Strawberry Hill, June 14, 1791.(page 508)

I pity you! what a dozen or fifteen uninteresting letters are

you

going to receive! for here I am, unlikely to have any thing to

tell you worth sending. You had better come back

incontinently-but pray do not prophesy any more; you have been

the death of our summer, and we are in close mourning for it in

coals and ashes. It froze hard last night: I went out for a

moment to look at my haymakers, and was starved. The contents

of

an English June are, hay and ice, orange-flowers and

rheumatisms!

I am now cowering over the fire. Mrs. Hobart had announced a

rural breakfast at Sans-Souci last Saturday; nothing being so

pastoral as a fat grandmother in a row of houses on Ham Common.

It rained early in the morning: she despatched postboys, for

want

of Cupids and zephyrs, to stop the nymphs and shepherds who

tend

their flocks in Pall-Mall and St. James's- street; but half of

them missed the couriers and arrived. Mrs. Montagu was more

splendid yesterday morning, and breakfasted seven hundred

persons

on opening her great room, and the room with the hangings of

feathers. The King and Queen had been with her last week. I

should like to have heard the orations she had prepared on the

occasion. I was neither City-mouse nor country-mouse. I did

dine at Fulham on Saturday with the Bishop of London: Mrs.

Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, and Hannah More were there; and Dr.

Beattie, whom I had never seen. He is quiet, simple, and

cheerful, and pleased me. There ends my tale, this instant,

Tuesday! How shall I fill a couple of pages more by Friday

morning! Oh! ye ladies on the Common, and ye uncommon ladies in

London, have pity on a poor gazetteer, and supply me with

eclogues or royal panegyrics Moreover--or rather more under--I

have had no letter from you these ten days, though the east

wind

has been as constant as Lord Derby. I say not this in

reproach,

as you are so kindly punctual; but as it stints me from having

a

single paragraph to answer. I do not admire specific responses

to every article; but they are great resources on a dearth.

Madame de Boufflers is ill of a fever, and the Duchess de

Biron(806) goes next week to Switzerland:--mais qu'est que cela

vous fait? I must eke out this with a few passages that I think

will divert you, from the heaviest of all books, Mr. Malone's

Shakspeare, in ten thick octavos, with notes, that are an

extract

of all the opium that is spread through the works of all the

bad

playwrights of that age. Mercy on the poor gentleman's

patience!

Amongst his other indefatigable researches he has discovered

some

lists of effects in the custody of the property-man to the Lord

Admiral's company of players, in 1598. Of those effects he has

given eight pages-you shall be off for a few items; viz. "My

Lord Caffe's [Caiaphas's] gercheri [jerkin] and his hoose

[hose];

one rocke, one tombe, one Hellemought [Hell-mouth], two

stepelles

and one chyme of belles, one chaine of Dragons, two coffines,

one

bulle's head, one vylter, one goste's crown, and one frame for

the heading of black Jone; one payer of stayers for Fayeton,

and

bowght a robe for to goo invisabell." The pair of stairs for

Phaeton reminds one of Hogarth's Strollers dressing in a barn,

where Cupid on a ladder is reaching Apollo's stockings, that

are

hanging to dry on the clouds; as the steeples do of a story in

L'Histoire du Th`eatre Fran`cois: Jodelet, who not only wrote

plays, but invented the decorations, was to exhibit of both

before Henry the Third. One scene was to represent a view of

the

sea, and Jodelet had bespoken two rochers; but not having time

to

rehearse, what did he behold enter on either side of the stage,

instead of two rochers, but two clochers! Who knows but my Lord

Admiral bought them?

Berkeley Square, Thursday, 16th.

I am come to town for one night, having promised to be at Mrs.

Buller's this evening with Mrs. Damer, and I believe your

friend,

Mrs. Cholmeley, whom I have seen two or three times lately and

like much. Three persons have called on me since I came, but

have not contributed a tittle of news to my journal. If I hear

nothing to-night, this must depart, empty as it is, to-morrow

morning, as I shall for Strawberry; I hope without finding a

new

mortification, as I did last time. Two companies had been to

see

my house last week; and one of the parties, as vulgar people

always see with the ends of their fingers, had broken off the

end

of my invaluable Eagle's bill, and to conceal their mischief,

had

pocketed the piece. It is true it had been restored at Rome,

and

my comfort is, that Mrs. Damer can repair the damage--but did

the

fools know that? It almost provokes one to shut up one's

house,

when obliging begets injury!

Friday noon.

This moment I receive your 35th, to which I have nothing to

answer, but that I believe Fox and Burke are not very cordial;

though I do not know whether there has been any formal

reconciliation or not. The Parliament is prorogued; and we

shall

hear no more of them, I suppose, for some months; nor have I

learnt any thing new, and am returning to Strawberry, and must

finish.

(806) Am`elie de Boufflers, wife of Armand-Louis de Gontaut,

Duc

do Biron, better known in England by the title of Duc de

Lauzan.

By a letter from Madame Necker to Gibbon, the Duchesse appears

to

have been at Lausanne in October; but in the following

September

, tempted," says Gibbon, " by some faint, and I fear,

fallacious

hope Of clemency to the women", she was induced to revisit

France, and perished by the guillotine, in one of Robespierre's

bloody proscriptions. See vol. v. pp. 133, 400. The Duc was

entrusted with the command of the army of the republic in La

Vend`ee; but, being reproached with having suffered Niort to be

besieged and with not having seconded westermann, he was

denounced at the bar of the Convention, delivered over to the

revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. He suffered on

the 31st of December 1793, and is words upon the scaffold are

said to have been, "I have been false to my God, my order, and

my

king: I die full of faith and repentance." See his "M`emoires,

"

in two volumes 8vo. published in 1802.-E.

Letter 384To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, June 23, 1791. (page 510)

Wo is me! I have not an atom of news to send you, but that the

second edition of Mother Hubbard's Tale was again spoiled on

Saturday last by the rain; yet she had an ample assemblage of

company from London and the neighbourhood. The late Queen of

France, Madame du Barry, was there; and the late Queen of

England, Madame d'Albany, was not. The former, they say, is as

much altered as her kingdom, and does not retain a trace of her

former powers. I saw her on her throne in the chapel of

Versailles;(807) and, though then pleasing in face and person, I

thought her un peu pass`e. What shall I tell you more? that Lord

Hawkesbury is added to the cabinet-council--que vous importe? and

that Dr. Robertson has published a Disquisition into the Trade of

the Anchellts with India;(808) a sensible work--but that will be

no news to you till you return. It was a peddling trade in those

days. They now and then picked up an elephant's tooth, or a

nutmeg, or one pearl, that served Venus for a pair of pendants,

when Antony had toasted Cleopatra in a bumper of its fellow;

which shows that a couple was imported:-but. alack! the Romans

were so ignorant, that waiters from the Tres Tabernoe, in St.

