Do not suffer yourself to be dejected.  Resolution and diligence will supply all that is wanting, and all that is lost.  But if your health should be impaired, I know not where to find a substitute.  I shall have no mistress; Mr. Thrale will have no wife; and the little flock will have no mother.

I long to be home, and have taken a place in the coach for Monday; I hope, therefore, to be in London on Friday, the 26th, in the evening.  Please to let Mrs. Williams know.  I am, &c.

XXIX.—­To THE SAME.

Lichfield, June 23, 1775.

DEAR MADAM,—­Now I hope you are thinking:  Shall I have a letter to-day from Lichfield?  Something of a letter you will have; how else can I expect that you should write? and the morning, on which I should miss a letter, would be a morning of uneasiness, notwithstanding all that would be said or done by the sisters of Stowhill, who do and say whatever good they can.  They give me good words, and cherries, and strawberries.  Lady ****, and her mother and sister, were visiting there yesterday, and Lady ——­ took her tea before her mother.

Mrs. Cobb is to come to Miss Porter’s this afternoon.  Miss A—­comes little near me.  Mr. Langley, of Ashbourne, was here to-day, in his way to Birmingham, and every body talks of you.

The ladies of the Amicable society are to walk, in a few days, from the townhall to the cathedral, in procession, to hear a sermon.  They walk in linen gowns, and each has a stick, with an acorn; but for the acorn they could give no reason, till I told them of the civick crown.

I have just had your sweet letter, and am glad that you are to be at the regatta.  You know how little I love to have you left out of any shining part of life.  You have every right to distinction, and should, therefore, be distinguished.  You will see a show with philosophick superiority, and, therefore, may see it safely.  It is easy to talk of sitting at home, contented, when others are seeing, or making shows.  But, not to have been where it is supposed, and seldom supposed falsely, that all would go if they could; to be able to say nothing, when every one is talking; to have no opinion, when every one is judging; to hear exclamations of rapture, without power to depress; to listen to falsehoods, without right to contradict, is, after all, a state of temporary inferiority, in which the mind is rather hardened by stubbornness, than supported by fortitude.  If the world be worth winning, let us enjoy it; if it is to be despised, let us despise it by conviction.  But the world is not to be despised, but as it is compared with something better.  Company is, in itself, better than solitude, and pleasure better than indolence:  “Ex nihilo nihil fit,” says the moral, as well as the natural, philosopher.  By doing nothing, and by knowing nothing, no power of doing good can be obtained.  He must mingle with the world, that desires to be useful.  Every new scene