ceeding ftages of modifh life, would carry us far beyond our prefent intention. Suffice it to obferve, that they prevail more particularly among people who are the most highly polished and refined. To compare their artificial mode of life with that of nature, would probably afford a very ftriking contraft; and at the fame time fupply an additional reason why, in the very large cities, inftances of longevity are so very rare. An Account of HERTFORDSHIRE: With a neat and accurate MAP of that County. THE county of Herts is bounded, and Ware, from the laft of which it is on the north, by Cambridgeshire; on the east, by Effex, from which county it is feparated, partly by the river Lea, and partly by the fmaller river Stort; on the north-west, by Bedfordshire; on the weft, by Bucks; and, on the fouth, by Middlefex. It is thirty-fix miles in length from north to fouth, and twenty-eight in breadth from east to weft. It is divided into eight hundreds, which contain nineteen market-towns, and 174 parishes. It fends fix members to parliament; namely, two for the county, and two cach for the borough-towns of Hertford and St. Alban's. is The northern skirt of this county hilly, forming a scattered part of the chalky ridge which extends across the kingdom in this direction. A number of ftreams take their rife from this fide, which, by their clearness, fhew the general nature of the foil to be inclined to hardness, and not abundantly rich. Flint ftones are scattered in great profufion over the face of this county; and beds of chalk are frequently to be met with. It is found, however, with the aid of proper culture, to be extremely favourable to corn, both wheat and barley, which come to as great perfection here as in any part of the kingdom. The western part is in general a tolerably rich foil, and under excellent cultivation. The principal river of Hertfordfhire is the Lea, which, rifing out of Leagrave marth in the fouth of Bedfordihire, flows obliquely to the eastern fide, wahing the towns of Hertford navigable to the Thames. It collects in its courfe all the ftreams of the northern and eaftern parts. Pope thus mentions this river: The gulfy Lea his fedgy treffes rears. WINDSOR FOREST. The Stort rises near Clavering in Effex, and leaving that county at Birchanger, flows to Bishop Stortford, where it has been made navigable to the river Lea, which it joins near Roydon. On the fouth-western fide the Coln unites various ftreams, and conveys them out of the county near Rickmansworth. The wholesome air and pleasant fituations of Hertfordshire, together with its vicinity to the metropolis, have rendered it a favourite residence both in ancient and modern times; and it poffeffes many country feats and remains of antiquity. Its towns, however, are of small account; and it is without manufactures. The great bufinefs of the county is the traffic of corn and the malting trade; which laft is carried on to a very large extent in the towns of Hitchin, Boldock, Royston-and Ware. The latter town fends a greater fupply of malt to London than any other market. The Hertfordshire malt is not, however, all grown in the county; but large quantities of barley are purchased in all the furrounding ones, which, after being malted in these towns, is fent to London chiefly by the navigation of the Lea. The HISTORY of Mr. BETHEL; an interefting and inftructive I Narrative. [From Defmond, a Novel, in 3 vol. by Mrs. Charlotte Smith.'] Told you in a former letter, that career, conceived an affection, or, acI would endeavour to give you a cording to your phrase, an ardent little of my dearly-bought experience. attachment to a married woman of You know that I have been unhappy; high rank; but I had, at the fame but you are probably quite unac- time, feen enough of them all, to dequainted with the fources whence that termine never to marry any of them unhappiness originates. In relating myself. them, I may perhaps convince you, that ignorance and fimplicity are no fecurities against the evils which you feem to apprehend in domeftic life; and that the woman, who is fuddenly raised from humble mediocrity to the gay scenes of fashionable fplendour, is much more likely to be giddily intoxicated, than one who has from her infancy been accustomed to them. At one-and-twenty, and at the close of a long minority, which had been paffed under the care of very excellent guardians, I became mafter of a very large fum of ready money, and an eftate the largest and best-conditioned that any gentleman poffeffed in the county where it lay. I was at that time very unlike the fiber fellow I now appear; and the moment I was free from the reftraint of those friends, to whofe guardianship my father had left me, I ruthed into all the diffipation that was going forward, and became one of the gayeft men at that time about town. With fuch a