Apollo's-street, did not carry home sacks of diamonds enough to

pave the Capitol--I hate exaggerations, and therefore I do not

say, to pave the Appian Way. One author, I think, does say, that

the wife of Fabius Pictor, whom he sold to a proconsul, did

present Livia(809) with an ivory bed, inlaid with Indian gold;

but, as Dr. Robertson does not mention it, to be sure he does not

believe the fact well authenticated.

It is an anxious moment with the poor French here: a strong

notion is spread, that the Prince of Cond`e will soon make some

attempt; and the National Assembly, by their pompous blustering

seem to dread it. Perhaps the moment is yet too early, till

anarchy is got to a greater head; but as to the duration of the

present revolution, I no more expect it, than I do the millennium

before Christmas. Had the revolutionists had the sense and

moderation of our ancestors, or of the present Poles, they might

have delivered and blessed their country: but violence,

injustice, and savage cruelty, tutored by inexperienced pedantry,

produce offspring exactly resembling their parents, or turn their

enemies into similar demons. Barbarity will be copied by

revenge.

Lord Fitzwilliam has flown to Dublin and back. He returned to

Richmond on the fourteenth day from his departure, and the next

morning set out for France: no courier can do more. In my last,

the description of June for orange-flowers, pray read roses: the

east winds have starved all the former; but the latter, having

been settled here before the wars of York and Lancaster, are

naturalized to the climate, and reek not whether June arrives in

summer or winter. They blow by their own old-style almanacks.

Madame d'Albany might have found plenty of white ones on her own

tenth of June; but, on that very day, she chose to go to see the

King in the House of Lords, with the crown on his head,

proroguing the Parliament.(810) What an odd rencontre! Was it

philosophy or insensibility? I believe it is certain that her

husband was in Westminster-hall at the coronation.

The patriarchess of the Methodists, Lady Huntingdon, is dead.

Now she and Whitfield are gone, the sect will probably decline: a

second crop of apostles seldom acquire the influence of the

founders. To-day's paper declares upon its say-so, that Mr.

Fawkener is at hand, with Catherine Slay-Czar's(811) acquiescence

to our terms; but I have not entire faith in a precursor on such

an occasion, and from Holland too. It looks more like a courier

to the stocks; and yet I am in little expectation of a war, as I

believe we are boldly determined to remain at peace. And now my

pen is quite dry-you are quite sure not from laziness, but from

the season of the year, which is very anti-correspondent. Adieu!

(807) See letter to George Montagu, Esq., Sept. 17, 1769, vol.3,

letter 371.

(808) This work, which was the last labour of the historian, was

suggested by the perusal of Major Rennell's "Memoir of a Map of

Hindostan." In sending a copy of it to Gibbon, he says "No man

had formed a more decided resolution of retreating early from

public view' and of spending the eve of life in the tranquillity

of professional and domestic occupations; but, directly in the

face of that purpose, I step forth with a new work, when just on

the brink of threescore and ten. My book has met with a

reception beyond what the spe lentus, pavidusque futuri, dared to

expect. I find, however, like other parents, that I have a

partial fondness for this child of my old age, and cannot set my

heart quite at rest, until I know your opinion of it."-E.

(809) This alludes to the stories told at the time, of an ivory

bed, inlaid with gold, having been presented to Queen Charlotte

by Mrs. Hastings, the wife of the governor-general of India.

(810) " The Bishop of London' " writes Hannah More, " carried me

to hear the King make his speech in the House of Lords. As it

was quite new to me, I was very well entertained; but the thing

that was most amusing was to see, among the ladies, the Princess

of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife to the Pretender, sitting

just at the foot of that throne, which she might once have

expected to have mounted; and what diverted the party, when I put

them in mind of it, was, that it happened to be the 10th of June,

the Pretender's birthday. I have the honour to be very much like

her; and this opinion was confirmed yesterday, when we met

again."-Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 343.-E.

(811) Walpole rarely makes mention of Catherine without an

allusion to the murder of the Czar Peter. in a letter written to

Madame du Deffand, in 1769 he thus indignantly denounce

Voltaire's applauses of the Empress:--"Voltaire me fait horreur

Avec sa Caterine: le beau sujet de badinage que l'assassinat d'un

mari, et l'usurpateur de son tr`one! Il n'est pas mal, dit-il,

qu'on ait une faute r`eparer: eh! comment reparer un meurtre?

Est-ce en retenant des po`etes `a ses gages? en payant des

historiens mercenaires, et en soudoyant des philosophes ridicules

`a mille lieues dc son pays? Ce sent ces `ames viles qui chantent

un Auguste, et se taisent sur ses proscriptions."-E.

Letter 385 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Tuesday night, July 12, 1791. (page 512)

I had had no letter from you for ten days, I suppose from west

winds; but did receive one this morning, which had been three

weeks on the road: and a charming one it was. Mr. Batt,--who

dined with me Yesterday, and stayed till after breakfast

to-day,--being here, I read part of It to him; and he was as much

delighted as I was with your happy quotation of incedit Regina.

If I could spare so much room, I might fill this paper with all

he said of you both, and with all the friendly kind things he

begged me to say to both from him. Last night I read to him'

certain Reminiscences; and this morning he slipped from me, and

walked to Cliveden, and hopes to see it again much more

agreeably. I hope so too, and that I shall be with him.

I wish there were not so many f`etes at Florence; they are worse

for you both than an Italian sultriness: but, if you do go to

them, I am glad you have More northern weather. News I have

none, but that Calonne arrived in London on Sunday: you may be

sure I do not know for what. In a word, I have no more opinion

of his judgment than of his integrity. Now I must say a syllable

about myself; but don't be alarmed! It is not the gout; it is

worse: it is the rheumatism, which I have had in my shoulder ever

since it attended the gout last December. It was almost gone

till last Sunday, when, the Bishop of London preaching a charity

sermon in our church, -whither I very. very seldom venture to

hobble, I would go to hear him; both out of civility, and as I am

very intimate with him. The church was crammed; and, though it

rained, every window was open. However, at night I went to bed;

but at two I waked with such exquisite pain in my, rheumatic

right shoulder, that I think I scarce ever felt greater torture

from the gout.

Letter 386 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, July 26, 1791. (page 512)

Ten months are gone of the longest year that ever was born--a

baker's year, for it has thirteen months to the dozen! As our

letters are so long interchanging, it is not beginning too early

to desire You will think of settling the stages to which I must

direct to you in your route. Nay, I don't know whether it is not

already too late: I am sure it will be, if I am to stay for an

answer to this; but I hope you will have thought on it before you

receive this. I am so much recovered as to have been abroad. I

cannot say my arm is glib yet; but, if I waited for the total

departure of' the rheumatism, I might stay at home till the

national debt is paid. My fair writing is a proof of my

lameness: I labour as if I were engraving; and drop no words, as

I do in my ordinary hasty scribbling.

