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88
MRS. SIDDONS.

ideas of finery very like the French, but not so cleanly; and they not only speak, but think coarsely. This is in confidence; therefore, your fingers on your lips, I pray. They are tenacious of their country to a degree of folly that is very laughable, and would call me the blackest of ingrates were they to know my sentiments of them. I have got a thousand pounds among them this summer. I always acknowledge myself obliged to them, but I cannot love them. I know but one among them that can in any degree atone for the barbarism of the rest, who thinks there are other means of expressing esteem besides forcing people to eat and to drink, the doing which to a most offensive degree they call Irish hospitality. I long to be at home, sitting quietly in the little snug parlour, where I had last the pleasure, or rather the pain, of seeing you that night. For the first time in my life I wished not to see you. I dreaded it, and with reason. I knew (which was the case) I should not recover that cruel farewell for several days.

"Oh! my dear friend, do the pleasures of life compensate for the pangs? I think not. Some people place the whole happiness of life in the pleasures of imagination, in building castles; for my part, I am not one that builds very magnificent ones. Nay; I don't build any castles, but cottages without end. May the great Disposer of all events but permit me to spend the evening of my toilsome, bustling day in a cottage, where I may sometimes have the converse and society which will make me more worthy those imperishable habitations which are prepared for the spirits of just men made perfect! Yes, let me take up my rest in this world near my beloved Langford. You know this has been my castle any time these four years. And I am