She shrunk from all observation, and in another letter says, “I will trespass so far on your good nature as to beg you will leave out whatever will imply my attempting to write poetry; but if there be any among the things you have of mine which you think worth placing among yours I shall have just cause to be pleased at seeing them come abroad in such company, if you will have the goodness to conceal my name, either under that of Eusebia or A Friend, a title which I shall think myself happy to deserve.” This letter enables us to identify four poetical pieces, entitled “A Rural Meditation,” “A Penitential Thought,” “A Midnight Hymn,” and the “Dying Christian’s Hope,” inserted in Watts’ Miscellanies, and attributed to Eusebia, as the compositions of the Countess. It may not be unpleasant to the reader to have brought before him some of these verses, which will show that the modesty of the Countess need not have been dictated by the poverty of her expression: A RURAL MEDITATION. Here in the tuneful groves and flow’ry fields, Nature a thousand various beauties yields: The daisy and tall cowslip we behold Arrayed in snowy white, or freckled gold. The verdant prospect cherishes our sight, Affording joy unmixed, and calm delight The forest-walk, and venerable shade, Wide-spreading lawns, bright rills, and silent glade, With a religious awe our souls inspire, And to the heav’ns our raptured thoughts aspire, To Him who sits in majesty on high, Who turned the starry arches of the sky; Whose word ordained the silver Thames to flow, Raised all the hills, and laid the valleys low; Who taught the nightingale in shades to sing, And bade the skylark warble on the wing; Makes the young steer obedient till the land, And lowing heifers own the milker’s hand; Calms the rough sea, and stills the raging wind, And rules the passions of the human mind. This correspondence sets in a very beautiful light the character of this amiable and excellent lady, no doubt one of Watts’ attached friends, and intercourse with whom, through the long period of twenty years, must have been to him a frequent source of rest and enjoyment. When their intimacy commenced she was in immediate attendance on the Queen Caroline, wife of George I. In those days the attempts which subsequently were made by the Countess of Huntingdon to create a feeling of piety and purity in the neighbourhood of the court had not been commenced, the manners of the great were not favourable to goodness and virtue, and the general spirit of the time brings out into strong relief the character of this gentle and noble lady; seldom apparently free from illness, her thoughts usually move round those loftiest sources of consolation in which the highest or the humblest equally find the surest and most abiding alleviation and repose.