 Arts, and Polite Literature.
MINERVA PRINTING OFFICE, Leadenhall-street.

HERMIONE.
 TO MISS BEAUMONT.
August—
AFTER a dreadful interval of four dismal weeks, I am once more enabled to resume my pen. Your friendly letter of condolence reached me last night. How soothing, my Sophia, is the balm of sympathy to a mind wounded by affliction. Your kind expressions made me dissolve into tears; but they were tears of softness and relief, far different from those of bitterness and despair, of which lately I have shed so many.
I admit of all you say, my dear; but reasoning, however solid and convincing, rarely makes any impression in the first

stages of immoderate sorrow, and I acknowledge the justice without feeling the force of the consolation you would inspire. I know we have enjoyed our beloved parent to a more advanced period than, from his feeble constitution and emaciated frame, we had cause to hope, and that we ought not now to repine that it has pleased the Almighty to take him from us; since every year of the last three of his life, has appeared in the light of a lease from heaven hardly to be expected, and at certain seasons, almost hardly to be wished; but for some months previous to his death, he had been blessed with such unusual good health, that all our former fears were lulled into fatal security, and I cherished with delight the pleasing idea of possessing him even in old age, and of devoting my days to render the remainder of his life comfortable and happy.
I do not however give uncontrouled

scope to my grief, as you tell me you are convinced is the case: I do not complain that the sudden shock of this sad stroke made it perhaps overpower us with redoubled violence; on the contrary, I bless heaven that the sufferings were ours not my dear father's, and that his transition to a better world seemed to all appearance unattended by those painful struggles and agonies which in general render the awful close of life still more dreadful, both to those who endure and to those who behold it.
Oh my beloved friend! it is not his loss (though God only knows how severe) that lies with such a weight of misery on our minds: ah no, Sophia; to the inevitable stroke of death our dearest interests remain every instant exposed; and dreadful as is the blow, resignation, assisted by time, especially in the sanguine season of youth, seldom I believe fails in restoring tranquillity. Long

and deeply must we have mourned our irreparable misfortune: yet I know I am not formed