Lady Cecilia tells me that her nephew, Mr. West,(812) who was

with you at Pisa, declares he is in love with you both; so I am

not singular. You two may like to hear this, though no novelty

to you; but it will not satisfy Mr. Berry, who will be impatient

for news from Birmingham: but there are no more, nor any-whence

else. There has not been another riot in any of the three

kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and

Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw

on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as

the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few

quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where

he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb`e Sieyes, about the

plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcestershire, whom

I mentioned in my last, were not a detachment from Birmingham,

but volunteer incendiaries from the capital; who went, according

to the rights of men, with the mere view of plunder, and

threatened gentlemen to burn their houses, if not ransomed.

Eleven of these disciples of Paine are in custody; and Mr. Merry,

Mrs. Barbauld, and Miss Helen Williams will probably have

subjects for elegies. Deborah and Jael, I believe, were invited

to the Crown and Anchor, and had let their nails grow

accordingly: but, somehow or other, no poissonni`eres were there,

and the two prophetesses had no opportunity that day of

exercising their talents or talons. Their French allies, cock

and hen, have a fairer field open; and the Jacobins, I think,

will soon drive the National Assembly to be better royalists than

ever they were, in selfdefence.

You have indeed surprised me by your account of the strange

credulity of poor King Louis's escape in safety! In these

villages we heard of his flight late in the evening, and, the

very next morning, of his being retaken.(814) Much as he, at

least the Queen, has suffered, I am persuaded the adventure has

hastened general confusion, and will increase the royal party;

though perhaps their Majesties, for their personal safeties, had

better have awaited the natural progress of anarchy. The

enormous deficiencies of money, and the total insubordination of

the army, both apparent and uncontradicted, from the reports made

to the National Assembly, show what is Coming. Into what such a

chaos will Subside, it would be silly to attempt to guess.

Perhaps it is not wiser in the exiles to expect to live to see a

resettlement in their favour. One thing I have for these two

years thought probable to arrive--a division, at least, a

dismemberment of France. Despotism could no longer govern so

unwieldy a machine; a republic would be still less likely to hold

it together. If foreign powers should interfere, they will take

care to pay themselves with what is `a leur biensance; and that,

in reality, would be serving France too. So much for my

speculations! and they have never varied. We are so far from

intending to new-model our government and dismiss the Royal

Family, annihilate the peerage, cashier the hierarchy, and lay

open the land to the first occupier, as Dr. Priestley, and Tom

Paine, and the Revolution Club humbly proposed, that we are even

encouraging the breed of princes. It is generally believed that

the Duke of York is going to marry the Princess of Prussia, the

King's daughter by his first wife, and his favourite child. I do

not affirm it; but many others do.(815)

Thursday night, late.

Lady Di. has told me an extraordinary fact. Catherine Slay-Czar

sent for Mr. Fawkener(816) and desired he will order for her a

bust of Charles Fox; and she will place it between Demosthenes

and Cicero (pedantry she learnt from her French authors, and

which our schoolboys would be above using); for his eloquence has

saved two great nations from a war--by his opposition to it,

s'entend: so the peace is no doubt made. She could not have

addressed her compliment worse than to Mr. Fawkener, sent by Mr.

Pitt, and therefore so addressed; and who of all men does not

love Mr. Fox, and Mr. Fox who has no vainglory, will not care a

straw for the flattery, and will understand it too. Good night!

(812) The Honourable Septimus West, uncle of the present Earl of

Delawarr. He died of consumption in October 1793.

(813) The great dinner at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in

celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution.-E.

(814) The flight of the Royal Family of France to, and return

from, Varennes.

(815) The marriage of the Duke of York with Frederica Charlotte

Ulrica Catherine, eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, was

solemnized, first in Prussia, on the 29th of September, and again

in England, on the 23d of November, 1791. For Walpole's account

of her Royal Highness's visit to Strawberry Hill, see his letter

to the Miss Berrys of the 25th of September, 1793.-E.

(816. Mr. Fawkener was the son of Sir Everard Fawkener, He was

one of the principal clerks of the privy council, and had been

sent on a secret mission to Russia.-E.

Letter 387 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, August 17, 1791. (page 514)

No letter from Florence this post, though I am wishing for one

every day! The illness of a friend is bad, but is augmented by

distance. Your letters say you are quite recovered; but the

farther you are from me, the oftener I want to hear that recovery

repeated: and any delay in hearing revives my apprehensions of a

return of your fever. I am embarrassed, too, about your plan.

It grows near to the time you Proposed beginning your journey. I

do not write with any view to hastening that, which I trust will

entirely depend on the state of your health and strength; but I

am impatient to know your intentions: in short, I feel that, from

this time to your arrival, my letters will grow very tiresome. I

have heard to-day, that Lord and Lady Sheffield, who went to

visit Mr. Gibbon at Lausanne, met with great trouble and

impertinence at almost every post in France. in Switzerland

there is a furious spirit of democracy, or demonocracy. They

made great rejoicings on the recapture of the King of France.

Oh! why did you leave England in such a turbulent era! When will

you sit down on the quiet banks of the Thames?

Wednesday night.

Since I began my letter, I have received yours of the 2d, two

days later than Usual; and a most comfortable one it is. My

belief and my faith are now of the same religion. I do believe

you quite recovered. You, in the mean time, are talking of my

rheumatism-quite an old story. Not that it is gone, though the

pain is. The lameness in my shoulder remains, and I am writing

on my lap: but the complaint is put upon the establishment; like

old servants, that are of no use, fill up the place of those that

could do something, and yet still remain in the house.

I know nothing new, public or private. that is worth telling.

The stocks are transported with the pacification with Russia, and

do not care for what it has cost to bully the Empress to no

purpose; and say, we can afford it. Nor can Paine and Priestley

persuade them that France is much happier than we are, by having

ruined itself. The poor French here are in hourly expectation of

as rapid a counterrevolution as what happened two years ago.

Have you seen the King of Sweden's letter to his minister,

enjoining him to look dismal, and to take care not to be knocked

on the head for so doing? It deserves to be framed with M. de

Bouill`e's bravado.(817) You say you will write me longer letters

when you know I am well. Your recovery has quite the contrary

effect on me: I could scarce restrain my pen while I had

apprehensions about you; now you are well, the goosequill has not

a word to say. One would think it had belonged to a physician.

I shall fill my vacuum with some lines that General Conway has

sent me, written by I know not whom, on Mrs. Harte, Sir William

Hamilton's pantomime mistress, or wife, who acts all the antique

statues in an Indian shawl. I have not seen her yet, so am no

judge; but people are mad about her wonderful expression, which I

do not conceive; so few antique statues having any expression at

all, nor being designed to have it. The Apollo has the symptoms

of dignified anger:(818) the Laocoon and his sons, and Niobe and

her family,(819) are all expression;' and a few more: but what do

the Venuses, Floras, Hercules, and a thousand others tell, but

the magic art of the sculptor, and their own graces and

proportions?

I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken

occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not

receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on

the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to

whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!

