Page:The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld volume 1.djvu/44

 exertion must always be productive of satisfaction to a well-constituted mind; and in this view Mrs. Barbauld might regard with complacency her situation at Palgrave. Its cares and its monotony were also relieved by vacations, which she and Mr. Barbauld usually passed either in agreeable visits to their friends in different parts of the country, or in the more animated delights of London society. As their connexions were extensive, they were now enabled to procure themselves a considerable share of that amusing and instructive variety of scenes and characters which forms the peculiar charm of the metropolis. At the splendid mansion of her early and constant admirer Mrs. Montague, Mrs. Barbauld beheld in perfection the imposing union of literature and fashion; under the humbler roof of her friend and publisher, the late worthy Joseph Johnson of St. Paul's Church-yard, she tasted, perhaps with higher relish, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul,"