into Italy, for the pleasure of Weeping over their Tomb Stone—and think the Sad Luxury, would Administer, more to my Happiness; than half the Pursuits, which the World styles Pleasant—I never shall contemplate, their Like again—Sense, Wit, Literature, All the Manly Accomplishments & Graces, were his!—Beauty, Softness, and every feminine Virtue Hers!—Their Story was Romantic—their Life Pleasant, and their Deaths I doubt not most Happy!—You may have heard me speak of them, before—but never with so much Explicitness—I had my reasons for being reserved on the subject—They were in England when I left it—but quite Incognito—M^r. Sterne Introduced me to their Notice—the most Agreable Service, He ever did me—for till I saw Madame de Martaigne—I never saw the Character, who came up to my Ideas of Female Beauty & Worth—till I knew her Husband—I never conceived it possible for a Man to please a whole Life—without the least Apprehension of Indifference or Satiety! Excuse this Elogium in their Praise to you my dear James, tho’ you knew them not—You would have loved, as much as I admired Them—and joined your Tears with mine, for the Loss of Persons so Amiably distinguished—this subject has such hold of me, that I cannot readily quit it—and therefore I’ll indulge the Penserozo Humours, by telling you a couple of little anecdotes, as such matters often give a better Insight into Character, than all the great Outlines—Upon reading Lord Lyttletons Monody, on the Death of his Lucy—she used to wish that Martaigne had wrote, and that she had been the subject—declaring, that to be so lamented—she would consent to dye, and that with Pleasure—Westminster Abbey, was her favorite Scene of Amusement—Contemplation rather—on account of a Monument there inscribed to the Memory of a M^{rs}. Nightingale, you may have noticed it, as it is a very Singular one, and well Executed—Death is stalking out of a Cavern—Aims his Dart at a Woman—and her Husband Endeavors to repel the Stroke, with an Anxiety and Terror in his Countenance, more Easy to conceive than describe—M^{rs}. M—— never passed the Abbey _if alone_, but she called to look at this Monument—often went there, from a very distant part of the Town, on no other Errand—and never saw it I believe, but it cost her more Tears, than the deepest wrote Tragedy would have done. She used to say—that Octavia was the first of all female Characters in Ancient History—and that Marc Anthony deserved to lose the World, for his insensibility to the Virtues of such a wife, rather than for attaching himself to a Cleopatra—Prior of all our English Poets, was her Favorite—and his Nut brown Maid, her Theme of Admiration whenever it was named—Solomons Egyptian, was a grand Favorite with her—especially when she returned the Proffer’d Wreath—afterwards, indeed, the Girl talked too much—but altogether, she behaved nobly—now poor Afra, _I_ think, was not inferior to her—and deserved a better fate than she met