(817) "The Marquis de Bouill`e, in order to draw upon himself the

indignation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which

might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated

it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey,

though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the

name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the

safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered

to them should be signally avenged. The Assembly winked at this

generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill`e; who had

nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p.

197.-E.

(818) "In his eye

And nostril beautiful disdain, and might

And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,

Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.

(819) "Go see

Laocoon's torture dignifying pain--

A father's love and mortal's agony

With an immortal's patience blending:--Vain

The struggle: vain against the coiling strain

And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,

The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain

Rivets the living links,--the enormous asp

Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.

Letter 388 To The Miss Berrys.

Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. (page 516)

I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury; and, as

I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how

agreeably I have passed the last three days; though they might

have been improved had you shared them, as I wished, and as I

sometimes do wish. On Saturday evening I was at the Duke of

Queensberry's (at Richmond, s'entend) with a small company: and

there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs. Harte; who, on the 3d of

next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame

l'Envoy`ee `a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to

receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where

only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs.

Hastings--who could go with a husband in each hand--are admitted.

Why the Margravine of Anspach, with the same pretensions, was

not, I do not understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I

forgot to retract, and make amende honourable to Mrs. Harte. I

had only heard of her attitudes; and those, in dumb show, I have

not yet seen. Oh! but she sings admirably; has a very fine,

strong voice: is an excellent buffa, and an astonishing

tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection; and there

her attitudes were a whole theatre of grace and various

expressions.

The next evening I was again at Queensberry-house, where the

Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the

Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced

one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with

her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good

deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul;

having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of

hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy with the

Duchesse de Choiseul.

On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the great room at the

Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert

Spencer,(820) and the House of Bouverie(821) to see the boats

start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected

on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; whither

we went to see them arrive, and where we had breakfast. For the

second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge; and did not stay

for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with my

favourite southeast wind. The scene, both up the river and down,

was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on

those green velvet meadows and on the shores, the yachts, barges,

pleasure and small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with

spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that

vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a

hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and

illuminations, with the Duke's cipher, etc. in coloured lamps,

as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went

again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where

there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.

Well! but you, who have had a fever with f`etes, had rather hear

the history of the new soi-disante Margravine. She has been in

England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their

marriage to the Earl,(822) her brother, who did not receive it

propitiously, but his Highness informed his lordship by a letter,

that they have an usage , in his country of taking a wife with

the left hand; that he had' espoused his lordship's sister in

that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow,(823)

to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied, that he

knew she was married to an English peer, a most respectable man,

and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and so they

are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!

(820) Brother to Lady Diana Beauclerc.

(821) The family of the Hon. Edward Bouverie, brother to the Earl

of Radnor.

(822) Of Berkeley.

(823) Lady Craven became a widow in the following month, and was

married to the Margrave of Anspach in October. See ante, p. 387,

letter 305.

Letter 389 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 11, 1791. (page 517)

Though I am delighted to know, that of thirteen doleful months

but two remain, yet how full of anxiety will they be! You set out

in still hot weather, and will taste very cold before you arrive!

Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and the sea, are all in my

map!- but I hope no slopes to be run down, no f`etes for a new

Grand Duke. I should dread your meeting armies, if I had much

faith in the counter-revolution said to be on the anvil. The

French ladies in my vicinage (a, word of the late Lord Chatham's

coin) are all hen-a-hoop on the expectation of a grand alliance

formed for that purpose, and I believe think they shall be at

Paris before you are in England; but I trust one is more certain

than the other. That folly and confusion increase in France

every hour, I have no doubt, and absurdity and contradictions as

rapidly. Their constitution, which they had voted should be

immortal and unchangeable,-though they deny that any thing

antecedent to themselves ought to have been so,-they are now of

opinion must be revised at the commencement of next century; and

they are agitating a third constitution, before they have thought

of a second, or finished the first! Bravo! In short, Louis Onze

could not have laid deeper foundations for despotism than these

levellers, who have rendered the name of liberty odious--the

surest way of destroying the dear essence!

I have no news for you, but a sudden match patched up for Lord

Blandford, with a little more art than was employed by the fair

Gunnilda. It is with Lady Susan Stewart, Lord Galloway's

daughter, contrived by and at the house of her relation and Lord

Blandford's friend, Sir Henry Dashwood ; and it is to be so

instantly, that her grace, his mother, will scarce have time to

forbid the bans.(824)

We have got a codicil to summer, that is as delightful as, I

believe, the seasons in the Fortunate Islands. It is pity it

lasts but till seven in the evening, and then one remains with a

black chimney for five hours. I wish the sun was not so

fashionable as never to come into the country till autumn and the

shooting season; as if Niobe's children were not hatched and

fledged before the first of September. Apropos, Sir William

Hamilton has actually married his Gallery of Statues, and they

are set out on their return to Naples. I am sorry I did not see

her attitudes, which Lady Di. (a tolerable judge!) prefers to any

thing she ever saw: still I do not much care. I have at this

moment a commercial treaty with Italy, and hope in two months to

be a greater gainer by the exchange; and I shall not be SO

generous as Sir William, and exhibit my wives in pantomime to the

public. 'Tis well I am to have the originals again; for that

wicked swindler, Miss Foldson, has not yet given up their

portraits.

The newspapers are obliged to live Upon the diary of the King's

motions at Weymouth. Oh! I had forgot. Lord Cornwallis has

taken Bangalore by storm, promises Seringapatam, and Tippoo Saib

has sued for peace. Diamonds will be as plenty as potatoes, and

gold is as common as copper-money in Sweden. I was told last

night, that a director of the Bank affirms, that two millions

five hundred thousand pounds, in specie, have already been

remitted or brought over hither from France since their

revolution.

(824) The marriage took place four days after the date of this

letter.-E.

Letter 390 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Friday night late, Sept. 16, 1791. (page 519)

As I am constantly thinking of you two, I am as constantly

writing to you, when I have a vacant quarter of an hour.

Yesterday was red-lettered in the almanacks of Strawberry and

Cliveden, Supposing you to set out towards them, as you intended;

the sun shone all day, and the moon at night, and all nature, for

three miles round, looked gay. Indeed, we have had nine or ten

days of such warmth and serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce

remember when the year begins to have gray, or rather yellow

hairs. All windows have been flung up again and fans ventilated;

and it is true that hay-carts have been transporting haycocks,

from a second crop, all the morning from Sir Francis Basset's

island opposite to my windows. The setting sun and the long

autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude Lorrain.

Guess whether I hoped to see such a scene next year: if I do not,

may you! at least, it will make you talk of me! The gorgeous

season' and poor partridges. I hear, have emptied London

entirely, and yet Drury-lane is removed to the Opera-house. Do

you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford, and

Miss Brunton(825) Mrs. Merry, but neither quits the stage? The

latter's captain, I think, might quit his poetic profession,

without any loss to the public. My gazettes will have kept you

so much au courant, that you will be as ready for any

conversation at your return, as if you had only been at a

watering-place. In short, -a votre intention, and to make my

letters as welcome as I can, I listen to and bring home a

thousand things, which otherwise I should not know I heard.

