 picturesque stile, and give you an idea of lord Lucan, en gros, which is certainly as much as I can venture to pretend to, at present, I find my paper has circumscribed me within the limits of the smallest miniature; and as my art cannot yet rise to

the nicer touches requisite to that small scale, I shall begin his portrait on a new sheet, next post: in the mean time, this will barely allow me to assure you that my affection and tenderness are, if possible, encreased by the unhappiness of my ever dear Fanny.
LOUISA BARTON.
Miss Leister is highly pleased, with the title you have given her; and says she will charge all her poetic swains to celebrate her, henceforward, by the name of Iris.



MY dear Louisa's agreeable melange gave me infinite pleasure, as I am very certain it is an exact representation of her soft yet lively mind.—I am sorry the gloomy picture I sent of my own, affected you even transiently.—Lovers, my dear, are a strange inconsistent race of mortals; their pains and pleasures so totally dependant upon trifling accidents, and yet so exquisite, that they are scarcely to be considered as rational beings.—You, who are not of the sighing tribe, will be amazed when I tell you, that at the time I received the effusions of your sympathetic tenderness, I had almost forgotten the source

of my own distress, and could have cried out, with Orestes,
"I never was unhappy."—

After this, I think I need not tell you that I had just then received a letter from Lord Hume. He is well, and kind, my sister! but, alas! he talks of spending three years on his tour.—We are both young, 'tis certain; but three years are three centuries, in a lover's calendar—and should he hold his purpose I should fancy myself old as a Sybil, or as Cybele, before that time may elapse.—
Tho' I detest the maxim you have quoted from Rochfoucault, I do not blame you for rejoicing in your own ease and tranquility; but you surely might

do so, though I were not in love—and yet, perhaps, the idea of your own felicity would not have struck you so strongly, if you had not then thought me miserable! They say it is in sickness that health is only valued; I fear there is a certain perverseness in human nature, that enhances the value of every blessing, from the privation of it—I had conceived an idea, here, but fear I have not sufficiently
