And how much of all this, my dear Mrs. Hayne, is due to you! If you had not been the brave-hearted woman you are, the struggle might not have been so manfully maintained; I am sure Mr. Hayne feels this, and is willing to share with you half his fame; it is you who have helped to make a shrine of Copse Hill; and you as well as he deserved to have your name engraven on the silver service received at Macon.

I hope you will be able to keep all visitors away from Mr. Hayne, until he entirely recovers, and gains a little strength again. But I need not warn you to do this, for have you not been the guardian angel who has always stood between him and the rough side of life?

How bitterly I regret the failure of all my endeavors to have you pay me a visit three years ago; to think that we should be friends so long, and yet never have met! And that we should meet now seems unlikely. But we cannot have things our way in this world; as Jean Ingelow says in her last letter to me, "I shall hope to meet, know, and love you in the world beyond." Will that have to content us? Or shall we hope to meet and know each other this side? If the meeting doesn't come soon, I fear I shall be too blind to see you...

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON TO PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

[From 'The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston,' by Elizabeth Preston Allan. Copyright, 1903, Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Used here by permission.]

Lexington, VA., Nov. 17th, 1870.

MY DEAR MR. HAYNE,-I enclose you a little poem coaxed out of me by Mr. Hand Browne for the December No. of the Eclectic. I want you to like it. The expression of Gen. Lee (uttered in his unconsciousness) seems to me more striking than anything I can now recall from the dying lips of a great commander. Tête d'armée-how weak in comparison was Napoleon's utterance! And yet how wonderfully characteristic of the two generals! "Let the tent be struck”— obedient to orders-readiness for the duty of advance-the one's; self-glory, tête d'armée-the thought of the other. I hope you received a little picture I sent you of the General's

lying in state-if anything so simple may thus be termed. But engagements press, and I must stop at once.

Very truly yours,

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

JOHN RANDOLPH TO MR. T. B. DUDLEY

GEORGETOWN, Feb. 16, 1817.
Sunday morning.

YOUR letter, written this day week, reached me yesterday. Indeed, all three of your last have arrived regularly on the Saturday morning after their date-a reformation in the postoffice that was more desired than expected.

I almost envy you Orlando. I would, if it were not Johnny Hoole's translation; although, at the age of ten, I devoured that more eagerly than gingerbread. Oh! if Milton had translated it, he might tell of

All who, since, baptized or infidel
Jousted in Aspromont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Morocco, or Torbisond;

Or whom Bisserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemagne, with all his peerage, fell
By Fontarabia.

Let me advise you to

Call up him, who left half told,

The story of Cambuscan bold.

Indeed, I have

I think you have never read Chaucer. sometimes blamed myself for not cultivating your imagination, when you were young. It is a dangerous quality, however, for the possessor. But if from my life were to be taken the pleasure derived from that faculty, very little would remain. Shakespeare, and Milton, and Chaucer, and Spenser, and Plutarch, and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and Don Quixote, and Gil Blas, and Tom Jones, and Gulliver, and Robinson Crusoe, "and the tale of Troy divine," have made up more than half of my worldly enjoyment. To these ought

to be added Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ariosto, Dryden, Beaumont and Fletcher, Southern, Otway, Congreve, Pope's Rape and Eloisa, Addison, Young, Thomson, Gay, Goldsmith, Collins, Sheridan, Cowper, Byron, Æsop, La Fontaine, Voltaire, (Charles XII., Mahomed, and Zaïre;) Rousseau, (Julie,) Schiller, Madame de Staël-but, above all, Burke.

One of the first books I ever read was Voltaire's Charles XII.; about the same time, 1780-'81, I read the Spectator; and used to steal away to the closet containing them. The letters from his correspondents were my favourites. I read Humphrey Clinker, also; that is, Win's and Tabby's letters, with great delight, for I could spell, at that age, pretty correctly. Reynard, the Fox, came next, I think; then Tales of the Genii and Arabian Nights. This last, and Shakespeare, were my idols. I had read them with Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, Pope's Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's Seasons, before I was eleven years of age; also, Goldsmith's Roman History, 2 vols. 8vo., and an old history of Braddock's war. When not eight years old, I used to sing an old ballad of his defeat:

On the 6th day of July, in the year sixty-five,
At two in the evening, did our forces arrive;

When the French and the Indians in ambush did lay

And there was great slaughter of our forces that day.