fortune it was not difficult to be introduced into the very first world.' The illuftrious adventurers and titled gamblers, of whom that world is compofed, found me an admirable fubject for them; while the women, who were then either the most celebrated ornaments of the circle where I moved, or were endeavouring to become fo, were equally folicitous to obtain my notice; and the unmarried part of them feemed generoufly willing to forget my want of title in favour of my twelve or thirteen thousand a year. I had, however, at a very early period of my Two years experience confirmed me in this refolution; but, by the end of that time, I was relieved from the embarraffments of a large property. In the courfe of the firit year, the turf and the hazard-table had disburthened me of all my ready money; and, at the conclufion of the fecond, my eftate was reduced to fomething lefs than one half. I then found that I was not, by above one half, fo great an object to my kind friends as I had been; and when, foon afterward, I was compelled to pay five thousand pounds for my fentimental attachment; when the obliging world reprefented my affairs infinitely worfe than they were, and I became afraid of looking into them myself; I found the period rapidly approaching, when to this circle I fhould become no object at all. My pride now affected that, which common fenfe had attempted in vain; and I determined to quit a fociety into which I fhould never have entered. I went down to my house in the county where almoft all my eftate lay; fent for the attorney who had the care of my property, and, with a fort of desperate refolution, refolved to know the worst, This lawyer, whofe father had been fteward to mine, and to whom at his death the ftewardship had been given by my guardians, was a clear-headed, active and intelligent man; and, when he faw himfelf entrusted with fuller powers to act in my bufinefs than he had till then poffeffed, he fet about it fo earnestly and affiduously, that he very foon got fuccefsfully through two law-fuits of great importance; raifed my rents without oppreffing my tenants; difpofed of fuch timber as could be fold without prejudice to the principal estate; fold off part of what was mortgaged to redeem and clear the reft; and fo regulated my affairs, that, in a few months from the time of his entirely undertaking them, I found myself relieved from every embarrassment, and stili poffeffed of an eftate of more than five thousand pounds a year. The feven that I had thrown away gave me, however, fome of the fevere pangs that are inflicted by mortified pride. Nabobs and rich citizens became the oftentatious poffeffors of manors and royalties in the fame county, which were once mine; and fome of my eftates-eftates that had been in my family fince the conqueft, now lent their names to barons by recent purchase, and indignified mushroom nobility. I fled, therefore, from public meetings, where I only found fubjects of felf-reproach, and made acquaintance with another fet of people, among whom I was still confidered as a man of great fortune; and where I found more attention, and, as I believed, more friendship than I had ever experienced in fuperior focieties. More general information and more understanding I certainly found; and none of my new friends poffeffed a greater fhare of both than my folicitor, Mr. Stamford. He had defervedly obtained my confidence, and I was now often at his houfe, which his family feemed to vie in trying to render agreeable to me. His wife was pleafing and goodhumoured; he had feveral fifters, fome married, and two fingle, who occafionally vifited at his houfe; and it was not difficult to fee, that in the eyes of the latter, Mr. Bethel, with his reduced fortune, was a man of greater confequence than he had ever appeared to the high-born damfels among whom he had lived in the meridian of his profperity.. I was not, however, flattered by their attention, or attracted by their coquetry. They were pretty enough, and not without fenfe; but they had both been very much in London; and, I thought, too deeply initiated, if not into very fashionable focieties, yet into the ftyle of those which catch, with imitative emulation, the manners and ideas those focieties give. Mr. Stamford feemed defirous of giving both thefe ladies a chance of fuccefs with me, for they were alternately brought forward for about twelvemonths; at the end of which time, they were both, perhaps, convinced, that they had neither of them any great profpect of it; for then the family of a widow fifter was invited, none of whom I had ever seen, or hardly heard mentioned before. The father of this family, a lieutenant in the army, had married the eldeft of Stamford's fifters, when he was recruiting in the town where she then lived; by which he fo greatly difobliged the friends on whom he