Mr. W.—No. I always read in my own room.
R.—You will not. Measure your candle.
(Exit Mr. Wilmot.) Rogers (to the remaining circle).—That Mr. Wilmot is a sensible man. I don’t say so from my own knowledge; not the least. He wrote a book, too. That, you’ll say, was nothing. And printed it. I don’t say that from my own knowledge either, for I never read it, never met anybody that had.
April, 1820.—Reflections for my sons.—May I learn to be humbly thankful for the blessings showered upon me; for an active and healthful body, a mind capable of receiving instruction, a liberal education, wise teachers, affectionate relations, and more than a sufficiency of all the goods of this life; for birth in a free country, far from the seat of war; for having been hitherto preserved from the commission of great crimes; and, above all, for the knowledge of the will of God as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. When I may be disposed not to have a due sense of these blessings, let me turn my thoughts to the sufferers in occupations of severe labour, in painful disorders, in extreme penury, in sorrows by the side of a dying friend, in sorrows from the wickedness and ingratitude of those whom they love; in the agonies of starvation, in the horrors of remorse, in hopeless and helpless anguish on the field of battle; in infamy, in dungeons, in chains, in slavery, in torture.
Let these reflections check in me that spirit of discontent prosperity may produce, and impress on me thy commands, O God, that all those who are fortunate in this world should watch over and relieve their afflicted brethren; thy declaration that Thou wilt punish those who neglect this duty so repeatedly enjoined in thy Holy Word. Let me, therefore, avoid all those acts which would incapacitate me from assisting the poor and helpless; and let me not give this assistance from compassion alone, but because Thou hast commanded it, and because Our Blessed Lord has vouchsafed to accept it as an evidence of our faith and our love.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.
London, May, 1820.
The Gazette of to-day is to contain the fate of the first Drawing-room. I have heard it is to be without hoops and without men—a face without nose and without eyes—but the changes of mind at the Great House are so rapid that impatient gossip toils after them in vain. Lady C. says that ladies shall walk at the Coronation, ministers say they shall not; and these two resolves are changed night and morning. We are amazingly like the Court of France in the later days of Louis the Fourteenth. There is the same extensive influence of favour in all directions; the same universal and avowed cupidity, the same delight in luxury, the same dangers and the same blindness, and the same public display of devotion.