When Queen Mary took the resolution of sheltering herself in England, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, attempting to dissuade her, attended her on her journey; and when they came to that irremeable stream that separated the two kingdoms, walked by her side into the water, in the middle of which he seized her bridle, and with earnestness proportioned to her own danger and his own affection pressed her to return. The queen went forward. If the parallel reaches thus far, may it go no farther the tears stand in my eyes.

I am going into Derbyshire, and hope to be followed by your good wishes, for I am, with great affection, Yours, &c.,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

Letters of Horace Walpole and the Misses Berry.

WALPOLE is well styled the "prince of letter-writers," and he is a most comfortable one to read. One feels as if one were not getting into his confidence clandestinely in reading his letters, they are so evidently intended for any eye, in his own time or later times, which would peruse them with interest. He writes with unflagging vivacity through a lifetime which lasted almost eighty years, and his epistolary production fills nine stout octavos. one wishes to know all the gossip, fashionable, political, theatrical, literary, and artistic, of the last three quarters

If

of the eighteenth century he can know it as intimately by reading Walpole as if he had taken tea every evening, during that long period, with the most loquacious newsmonger of the day.

Walpole was unmarried, and preserved to the last his bachelor estate. But if other gossips than he speak true, he offered himself to each of the Misses Berry in succession.

Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry were English girls who had been for some years residing in Paris before they came to live in England, near Walpole. He formed for them both a very tender friendship, and one gets a better idea of his heart from his letters to them, than from anything else he ever wrote. They became most valuable adjuncts to his life, and one can fancy his existence would have become dreary without them. He writes to one of his correspondents shortly after meeting them: “I have made a to me precious acquisition. It is the acquaintance of two young ladies of the name of Berry, whom I first saw last winter, and who have taken a house here with their father for the summer."

They finally settled on a small estate of his, sometimes called "Little Strawberry," after his larger house “Strawberry Hill," and he often spoke of the two ladies as his Strawberries." The small house which they occupied, where beautiful Kitty Clive the actress had once lived, he bequeathed to the sisters in his will.

Although he writes with equal affection to the two sisters, Miss Mary Berry was doubtless the favourite, and the one rumour most frequently assigned to him as a wife. When one of his nieces used to ask him jestingly when she should "call Miss Berry aunt," he answered, "Whenever Miss Berry chooses." Miss Martineau, who met Miss Berry

late in life (she lived to extreme age), says she could doubt less, had she chosen, have been the Countess of Orford.

But if the brilliant old peer ever desired such a marriage his letters rather disavow it, as we shall see in reading some of the following; and his feeling may have been only the tender, half-paternal friendship which a man of seventythree felt for two sensible and clever young women of twenty-five and six, who were charmed by his wit and knowledge of the world, and ready to cheer his latest years with a great deal of their pleasant society.

Walpole to the Misses Berry.

FEB. 2, 1789.

I AM Sorry in the sense of the word before it meant, like a Hebrew word, glad or sorry - that I am engaged this evening; and I am at your command on Tuesday, as it is always my inclination to be.

It is a misfortune that words become so much the current coin of society, that like King William's shillings they have no impression left; they are worn so smooth that they mark no more to whom they first belonged than to whom they do belong, and are not worth even the twelvepence into which they may be changed. But if they mean too little, they may seem to mean too much too; especially when an old man (who is often synonymous for a miser) parts with them. I

am afraid of protesting how much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect being gallant ; but if two negatives make an affirmative, why may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense? and therefore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the good sense of your devoted H. WALPOLE.

The Same to the Same.

Not long after their first acquaintance the Misses Berry went to the Continent for a visit, and it was during this absence that most of Walpole's letters to them were written.

SUNDAY, Oct. 10, 1790.

(The day of your departure for the Continent.) Is it possible to write to my beloved friends, and refrain from speaking of my grief at losing you, though it is but the continuation of what I have felt ever since I was stunned by your intention of going abroad this autumn? Still I will not tire you with it often. In happy days I smiled and called you my dear wives; now I can only think of you as darling children of whom I am bereaved. As such I have loved and do love you, and, charming as you both are, I have no occasion to remind myself that I am past seventythree.

Your hearts, your understandings, your

virtues, and the cruel injustice of your fate have interested me in everything that concerns you; and so far from having occasion to blush for any unbecoming weakness, I am proud of my affection for you, and very proud of your condescending to pass so many hours with an old man, when everybody admires you, and the most insensible allow that your good sense and information have formed you to converse with the most intelligent of our sex as well as your own; and neither can tax you with airs of pretension or affectation. Your simplicity and natural ease set off all your other merits; all these graces are lost to me, alas! when I have no time to lose.

Sensible as I am to my loss, it will оссиру but part of my thoughts, till I know you safely landed, and arrived safely in Turin; not till you are there, and I learn so, will my anxiety subside, and settle into steady, selfish sorrow. I looked at every weathercock as I came along the road to-day and was happy to see every one pointing northeast. May they do so to-morrow.

Forgive me for writing nothing to-night but about you two and myself. Of what can I have thought else? I have not spoken to a single person but my own servants since we parted last night. I found a message here from Miss Howe