Hayley-XXI-67

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Parkgate Sep^t. 3^d 1792

My dear H

I should have thanked you sooner for your most pleasing entertaining letter, but I have delayed writing a few days in hopes that something might arrive to furnish matter for a letter - but I have nothing to tell.

As a chearful old maid (who does credit to the sisterhood observes), Parkgate is a constant scramble, first for a bathing house in the morning, which sets us in action[?] & then we go on fighting for souls & chickens, shrimps & plum pies at dinner & supper. The crowd \has/ been immense during the last week, but as it is grown colder it \is/ more bearable, & tomorrow I am to be lodged in the Assembly House, & my maid & I are to be

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furnished with separate rooms which will be a great requisition of comfort to me, I trust tho I have ever found it dangerous boasting for the day after I wrote to you I was seized with a violent cold which turned to a cough & prevents my bathing for ten days: but I hope to have no further interruption as the evenings grow long & I begin to grow very tired of them tho the society has been better than I was taught to expect, & a Derby lady (who is come here to meet her husband from Ireland) expresses astonishment at my improved appearance - therefore I ought to be contented.

This Cauldron of Medea naturally reminds me of M.^rs Smith. One of the pleasantest divines I have ever seen who spent the last week with us speaks of her new publication with such delight that I quite long to read it, but I fear I must wait till I return to Derby as we have no circulating library & I am told I shall hardly be able to get it

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from Chester tho I shall make an attempt to do so when I am more settled which I hope to be after tomorrow - but sleeping at one house & eating at another with drying my hair &c I have hitherto found only time to read Paines illeg Rights of Man which I never had read before. What say you to his attack on your favorite King William in the second part of his Rights of Man?

I wish also extremely to know what D^r. Warner says to the present state of the French Revolution? I see no news paper here regularly & our party is illeg so aristocratic (like most provincials) that I believe nothing I hear - they say I am a Democrat, & like Portia so father’d & so husbanded I certainly ought to be so yet more like my new favorite divine I confess I prefer love to politics & am therefore contented when I have liesure [sic] to retire to my bedchamber with the nouvelle Heloise which I brought with me from Derby. With love to Tom

I am your sincere E. Hayley

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William Hayley Esq^re.
Eartham
near
Chichester