No 93. SATURDAY, November 11, 1786. Fortunatus et ille Deos qui novit agreftes. VIRG. ONE of the great pleasures of a periodical Effayift arifes from that fort of friendly and cordial intercourfe which his publication fometimes procures him with worthy and refpectable characters. The receipt of the following letter has added to the lift of my acquaintance a gentleman whofe perfon indeed I am ignorant of, but whofe fentiments I refpect, whofe forrows I revere, and whofe feelings I am perfuaded many of my readers (even in these days, which he holds not very susceptible of such emotions) will warmly participate. I, SIR, To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER. As well as your correfpondent Urbanus, was very much pleafed with your late Paper on the moral ufe of the country, and the portrait of the excellent Lady it contained. I am an old man, Sir, but, thank God, with all my faculties and feelings entire and alive about me; and your defcription recalled to my memory fome worthy worthy characters with which my youth was acquainted, and which, I am inclined to believe, I fhould find it a little difficult, were I even disposed to look out for them, to fupply now. At my time of life, friends are a treasure which the fortunate may have preferved, but the most fortunate can hardly acquire; and, if I am not mistaken in my opinion of the prefent race, there are not many friendships among them which I would be folicitous to acquire, or they will be likely to preferve. It is not of their little irregularities or imprudences I complain; I know thefe must always be expected and pardoned in the young; and there are few of us old people who can recollect our youthful days without having fome things of that fort to blush for. No, Mr. Lounger, it is their prudence, their wisdom, their forefight, their policy, I find fault with. They put on the livery of the world fo early, and have fo few of the weakneffes of feeling or of fancy! To this caufe I impute the want of that rural fentiment which your correfpondent Urbanus seems to suppose is banifhed only from the country-retreats of town. diffipation, from the abodes of fashionable and frivolous people, who carry all the follies and pleasures of a city into scenes destined for rural fimplicity and rural enjoyments. But in truth, Sir, the people of the country themselves, who never knew fashionable life or city-diffipation, L 3 have have now exchanged the fimple-hearted pleafures which in my younger days were common amongst them, for ideas of a much more selfish and interested fort. Moft of my young acquaintance there (and I spend at least eight months of the year in the country) are really arrived at that prudent way of estimating things which we used to be diverted with in Hudibras: "For what's the value of a thing, Their ambition, their love, their friendship, all have this tendency, and their no-ambition, their no-love, their no-friendship, or, in one word, their indifference about every object from which fome wordly advantage is not to be drawn, is equally obfervable on the other hand. On fuch a disposition, Mr. Lounger, what impreffion is to be made by rural objects or rural scenery? The vifions which thefe paint to fancy, or the tender ties they have on remembrance, cannot find room in an imagination or a heart made callous by felfish and interested indifference. "Tis with regret rather than refentment that I perceive this fort of turn fo prevalent among the young people of my acquaintance, or those with whom I am connected. I have now, alas! no child of my own in whom I can can either lament fuch a failing, or be proud of the want of it. I think myself happy, Sir, that, even at my advanced period of life, I am ftill fufceptible of fuch impreffions as thofe which your 87th number imputes to rural contemplation. At this season, above all others, methinks they are to be enjoyed. Now, in this fading time of the year, when the flush of vegetation, and the glow of maturity is past, when the fields put on a fober, or rather a faddened appearance, I look on the well-known fcenery around my countrydwelling, as I would on a friend fallen from the pride of profperity to a more humble and a more interefting fituation. The withering grafs that whistles on the unfheltered bank; the fallen leaves ftrewed over the woodland path; the filence of the almost naked copfe, which not long ago rung with the mufic of the birds; the flocking of their little tribes that seem mute with the dread of ills to come; the querulouscall of the partridge in the bare brown field, and the foft low fong of the red-breast from the household fhed; this penfive landscape, with these plaintive accompaniments, dimmed by a grey October fky, which we look on with the thoughts of its fhortened and still shortening light; all this preffes on my bosom a certain ftill and gentle melancholy, which I would not part with for all the pleafure that mirth could give, for all the luxury that wealth could buy. You fay truly, in one of your late - Papers, that poetry is almost extinguished among us: it is one of my old-fashioned propenfities to be fond of poetry, to be delighted with its defcriptions, to be affected by its fentiments. I find in genuine poetry a fort of opening to the feelings of my mind, to which my own expreffion could not give vent; I fee in its defcriptions, a picture more lively and better compofed than my own lefs diftinct and lefs vivid ideas of the objects around me could furnifh. It is with fuch impreffions that I read the following lines of Thomfon's Autumn, introductive of the folemn and beautiful apoftrophe to philofophic melancholy. "But fee the fading many-colour'd woods, "Shade deepening over fhade, the country round "Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dufk and dun, "Of every hue, from wan-declining green. "To footy dark. Thefe now the lonesome "Mufe, Low-whispering, lead into their leaf-strown "walks, "And give the feafon in its latest view. "Meantime, light-fhadowing all, a fober calm "Fleeces unbounded ether; whofe leaft wave "Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn "The gentle current: while illumin'd wide "The |