Lord Buchan is screwing out a little ephemeral fame from

instituting a jubilee for Thomson.(826) I fear I shall not make

my court to Mr. Berry, by owning I would not give this last

week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank verse.

There is more nature in L'Allegro and Penseroso, than in all the

laboured imitations Of Milton. What is there in Thomson of

original?

Berkeley Square, Monday night, 19th.

You have alarmed me exceedingly, by talking of returning through

France, against which I thought myself quite secure, or I should

not have pressed you to stir, yet. I have been making all the

inquiries I could amongst the foreign ministers at Richmond, and

I cannot find any belief of' the march of armies towards France.

Nay, the Comte d'Artois is said to be gone to PetersbUrgh; and he

must bring back forces in a balloon, if he can be time enough to

interrupt your passage through Flanders. One thing I must

premise, if, which I deprecate, You should set foot in France; I

beg you to burn, and not to bring a scrap of paper with you.

Mere travelling ladies as young as you, I know have been stopped

and rifled, and detained in France to have their papers examined;

and one was rudely treated, because the name of a French lady of

her acquaintance was mentioned in a private letter to her, though

in no political light. Calais is one of the worst places you can

pass; for, as they suspect money being remitted through that town

to England, the search and delays there are extremely strict and

rigorous. The pleasure of seeing you would be bought infinitely

too dear by your meeting with any disturbance; as my impatience

for your setting out is already severely punished by the fright

you have given me. One charge I can wipe off; but it were the

least of my faults. I never thought of your settling at Cliveden

in November, if your house in town is free. All my wish was,

that you would come for a night to Strawberry, and that the next

day I might put you in possession of Cliveden. I did not think

of engrossing you from all your friends, who must wish to embrace

you at your return.

Tuesday.

I am told that on the King's acceptance of the constitution,

there is a general amnesty published, and passports taken off.

If this is true, the passage through France, for mere foreigners

and strangers, may be easier and safer; but be assured, of all, I

would not embarrass your journey unnecessarily; but, for Heaven's

sake! be well informed. I advise nothing: I dread every thing

where your safeties are in question, and I hope Mr. Berry is as

timorous as I am. My very contradictions prove the anxiety of my

mind, or I should not torment those I love so much; but how not

love those who sacrifice so much for me, and who, I hope, forgive

all my unreasonable inconsistencies. Adieu! adieu!

(825) An actress of considerable talent and personal attractions.

Her sister, also a popular actress, was married, in 1807, to the

Earl of Craven.-E.

(826) The jubilee took place on the 22d of September, at

Ednam-hill. On crowning the first edition of "The Seasons" with

a wreath of bays, Lord Buchan delivered an eulogy on the poet,

containing the following singular passage:--"I think myself happy

to have this day the honour of endeavouring to do honour to the

memory of Thomson, which has been profanely touched by the rude

hand of Samuel Johnson: whose fame and reputation indicate the

decline of taste in a country that, after having produced an

Alfred, a Wallace, a Bacon, a Napier, a Newton, a Buchanan, a

Milton, a Hampden, a Fletcher, and a Thomson, can submit to be

bullied by an overbearing pedant."-E.

Letter 391 To The Miss Berrys.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1791. (page 520)

How I love to see My numeros increase.(827) I trust they will

not reach sixty! in short, I try every nostrum to make absence

seem shorter; and yet, with all my conjuration, I doubt the next

five or six weeks will, like the harvest-moon, appear of a

greater magnitude than all the moons of the year, its

predecessors. I wish its successor, the hunter's moon, could

seem less in proportion; but, on the contrary! I hate travelling,

and roads. and inns myself: while you are on your way, I shall

fancy, like Don Quixote, that every inn is the castle of some

necromancer, and every windmill a giant; and these will be my

smallest terrors.

Whether this will meet or follow you, I know not. Yours of the

5th of this month arrived yesterday, but could not direct me

beyond Basle. I must, then, remain still 11 in ignorance whether

you will take the German or French route. It is now, I think,

certain that there will no attempt against France be made this

year. Still I trust that you will not decide till you are

assured that you may come through France without trouble or

molestation; and I still prefer Germany, though it will protract

your absence.

I am sorry you were disappointed of going to Valombroso. Milton

has made every body wish to have seen it; which is my wish, for

though I was thirteen months at Florence (at twice ), I never did

see it. In fact, I was so tired of seeing when I was abroad,

that I have several of these pieces of repentance on my

conscience, when they come into my head; and yet I saw too much

for the quantity left such a confusion in my head, that I do not

remember a quarter clearly. Pictures, statues, and buildings

were always so much my passion, that, for the time, I surfeited

myself; especially as one is carried to see a vast deal that is

not worth seeing. They who are industrious and correct, and wish

to forget nothing, should go to Greece, where there is nothing

left to be seen, but that ugly pigeon-house, the Temple of the

Winds, that fly-cage, Demosthenes's lanthorn, and one or two

fragments of a portico, or a piece of a column crushed into a mud

wall; and with such a morsel, and many quotations, a true classic

antiquary can compose a whole folio, and call it Ionian

Antiquities!(828) Such gentry do better still when they journey

to Egypt to visit the pyramids, which are of a form which one

think nobody could conceive without seeing, though their form is

all that is to be seen; for it seems that even prints and

measures do not help one to an idea of magnitude: indeed, the

measures do not; for no two travellers have agreed on the

measures. In that scientific country, too, you may guess that

such or such a vanished city stood within five or ten miles of

such a parcel of land; and when you have conjectured in vain, at

what some rude birds, or rounds or squares, on a piece of an old

stone may have signified, you may amuse your readers with an

account of the rise of the Nile, some feats of the-Mamelukes, and

finish your work with doleful tales of the robberies of the wild

Arabs. One benefit does arise from travelling: it cures one of

liking what is worth seeing especially if what you have seen is

bigger than what you do see. Thus, Mr. Gilpin, having visited

all the lakes, could find no beauty in Richmond-hill. If he

would look through Mr. Herschell's telescope at the profusion of

worlds, perhaps he would find out that Mount Atlas is an

ant-hill; and that the sublime and beautiful may exist

separately.

(827) Mr. Walpole numbered all the letters written by him to the

Miss Berrys during their residence abroad.-E.

(828) The first volume of "Ionian Antiquities," in imperial folio

edited by R. Chandler, N. Revett, and W. Pais, was published in

1769; a second, edited by the Society of Dilettanti, appeared in

1797.-E.

