feelings. But, once for all, it is their way, and there is no help for it.

O Betty! do you remember the little green thing that I left in your care once while I was over in Fife? And when I returned you had transplanted it into a yellow glass, which I have on my toilet-table to this hour, keeping my rings, etc., in it. Well! I must surely have told you long ago that the little thing, with two tiny leaves, from my father's grave, had, after twelve months in the garden at Chelsea, declared itself a gooseberry-bush! It has gone on flourishing, in spite of want of air and of soil, and is now the prettiest round bush, quite full of leaves. I had several times asked our old gardener if there is nothing one could do to get the bush to bear, if it were only one gooseberry; but he treated the case as hopeless. "A poor wild thing. No; if you want to have gooseberries, ma'am, better get a proper gooseberry-bush in its place!" The old Goth! He can't be made to understand that things can have any value but just their garden value. He once, in spite of all I could beg and direct, rooted out a nettle I had brought from Crawford Churchyard, and with infinite pains got to take root and flourish.

But, I was going to tell you, one day Lizzy, my youngest maid, came running in from the garden to ask me had I seen the three little gooseberries on the gooseberry-bush? I rushed out, as excited as a child, to look at them. And there they were-three little gooseberries, sure enough! And immediately I had settled it in my mind to send you one of them in a letter when full grown. But, alas! whether it was through too much staring at them, or too much east wind, or through mere delicacy in "the poor wild thing," I can't tell; only the result, that the three bits of gooseberries, instead of growing larger, grew every day less, till they reached the smallness of pin-heads, and then dropped on the ground! I could have cried when the last one went.

MRS. THOMAS CARLYLE TO MRS. MARY RUSSELL. CHELSEA, August 30, 1861.

Darling! I want to hear about you; and that is lucky for you, if you be at all wanting to hear about me! For I'll be hanged if mere unassisted sense of duty, and that sort of thing, could nerve me to sit down and write a letter in these days, when it takes pretty well all the

sense and strength I have left to keep myself soul and body together, doing the thing forced into my hands to do, and answering when I am spoken to. A nice woman I am! But I know you have been in such depths yourself occasionally, and will have sympathy with me, instead of being contemptuous or angry, as your strong-minded, able-bodied women would be; and accordingly strong-minded, able-bodied women are my aversion, and I run out of the road of one as I would from a mad cow. The fact is, had there been nobody in the world to consider except myself, I ought to have "carried out" that project I had set my heart on of streaming off by myself to Holm Hill, and taking a life-bath, as it were, in my quasinatural air, in the scene of old affections, not all past and gone, but some still there as alive and warm, thank God! as ever, and only the dearer for being mixed up with those that are dead and gone.

JAMES BOSWELL TO W. J. TEMPLE.

LONDON, May 14, 1768.

I am really the great man now. I have

had David Hume, in the forenoon, and Mr. John

son, in the afternoon, of the same day, visiting me. Sir John Pringle, Dr. Franklin, and some more company, dined with me to-day; and Mr. Johnson and General Oglethorpe one day, Mr. Garrick alone another, and David Hume and some more literati dine with me next week. I give admirable dinners and good claret; and the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labors, and appearing like the friend of Paoli. By the bye, the Earl of Pembroke and Captain Meadows are just setting out for Corsica, and I have the honor of introducing them by a letter to the General. David Hume came on purpose, the other day, to tell me that the Duke of Bedford was very fond of my book,* and had recommended it to the Duchess. David is really amiable: I always regret to him his unlucky principles, and he smiles at my faith; but I have a hope which he has not, or pretends not to have. So who has the best of it, my reverend friend? David is going to give us two more volumes of History, down to George II.

*His "Account of Corsica," then recently published.

JAMES BOSWELL TO W. J. TEMPLE.

EDINBURGH, June 6, 1775.

Believe me, your excellent letter of the 27th of May, which I received last night, after my coming home fatigued, after seeing a review, was exceedingly refreshing to me; nay, it elevated my mind higher than I can well express to so intimate a friend; for it is most certain that all expressions of compliment or kindness between such friends as we are ought to be superfluous. General Paoli told me lately that his brother was ill; he consulted physicians in London, and informed him of what they said; but he never once put in words that he was sorry or affectionately concerned, for he thought that would be quite unnecessary he was so obliging as to apply this remark to me: “I need not tell you,” said he, "that every thing in my power is at your disposal." For the last fortnight that I was in London, since I saw you, I lay at his house, and had the command of his coach. My lodgings in Gerrard Street were taken by a gentleman for a longer time than I could stay; so it was obliging my landlord to quit them, and all cards and messages of every kind were taken in