return to London; because, on the 11th, he writes to his wife from Ayton on the third day of his journey, one (a Sunday) had been spent in inaction on the road. "I hope," says he, "God willing, to be at London, Saturday come se'nnight;" that is to say, the journey was to take a fortnight. Thus, we find him writing on the 15th from Pearce Bridge, in the county of Durham, with his limbs much better than usual after his seven days' journey from Edinburgh towards London. He tells us on this occasion: "You cannot imagine the civilities and honours I had done me there, and [I] never lay better, ate or drank better, or conversed with men of better sense than there."-Steele's Correspondence.

Brief as his visit had been, Steele was evidently pleased with the men he met in the Scottish capital. The business he came about was a disagreeable one; but his name was a celebrated one in British literature, of which he had recently established a class; he was personally good-natured, gay and social, and his Scottish hosts could separate the great essayist from the Whig partisan and servant of the ministry. "Allan Ramsay," says Mr. Chambers, "would be delighted to see him in his shop' opposite to Niddry's Wynd head.' Thomson, then a youth at college, would steal a respectful look at him as he stood amongst his friends at the Cross. From Alexander Pennecuik, gentleman,' a bard little known to fame, he received a set of complimentary verses, ending thus:

"Scotia.

Grief more than age hath furrowed her brow,
She sobs her sorrows, yet she smiles on you;

Tears from her crystal lembics do distil,

With throbbing breast she dreads th' approaching ill,

Yet still she loves you, though you come to kill,

In midst of fears and wounds, which she doth feel,

Kisses the hurting hand, smiles on the wounding STEELE.""

Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh in attendance upon the business of the Commission. We find him taking a furnished house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May, (the Whitsunday term in Scotland;) but on the 29th July, he had not come to take possession; neither could he say when he would arrive, till this "great affair" was finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for Scotland, "though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife's inability to go with me." "I shall," he adds, "want the four-horse stable for my saddle-horses."

DEATH OF LADY STEELE.

In the spring of 1717, Lady Steele visited Llangunnor, near Caermarthen, to look after her family estate there. Sir Richard bout this time was much occupied in London with a project or conveying fish alive, by which he assured his wife, he firmly lieved he should make his fortune; but, like most of his other schemes, this did not succeed.

Steele's fondness for his children and his wife is playfully xpressed in the two following letters written by him to her n Wales:

DEAR PRUE,

Hampton Court, March 16, 1716-17.

If you have written anything to me which I should have received ast night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next post. Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in umbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He 3 also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought own my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very agged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new lothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his -ervice.

MY DEAREST PRUE, —

March 26, 1717.

I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of elling me enow of the continual pain in your head. When I lay your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last ight, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake ni in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep.

For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher.

In one of her latest letters, when illness kept them apart, ne in London, the other at Hampton Court, her happening to call him good Dick so delights him, that he tells her he ould almost forget his miserable gout and lameness, and walk down to her. Not long after this, her illness terminated atally. She died on the morrow of the Christmas-day of 1718, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in that part of he south transept not included in Poet's Corner: a gravetone is placed over her remains.

STEELE AGAIN IN SCOTLAND.

Sir Richard renewed his official visit to Edinburgh in the

year 1719, after Lady Steele's death, (1720 and 1721): in the latter year we find this allusion to some party of pleasure. He writes to Mr. James Anderson, the editor of the Diplomata Scotia: "Just before I received yours, I sent a written message to Mr. Montgomery, advising that I designed the coach should go to your house, to take in your galaxy, and after call for his star," referring, probably, to the female members of Mr. Anderson's and Mr. Montgomery's families. In the ensuing month, he writes to Mr. Anderson from the York Buildings Office in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a small bill representing money of his own for her relief. "This trifle," he says, "in her housewifery hands, will make cheerful her numerous family at Collingtown."

"These," adds Mr. Chambers, "are meagre particulars regarding Steele's visits to Scotland, but are at least serviceable in illustrating his noted kindheartedness

'Kind Richy Spee, the friend of a' distressed,'

as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal acquaintance at this time."

STEELE AND THE PRESBYTERIANS.

When in Scotland, Sir Richard had interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches-a "devout imagination," which one would have thought very few such interviews would have required to dispel. He was particularly struck with James Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, an excellent man and most attractive preacher. What most impressed Steele was, the good humour and benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of human nature, and the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him, on this account, "the Hangman of the Gospel."

THE MENDICANTS' FEAST.

While in Edinburgh, Steele gave a proof of his benevolent humour by assembling all the eccentric-looking mendicants of the Scottish capital in a tavern in Lady Stair's Close, and

there pleasing the whimsical taste of himself and one or two friends by witnessing their enjoyment of an abundant feast, and observing their various oddities. Nor was the effect upon Steele temporary or evanescent; for he afterwards confessed that from this mendicants' feast he had drunk in enough of native drollery to compose a comedy.

"THE TOWER OF REPENTANCE."

Steele, in one of his journeys to Scotland, soon after he had crossed the Border, near Annan, observed a shepherd on a hill-side, and reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. "And what do you learn from this book?" asked Sir Richard. "I learn from it the way to Heaven." 66 "Very well," replied the Knight, we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would show us the way." Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence, at some miles' distance, and said: "Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower." The party, surprised and amused, demanded to know how the tower was called. The shepherd answered, "It is the Tower of Repentance."

It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Repentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.-Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland.

SPECULATION AT YORK BUILDINGS.

The reader, we dare say, will remember the picturesque water-gate at the south end of Buckingham-street, in the Strand, facing the Thames. This is all that remains of the stately York House, which the Duke of Buckingham borrowed for the entertainment of foreign princes. His Grace pulled down the old house, and erected a large and temporary structure, sumptuously fitted up, which he used for state occasions: "his noble soul," Pepys tells us, appeared "in every place, in the doorcases and the windows." The Duke sold the house and gardens in 1672: the mansion was taken down and the gardens cleared, and upon the site were erected

"York Buildings." Harley, Earl of Oxford, was living here in 1708; and a dozen years later, we find Sir Richard Steele residing here upon an extravagant scale, in a house in Villiersstreet. The Buildings" appear to have been a focus for speculators; and Steele projected here a sort of nursery for the stage, which required large premises; and possibly, he may have fitted up for this purpose, some portion of Buckingham's structure that may have been spared. Here he gave a sumptuous entertainment to some two hundred guests, amusing them with dramatic recitations. Addison assisted, and wrote an epilogue for the occasion, in which we can relish the sly humour of these lines:

"The Sage, whose guests you are to-night, is known
To watch the public weal, though not his own."

It was in fitting up the theatre, which was opened with this entertainment, that Steele was outwitted by his carpenter by retaliation much more moderate than that which characterizes the builders' strikes of our times. The theatre was nearly completed, and before it was opened, Steele was anxious to try whether the place was well adapted for hearing. Accordingly, he placed himself in the most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking," and did not know what to say to his honour; but the good-natured knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and, after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible: "Sir Richard Steele !" he said, "for three months past me and my men have been a-working in this theatre, and we've never seen the colour of your honour's money: we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we wont drive in another nail." Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like his subject much.

Steele resided in Villiers-street after his wife's death, from 1721 to 1724: Mr. Peter Cunningham, in searching the ratebooks of St. Martin's, found, in 1725, the word "gone" written against Steele's name.

"THE CONSCIOUS LOVERS."

After Steele's serious failure in the Lying Lover, in 1704, he did not reappear as a dramatist till 1722, when he pro