depended, that, though he had a very large family, they never afforded him afterward the leaft affiftance; and, about two years before the period I now fpeak of, he had died at Jamaica, leaving his widow and feven children, with very little more than the penfion allowed by government to fubfift upon. Of thefe children, the two eldest were daughters; who, from the obscure village their mother was compelled to inhabit in Wales, were now come to pass the winter, at the house of their uncle, in a large provincial town. On entering one morning Stamford's parlour, in my ufual familiar way, I was ftruck with the fight of two very young women who were at work there; the elder of whom was, I thought, the most perfect beauty I had ever feen. When I met Stamford, I expreffed my admiration of the young perfon I had juft parted from, and enquired who fhe was; he told me he was his niece, and briefly related the history of his fifter's family. At dinner, as Stamford invited me to stay, I could not keep my eyes from from the contemplation of Louifa's beauty, which, the longer I beheld it, became more and more fascinating. The unaffected innocence and timidity of her manners rendered her yet more interefting. She knew merely how to read and write, and had, till now, never been out of the village, whither her mother had retired when she was only fix or seven years old; and her total unconsciousness of the beauty fhe fo eminently poffeffed, rivetted the fetters which that beauty, even at the first interview, impofed. Her uncle was not, however, fo blind to the impreffion I had received; yet he managed fo well, that, without any appearance of artifice on his part, I was every day at the house: and, in a week, I was gone a whole age in love. I foon made proposals, which were accepted with tranfport. I married the beautiful Louifa-and was for fome time happy. Mr. Stamford had immediately the whole management of my fortune, in the improvement of which he had now fo much intereft; and, in his hands, it recovered itself so fast, that though I made a very good figure in the country, I did not expend more than half my income. The money thus faved, Stamford put out to the best advantage, and I saw myself likely to regain the loft confequence I fo much regretted a foolish vanity, to which I facrificed my real felicity. Stamford, who had all the latent ambition that attends confcious abilities, as a man of bufinefs, had, till now, felt that ambition repreffed by the little probability there was of his ever reaching a more elevated fituation. But he faw and irritated the mortified pride which I very ill concealed; and, by degrees, he communicated to me, and taught me to adopt thofe projects, by which he told me I fhould not only be relieved from this uneafy fenfation, but rife to greater confequence than I had ever poffeffed. -You have talents,' faid he, and ought to exert them. In thefe times, any thing may be done by a man of abilities, who has a feat in parliament. Take a feat in the house of commons, and a feffion or two will open to you profpects greater than those you facrificed in the early part of your life.'I took his advice, and the following year, inftead of felling, at a general election, the two feats for a borough which belonged to me, I filled one myself, and gave the other to Stamford, who, confcious as he was of poffeffing those powers, which, in a corrupt government, are always eagerly bought, had long been folicitous to quit the narrow walk of a country attorney, and mount a ftage where thofe abilities would have fcope. In confequence of this arrangement, I took a large houfe in town; where Stamford and his family had apartments for the first four or five months. At the end of that time, he had managed fo well, that he hired one for himself.-Artful, active, and indefatigable, with a tongue very plausible, and a confcience very pliant, he foon became a very ufeful man to the party who had purchased him. Preferments and fortune crowded rapidly upon him; and Stamford, the country attorney, was foon forgotton, in Stamford the confident of minifters, and the companions of peers. I was not, however, entirely without acquiring fome of the advantages he had taught me to expect. I obtained, by what I now blush to think of (giving my voice in direct oppofition to my opinion and my principles) a place of tix hundred pounds a year; which, though it did little more than pay the rent of my house in town, was, as Mr. Stamford affured me, the foretafte of fuperior advantages. But, long before the close of this feffion of parliament, I discovered, that far from being likely to recover the fortune I had diffipated, I was, in fact, a confiderable lofer in pecuniary matters. Alas! I was yet endeavouring to fhut my eyes against the fad conviction, that I had fuftained, a yet heavier, and more irrepa rable |