Health, leisure, means t’ improve it, friendship, peace.”
My most dutiful affections await mamma; and my kind regards attend the young ladies residing with her. How great a share of my ardent love is at your command, need not be renewedly testified.
MARIA WILLIAMS.
To Miss SOPHIA MANCHESTER.
Newburyport.
The extracts which you transmitted to me in your last letter, my dear Sophia, from your favorite author, Dr. Young, corresponded exactly with the solemnity infused into my mind by the funeral of a neighbor, from which I had just returned.
I agree with you that the Night-Thoughts are good devotional exercises. It is impossible to read them with that degree of attention which they merit, without being affected by the important and awful subjects on which they treat. But Young, after all, is always too abstruse, and in many instances too gloomy for me. The most elaborate application is necessary to the comprehension of his meaning and design; which when discovered often tend rather to depress than to elevate the spirits.
Thompson is much better adapted to my taste. Sentiment, elegance, perspicuity and sublimity are all combined in his Seasons. What an inimitable painter! How admirably he describes the infinitely variegated beauties and operations of nature! To the feeling and susceptible heart they are presented in the strongest light. Nor is the energy of his language less perceivable, when he describes the Deity riding on the wings of the wind, and directing the stormy tempest.
“How chang’d the scene! In blazing height of noon,
The sun oppress’d, is plunged in thickest gloom,