MRS. GWYLLIM,

IT has pleased Providence to bring us safe back to England, and partake us in many pearls by land and water, in particular the Devil’s Harse-a-pike, and Hoyden’s Hole, which hath got no bottom; and, as we are drawing huomwards, it may be proper to uprise you, that Brambleton-hall may be in a condition to receive us, after this long gurney to the islands of Scotland. By the first of next month you may begin to make constant fires in my brother’s chamber and mine; and burn a fagget every day in the yellow damask room: have the tester and curtains dusted, and the featherbed and matrosses well haired, because, perhaps, with the blissing of haven, they may be yoosed on some occasion. Let the ould hogsheads be well skewred and seasoned for bear, as Mat is resolved to have his seller choak fool.

If the house was mine, I would turn over a new leaf. I don’t see why the sarvants of Wales shouldn’t drink fair water, and eat hot cakes and barley cale, as they do in Scotland, without troubling the botcher above once a quarter. I hope you keep accunt of Roger’s purseeding in reverence to the buttermilk. I expect my dew when I come huom, without baiting an ass, I’ll assure you. As you must have layed a great many more eggs than would be eaten, I do suppose there is a power of turks, chickings, and guzzling about the house; and a brave kergo of cheese ready for market; and that the owl has been sent to Crickhowel, saving what the maids spun in the family.

Pray let the whole house and furniture have a thorough cleaning from top to bottom, for the honour of Wales; and let Roger search into, and make a general clearance of the slit holes which the maids have in secret; for I know they are much given to sloth and uncleanness. I hope you have worked a reformation among them, as I exhorted you in my last, and set their hearts upon better things than they can find in junkitting and caterwauling with the fellows of the country.

As for Win Jenkins, she has undergone a perfect metamurphysis, and is become a new creeter from the ammunition of Humphry Clinker, our new footman, a pious young man, who has laboured exceedingly, that she may bring forth fruits of repentance. I make no doubt but he will take the same pains with that pert hussey Mary Jones, and all of you; and that he may have power given to penetrate and instil his goodness, even into your most inward parts, is the fervent prayer of

Your friend in the spirit,
TAB. BRAMBLE.

To Dr. Lewis.

Sept. 20.

DEAR LEWIS,

LISMAHAGO is more paradoxical than ever. The late gulp he had of his native air, seems to have blown fresh spirit into all his polemical faculties. I congratulated him the other day on the present flourishing state of his country, observing that the Scots were now in a fair way to wipe off the national reproach of poverty, and expressing my satisfaction at the happy effects of the union, so conspicuous in the improvement of their agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and manners. The lieutenant, screwing up his features into a look of dissent and disgust, commented on my remarks to this effect: ‘Those who reproach a nation for its poverty, when it is not owing to the profligacy or vice of the people, deserve no answer. The Lacedaemonians were poorer than the Scots, when they took the lead among all the free states of Greece, and were esteemed above them all for their valour and their virtue. The most respectable heroes of ancient Rome, such as Fabricius, Cincinnatus, and Regulus, were poorer than the poorest freeholder in Scotland; and there are at this day individuals in North-Britain, one of whom can produce more gold and silver than the whole republic of Rome could raise at those times when her public virtue shone with unrivalled lustre; and poverty was so far from being a reproach, that it added fresh laurels to her fame, because it indicated a noble contempt of wealth, which was proof against all the arts of corruption. If poverty be a subject for reproach, it follows that wealth is the object of esteem and veneration. In that case, there are Jews and others in Amsterdam and London, enriched by usury, peculation, and different species of fraud and