them; be assured, they are fellows of no mark or likelihood; what little they know has been acquired from Longinus, Aristotle, and Horace, or some such outlandish creatures. A very pretty lady observed to me, that the monthly reviewers were the most petrifying creatures imaginable in matters of taste; and she was an excellent judge, as she had published a novel which contained an immense black forest of twenty aged trees; two crazy castles; three murderers; a trap-door with rusty bolts; a bloody key, ditto dagger; two pair of broken stairs; a sheeted ghost; a ghostly monk, and a marriage. She assured me, 'pon honour, that in the critique upon her work (which had passed the ordeal of taste in all the circulating libraries, and was actually the last book the great Burke ever read, indeed, some said he expired with it in his hand) the reviewers were so stupid they could not comprehend the elegant expressions "pleasing anguish," "delightful despair,"

and "heart-rending felicity;" nay, they had the audacity to sneer at the phrase "subterraneous matter in the clouds," which she had introduced into a thunderstorm, and which the whole blue-stocking club pronounced immensely sublime.

Which of the above routes I took to good company, or what other path I selected, I leave you to conjecture until some future letter or conversation shall enlighten you.

Your old and sincere friend.

LETTER V.

The British House of Commons.

LONDON.

My excellent Friend,

THROUGH the politeness of a friend, I was yesterday admitted to the gallery of the British house of commons. Never were a man's expectations higher raised. To see the grave fathers of the senate, the collected wisdom of a nation known by its commercial enterprise, its colonies and its victories, throughout the habitable globe, was, indeed, a spectacle so august that I anticipated it with pleasure tempered by reverence: not that I expected to see the curule chairs, the fasces and lictors of the Roman forum, or to discover, in British countenances, that inflexible composure of

features which dignified the conscript father slain in his ivory chair by the barbarian Gaul; but I had reason to expect to see a solemn assembly of wise, dignified men, in sober consultation upon the important concerns of the greatest commercial nation in the world. In an assembly of hereditary legislators, like the house of lords, there might be dignity, but a general display of great talents, as it is fortuitous, could not be expected. In the house of commons, elected from the great body of the people, I justly expected to find the talents, the learning, the wisdom and political science of a wise nation collected in one brilliant focus; to hear the persuasion of Cicero, the subtlety of Eschines, the thunder of Demosthenes, with all .I had read, and more than I could conceive, of ancient eloquence, poured from British lips in language nobler than that of Greece or Rome.

It seems, in going at too early an hour, I had committed the common blunder of

the plebeian who is invited to dine with my lord. I had taken my seat in the gallery full three hours before the feast of reason was served up: there were only a few official attendants of the house present. After a while, several gentlemen came in, booted and spurred as if from a fox-chase: they formed little parties of chit-chat. As I understood several of them were members of parliament, I was not a little anxious to hear them converse, hoping to stay my appetite with some eleemosynary scraps of wisdom, as we, in Boston, take a relish of punch and oysters, at noon, to prepare the appetite when invited to a fashionable dinner. I was soon gratified; two of them came within hearing, and seemed earnestly engaged in discourse. Aye, thought I, now you are untwisting some knotty fiscal point, or quoting Puffendorf, Grotius, and Vattel on the laws of nations, or citing passages from the laws of Oleron, to correct the defects of your maritime code. Suddenly, one of them vociferated-"done