Letter 392 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1791. (page 522)

Your letter was most welcome, as yours always are; and I answer

it immediately, though our post comes in so late that this will

not go away till to-morrow. Nay, I write, though I shall see you

on Sunday, and have not a tittle to tell you. I lead so insipid

a life, that, though I am content with it, it can furnish me with

nothing but repetitions. I scarce ever stir from home in a

morning; and most evenings go and play at loto with the French at

Richmond, where I am heartily tired of hearing of nothing but

their absurd countrymen, -absurd, both democrates and

aristocrates. Calonne sends them gross lies, that raise their

hopes to the skies - and in two days they hear of nothing but

horrors and disappointments; and the poor souls! they are in

despair. I can say nothing to comfort them, but what I firmly

believe, which is, total anarchy must come on rapidly. Nobody

pays the taxes that are laid; and which, intended to produce

eighty millions a month, do not bring in six. The new Assembly

will fall on the old,(829) probably plunder the richest, and

certainly disapprove of much they have done; for can eight

hundred new ignorants approve of what has been done by twelve

hundred almost as Ignorant, and who were far from half agreeing?

And then their immortal constitution (which, besides, is to be

mightily mended nine years hence) will die before it has cut any

of its teeth but its grinders. The exiles are enraged at their

poor King for saving his own life by a forced acceptance:(830)

and yet I know no obligation he has to his noblesse, who all ran

away to save their own lives; not a gentleman, but the two poor

gendarmes at Versailles, having lost their lives in his defence.

I suppose La Fayette, Barnave,(831) the Lameths, etc. will run

away too,(832) when the new tinkers and cobblers, of whom the

present elect are and will be composed, proceed on the levelling

system taught them by their predecessors, who., like other

levellers, have taken good care of themselves, Good Dr.

Priestley's friend, good Monsieur Condorcet, has got a place in

the treasury of one thousand pounds a year:-ex uno disce omnes!

And thus a set of rascals, who might, with temper and discretion,

have obtained a very wholesome Constitution, Witness Poland! have

committed infinite mischief, infinite cruelty, infinite

injustice, and left a shocking precedent against liberty, unless

the Poles are as much admired and imitated as the French ought to

be detested. I do not believe the Emperor will stir yet; he, or

his ministers, must see that it is the interest of Germany to let

France destroy itself. His interference yet might unite and

consolidate, at least check further confusion and though I rather

think that twenty thousand men might march from one end of France

to the other, as, though the officers often rallied, French

soldiers never were stout; yet, having no officers, no

discipline, no subordination, little resistance might be

expected. Yet the enthusiasm that has been spread might turn

into courage. Still it were better for Caesar to wait. Quarrels

amongst themselves will dissipate enthusiasm; and, if they have

no foreign enemy, they will soon have spirit enough to turn their

swords against one another, and what enthusiasm remains will soon

be converted into the inveteracy of faction. This is

speculation, not prophecy; I do not pretend to guess what will

happen: I do think I know what will not; I mean, the system of

experiments that they call a constitution cannot last.

Marvellous indeed would it be, if a set of military noble lads,

pedantic academicians, curates of villages, and country

advocates, could in two years, amidst the utmost confusion and

altercation amongst themselves, dictated to or thwarted by

obstinate clubs of various factions, have achieved what the

wisdom of all ages and all nations has never been able to

compose--a system of government that would set four-and-twenty

millions of people free, and contain them within any bounds!

This, too, without one great man amongst them. If they had had,

as Mirabeau seemed to promise to be, but as we know that he was,

too, a consummate villain, there would soon have been an end of

their vision of liberty. And so there will be still, unless,

after a civil war, they split into small kingdoms or

commonwealths. A little nation may be free; for it can be upon

its guard. Millions cannot be so; because, the greater number of

men that are one people, the more vices, the more abuses there

are, that will either require or furnish pretexts for restraints;

and if vices are the mother of laws, the execution of laws is the

father of power:-and of such parents one knows the progeny.

(829) The Constitutional Assembly closed its sittings on the 30th

of September; having, during the three years of its existence,

enacted thirteen hundred laws and decrees, relative to

legislation, or to the general administration of the state. The

first sitting of the, Legislative Assembly took place on the

following day.-E.

(830) The King, on the 14th Of September, had accepted the new

constitution, and sworn to maintain it.-E.

(831) For expressing his opinion, that the new constitution

inclined too much to a democracy, Barnave, after fifteen months,

imprisonment at Grenoble was tried before the revolutionary

tribunal, condemned to death, and guillotined on the 29th of

November 1793.-E.

(832) The two Lameths, Charles and Alexander, fled the country,

The latter, having fallen into the hands of the Austrians with La

Fayette, shared his captivity, till December 1795.-E.

Letter 393 To Miss Hannah More.

Berkeley Square, Sept, 29, 1791. (page 523)

My dear madam,

I have been very sorry, but not at all angry, at not hearing from

you so long. With all your friendly and benevolent heart, I know

by experience how little you love writing to your friends; and I

know why: you think you lose moments which you could employ in

doing more substantial good; and that your letters only pamper

our minds, but do not feed or clothe our bodies; if they did, you

would coin as much paper as the French do in assignats. Do not

imagine now that you have committed a wicked thing by writing to

me at last: comfort yourself, that your conscience, not

temptation, forced you to write; and be assured, I am as grateful

as if you had written from choice, not from duty, as your

constant spiritual director.

I have been out of order the whole summer, but not very ill for

above a fortnight. I caught a painful rheumatism by, going into

a very crowded church on a rainy day, where all the windows were

open, to hear our friend the Bishop of London preach a charity

sermon here at Twickenham. My gout would not resign to a new

incumbent, but came too; and both together have so lamed my right

arm, though I am now using it, that I cannot yet extend it

entirely, nor lift it to the top of my head. However, I am free

from pain; and as Providence, though it supplied us originally

with so many bounties, took care we might shift with succedaneums

on the loss of several of them, I am content with what remains of

my stock; and since all my fingers are not useless, and that I

have not six hairs left, I am not much grieved at not being able

to comb my head. Nay, should not such a shadow as I have ever

been, be thankful, that at the eve of seventy-five I am not yet

passed away?

I am so little out of charity with the Bishop for having been the

innocent cause of the death of my shoulder, that I am heartily

concerned for him and her on Mrs. Porteus's accident.(833) It

may have marbled her complexion, but I am persuaded has not

altered her lively, amiable, good-humoured countenance. As I

know not where to direct to them, and as you cannot suppose it a

sin for a sheep to write to its pastor on a week-day, I wish you

would mark the interest I take in their accident and escape from

worse mischief.

I thank you most cordially for your inquiry after my wives. I am

in the utmost perplexity Of mind about them; torn between hopes

and fears. I believe them set out from Florence on their return

since yesterday se'nnight, and consequently feel all the joy and

impatience of expecting them in five or six weeks: but then,

besides fears of roads, bad inns, accidents, heats and colds, and

the sea to cross in November at last, all my satisfaction is

dashed by the uncertainty whether they Come through Germany or

France. I have advised, begged, implored, that it may not be

through those Iroquois, Lestryons, Anthropophagi, the Franks; and

then, hearing passports were abolished, and the roads more

secure, I half Consented, as they wished it, and the road is much

shorter; and then I repented, and have contradicted myself again.