At about eleven, 1784-5, Percy's Reliques, and Chaucer, became great favourites, and Chatterton, and Rowley. I then read Young and Gay, &c.: Goldsmith I never saw until 1787. Pray get my Germany from Mr. Hoge, or Mr. Lacy: they have it.

I have scribbled at a great rate. Do thou likewise. JOHN RANDOLPH.

MR. T. B. DUDLEY.

I have been reading Lear these two days, and incline to prefer it to all Shakespeare's plays. In that and Timon only, it has been said, the bard was in earnest. Read both-the first especially.

JOHN ROLPH TO SIR THOMAS DALE

[John Rolph, of Rolfe, one of the early settlers in Virginia, married Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, in 1613. The following letter, a curious blending of piety and love, was written by Rolph to justify his proposed marriage.]

HONOURABLE SIR, AND MOST WORTHY GOVERNOR :-When your leasure shall best serve you to peruse these lines, I trust in God the beginning will not strike you into greater admiration than the end will give you good content. It is a matter of no small moment, concerning my own particular, which here I impart unto you, and which toucheth me so nearly as the tenderness of my salvation. Howbeit, I freely subject myself to your great and mature judgment, deliberation, approbation, and determination; assuring myself of your zealous admonition and godly comforts, either persuading me to desist, or encouraging me to persist therein, with a religious fear and godly care, for which (from the very instant that this began to roote itself within the secrete bosome of my breast) my daily and earnest praiers have bin, still are, and ever shall be poored forthwith, in as sincere a goodly zeal as I possibly may, to be directed, aided, and governed in all my thoughts, words, and deedes, to the glory of God and for my eternal consolation; to persevere wherein I had never had more neede, nor (till now) could ever imagine to have bin moved with the like occasion. But (my case standing as it doth) what better worldly refuge can I here seeke, than to shelter myself under the safety of your favourable protection? And did not my case proceede from an unspotted conscience, I should not dare to offer to your view and approved judgment these passions of my troubled soule; so full of feare and trembling is hypocrisie and dissimulation. But, knowing my own innocency and godly fervour in the whole prosecution hereof, I doubt not of your benigne acceptance and clement construction. As for malicious depravers and turbulent spirits, to whom nothing is tasteful but what pleaseth their unsavory pallate, I passe not for them, being well assured in my persuasion by the often trial and proving of myselfe in my holiest meditations and praises, that I am called hereunto by the Spirit of God; and it shall be sufficient for me to be protected by your

selfe in all virtuous and pious endeavours. And for my more happy proceedings herein, my daily oblations shall ever be addressed to bring to passe to goode effects, that your-selfe and all the world may truly say, "This is the worke of God, and it is marvellous in our eies."

But to avoide tedious preambles, and to come nearer the matter: first, suffer with your patience to sweepe and make cleane the way wherein I walke from all suspicions and doubts, which may be covered therein, and faithfully to reveale unto you what should move me hereunto.

Let, therefore, this my well-advised protestations, which here I make before God and my conscience, be a sufficient witnesse at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secret of all living harts shall be opened, to condemn me herein, if my deepest intent and purpose be not to strive with all my power of body and minde, in the undertaking of so mighty a matter, for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my own salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ an unbelieving creature,-viz.: Pokahontas. To whom my hartie and best thoughts are and have a long time bin so intangled and inthralled in so intricate a labyrinth, that I was even awearied to unwinde myself thereout. But Almighty God, who never faileth his that truly invocate his holy name, hath opened the gate and led me by the hand, that I might plainly see and discerne the safe pathes wherein to treade.

To you, therefore, (most noble sir,) the patron and father of us in this countrie, doe I utter the effects of this my settled and long-continued affection, (which hath made a mightie warre in my meditations;) and here I do truly relate, to what issue this dangerous combat is come unto, wherein I have not only examined, but thoroughly tried and pared my thoughts, even to the quicke, before I could finde any fit, wholesome, and apt applications to cure so dangerous an ulcer. I never failed to offer my daily and faithful praiers to God for his sacred and holy assistance. I forgot not to set before mine eies the frailtie of mankind, his proneness to evill, his indulgence of wicked thoughts, with many other imperfections, wherein man is daily insnared and oftentimes overthrown, and them compared to my presente state. Nor was I ignorant