."

The letter which opens in this promising manner closes, as might be expected, with a fervent and glowing apostrophe to the absent one:—

"Virtuous friendship, how pure, how sacred are thy delights! Sophia, thy mind is capable of tasting them in all their poignancy. Against how many of life's incidents may that capacity be considered as a counterpoise."