And now I know not which route they wilt take: nor shall enjoy

any comfort from the thoughts of their return, till they are

returned safe.

'Tis well I am doubly guaranteed, or who knows, as I am as old

almost as both her husbands together, but Mrs. B-- might have

cast a longing eye towards me? How I laughed at hearing of her

throwing a second muckender to a Methusalem! a red-faced veteran,

with a portly hillock of flesh. I conclude all her grandfathers

are dead; or, as there is no prohibition in the table of

consanguinity against male ancestors, she would certainly have

stepped back towards the Deluge, and ransacked her pedigrees on

both sides for some kinsman of the patriarchs. I could titter a

plusieurs reprises; but I am too old to be improper, and you are

too modest to be impropered to: and so I will drop the subject at

the herald's office.

I am happy at and honour Miss Burney's resolution in casting away

golden, or rather gilt chains: others, out of vanity, would have

worn them till they had eaten into the bone. On that charming

young woman's chapter I agree with you perfectly; not a jot on

Deborah * * * * whom you admire: i have neither read her verses,

nor will. As I have not your aspen conscience, I cannot forgive

the heart of a woman that is party per pale blood and tenderness,

that curses our clergy and feels for negroes. Can I forget the

14th of July, when they all contributed their fagot to the fires

that her presbytyrants (as Lord Melcombe called them) tried to

light in every Smithfield in the island; and which, as Price and

Priestley applauded in France, it would be folly to suppose they

did not only wish, but meant to kindle here ? Were they ignorant

of the atrocious barbarities, injustice, and violation of oaths

committed in France? Did Priestley not know that the clergy there

had no option but between starving and perjury? And what does he

think of the poor man executed at Birmingham, who declared at his

death, he had been provoked by the infamous handbill? I know not

who wrote it. No, my good friend: Deborah may cant rhymes of

compassion, but she is a hypocrite; and you shall not make me

read her, nor, with all your sympathy and candour, can you esteem

her. Your compassion for the poor blacks is genuine, sincere

from your soul, most amiable; hers, a measure of faction. Her

party supported the abolition, and regretted the disappointment

as a blow to the good cause. I know this. Do not let your piety

lead you into the weakness of respecting the bad, only because

they hoist the flag of religion, while they carry a stiletto in

the flagstaff. Did not they, previous to the 14th of July,

endeavour to corrupt the guards? What would have ensued, had they

succeeded, you must tremble to think!

You tell me nothing of your own health. May I flatter myself it

is good? I wish 1 knew so authentically! and I wish I could guess

when I should see you, without your being staked to the fogs of

the Thames at Christmas; I cannot desire that. Adieu, my very

valuable friend! I am, though unworthy, yours most cordially.

(833) An overturn in a carriage.

Letter 394 To Miss Berry.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 9, 1791. (page 526)

It will be a year to-morrow since you set out: next morning came

the storm that gave me such a panic for you! In March happened

your fall, and the wound on your nose; and in July your fever.

For sweet Agnes I have happily had no separate alarm: yet I have

still a month of apprehension to come for both! All this mass of

vexation and fears is to be compensated by the transport at your

return, and by the complete satisfaction on your installation at

Cliveden. But could I believe, that when my clock had struck

seventy-four, I could pass a year in such agitation! It may he

taken for dotage; and I have for some time expected to be

superannuated: but, though I task myself severely, I do not find

my intellects impaired; though I may be a bad judge myself, You

may, perhaps, perceive it by my letters; and don't imagine I am

laying a snare for flattery. No! I am only jealous about myself,

that you two may have created such an attachment, without owing

it to my weakness. Nay, I have some colt's limbs left, which I

as little suspected as my anxieties.

I went with General Conway, on Wednesday morning, from Park-place

to visit one of my antediluvian passions,--not a Statira or

Roxana, but one pre-existent to myself,--one Windsor Castle; and

I was so delightful and so juvenile, that, without attending to

any thing but my eyes, I stood full two hours and a half, and

found that half my lameness consists in my indolence. Two

Berrys, a Gothic chapel, and an historic castle, are anodynes to

a torpid mind. I now fancy that old age was invented by the

lazy. St. George's Chapel, that I always worshipped, though so

dark and black that I could see nothing distinctly, is now being

cleaned and decorated, a scene of' lightness and graces. Mr.

Conway was so struck with its Gothic beauties and taste, that he

owned the Grecian style would not admit half the variety of its

imagination. There is a new screen prefixed to the choir, so

airy and harmonious, that I concluded it Wyat's; but it is by a

Windsor architect, whose name I forget. Jarvis's window, over

the altar, after West, is rather too sombre for the Resurrection,

though it accords with the tone of the choirs; but the Christ is

a poor figure, scrambling to heaven in a fright, as if in dread

of being again buried alive. and not ascending calmly in secure

dignity: and there is a Judass below, T so gigantic, that he

seems more likely to burst by his bulk, than through guilt. In

the midst of all this solemnity, in a small angle over the lower

stalls, is crammed a small bas-relief, in oak, with the story of

Margaret Nicholson, the King, and the Coachman, as ridiculously

added and as clumsily executed as if it were a monkish miracle.

Some loyal zealot has broken away the blade of the knife, as if

the sacred wooden personage would have been in danger still. The

Castle itself is smugged up, is better glazed, has got some new

Stools, clocks, and looking-glasses, much embroidery in silk, and

a gaudy, clumsy throne, with a medallion at top of the King's and

Queen's heads, over their own--an odd kind of tautology, whenever

they sit there! There are several tawdry pictures, by West, of

the history of the Garter; but the figures are too small for that

majestic place. However, upon the whole, I was glad to see

Windsor a little revived.

I had written thus far, waiting for a letter, and happily receive

Your two from Bologna together; for which I give you a million of

thanks, and for the repairs of your coach, which I trust will

contribute to your safety: but I will swallow my apprehensions,

for I doubt I have tormented you with them. Yet do not wonder,

that after a year's absence, my affection, instead of waning, is

increased. Can I help feeling the infinite obligation I have to

you both, for quitting Italy that you love, to humour

Methusalem?--a Methusalem that is neither king nor priest, to

reward and bless you; and whom you condescend to please, because

he wishes to see you once more; though he ought to have

sacrificed a momentary glimpse to your far more durable

satisfaction. Instead of generosity, I have teased, and I fear,

wearied you, with lamentations and disquiets; and how can I make

you amends? What pleasure, what benefit, can I procure for you

in return? The most disinterested generosity, such as yours is,

gratifies noble minds; but how paltry am I to hope that the

reflections of your own minds will compensate for all the

amusements you give up to

"Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death!"

I may boast of having no foolish weakness for your persons, as I

certainly have not; but

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,

Lets in new selfishness through chinks that time has made."

And I have been as avaricious of hoarding a few moments of

agreeable society, as if I had coveted a few more trumpery

guineas in my strong-box! and then I have the assurance to tell

you I am not superannuated! Oh! but I am!

The Bolognese school is my favourite, though I do not like

Guercino, whom I call the German Guido, he is so heavy and dark.

I do not, like your friend, venerate Constantinopolitan

paintings, which are scarce preferable to Indian. The characters

of the Italian comedy were certainly adopted even from the

persons of its several districts and dialects. Pantaloon is a

Venetian, even in his countenance; and I once saw a gentleman of

Bergamo, whose face was an exact Harlequin's mask.

I have scarce a penfull of news for you; the world is at Weymouth

or Newmarket. En attendent, voici, the Gunnings again! The old

gouty General has carried off his tailor's wife; or rather, she

him, whither, I know not. Probably, not far; for the next day

the General was arrested for three thousand pounds, and carried

to a spunginghouse, whence he sent cupid with a link to a friend,

to beg help and a crutch. This amazing folly is generally

believed; perhaps because the folly of that race is amazing--so

is their whole story. The two beautiful sisters Were going on

the stage, when they are at once exalted almost as high as they

could be, were countessed and double-duchessed; and now the rest

of the family have dragged themselves through all the kennels of

the newspapers! Adieu! forgive all my pouts. I will be perfectly

good-humoured when I have nothing to vex me!

Letter 395 To John Pinkerton, Esq.(834)

Berkeley Square, Dec. 26, 1791. (page 528)

As I am sure of the sincerity of your congratulations,(835 I feel

much obliged by them, though what has happened destroys my

tranquillity; and, if what the world reckons advantages could

compensate the loss of peace and ease, would ill indemnify me,

even by them. A small estate, loaded with debt, and of which I

do not understand the management, and am too old to learn; a

source of lawsuits among my near relations, though not affecting

me; endless conversations with lawyers, and packets of letters to

read every day and answer,--all this weight of new business is

too much for the rag of life that yet hangs about me, and was

preceded by three weeks of anxiety about my unfortunate nephew,

and daily correspondence with physicians and mad-doctors, falling

upon me when I had been out of order ever since July. Such a

mass of troubles made me very seriously ill for some days, and

has left me and still keeps me so weak and dispirited, that, if I

shall not soon be able to get some repose, my poor head or body

will not be able to resist. For the empty title, I trust you do

not suppose it is any thing but an incumbrance, by larding my

busy mornings with idle visits of interruption, and which, when I

am able to go out, I shall be forced to return. Surely no man of

seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest

pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost always

do, and being called by a new name! It will seem personal, and

ungrateful too, to have said so much about my own triste

situation, and not to have yet thanked you, Sir. for your kind

and flattering offer of letting me read what you have finished of

your history; but it was necessary to expose my position to you,

before I could venture to accept your proposal, when I am so

utterly incapable of giving a quarter of an hour at a time to

what I know, by my acquaintance with your works, will demand all

my attention, if I wish to reap the pleasure they are formed to

give me. It is most true that for these seven weeks I have not

read seven pages, but letters, states of account, cases to be

laid before lawyers, accounts of farms, etc. etc., and those

subject to mortgages. Thus are my mornings occupied: in an

evening my relations and a very few friends come to me; and, when

they are gone, I have about an hour to midnight to write answers

to letters for the next day's post, which I had not time to do in

the morning. This is actually my case now. I happened to be

quitted at ten o'clock, and would not lose the opportunity of

thanking you, not knowing when I could command another hour.

I by no means would be understood to decline your obliging offer,

Sir: on the contrary, I accept it joyfully, if you can trust me

with your manuscript for a little time, should I have leisure to

read it but by small snatches, which would be wronging you, and

would break all connexion in my head. Criticism you are too

great a writer to want; and to read critically is far beyond my

present power. Can a scrivener, or a scrivener's hearer, be a

judge of composition, style, profound reasoning, and new lights

and discoveries, etc.? But my weary hand and breast must finish.

May I ask the favour of you calling on me any morning, when you

shall happen to come to town? You will find the new-old lord

exactly the same admirer of yours.

(834) Now first collected.

(835) Mr. Walpole had succeeded to the title of Earl of Orford on

the 5th of December, upon the death of his nephew George, the

third Earl.-E.

Letter 396 To Miss Hannah More.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 1, 1792. (PAGE 529)

My much-esteemed friend,

I have not so long delayed answering your letter from the pitiful

revenge of recollecting how long your pen is fetching breath

before it replies to mine. Oh! no; you know I love to heap coals

of kindness on your head, and to draw you into little sins, that

you may forgive yourself, by knowing your time was employed on

big virtues. On the contrary, you would be revenged; for here

have you, according to your notions, inveigled me into the

fracture of a commandment; for I am writing to you on a Sunday,

being the first moment of leisure that I have had since I

received your letter. It does not indeed clash with my religious

ideas, as I hold paying one's debts as good a deed, as praying

and reading sermons for a whole day in every week, when it is

impossible to fix the attention to one course of thinking for so

many hours for fifty-two days in every year. Thus you see I can

preach too. But seriously, and indeed I am little disposed to

cheerfulness now, I am overwhelmed with troubles, and with

business--and business that I do not understand; law, and the

management of a ruined estate, are subjects ill-suited to a head

that never studied any thing that in worldly language is called

useful. The tranquillity of my remnant of life will be lost, or

so perpetually interrupted, that I expect little comfort; not

that I am already intending to grow rich, but, the moment one is

supposed so, there are so many alert to turn one to their own

account, that I have more letters to Write, to satisfy, or rather

to dissatisfy them, than about my own affairs, though the latter

are all confusion. I have such missives on agriculture,

pretensions to livings, offers of taking care of my game as I am

incapable of it, self-recommendations of making my robes, and

round hints of taking out my writ, that at least I may name a

proxy, and give my dormant conscience to somebody or other! I

trust you think better of my heart and understanding than to

suppose that I have listened to any one of these new friends.

Yet, though I have negatived all, I have been forced to answer

some of them before you; and that will convince you how cruelly

ill I have passed my time lately, besides having been made ill

with vexation and fatigue. But I am tolerably well again.

For the other empty metamorphosis that has happened to the

outward man, you do me justice in concluding that it can do

nothing but tease me; it is being called names in one's old age.

I had rather be my lord mayor, for then I should keep the

nickname but a year; and mine I may retain a little longer, not

that at seventy-five I reckon on becoming my Lord Methusalem.

Vainer, however, I believe I am already become; for I have wasted

almost two pages about myself, and said not a tittle about your

health, which I most cordially rejoice to hear you are

recovering, and as fervently hope you will entirely recover. I

have the highest opinion of the element of water as a constant

beverage; having so deep a conviction of the goodness and wisdom

of Providence, that I am persuaded that when it indulged us in

such a luxurious variety of eatables, and gave us but one

drinkable, it intended that our sole liquid should be both

wholesome and corrective. Your system I know is different; you

hold that mutton and water were the Only cock and hen that were

designed for our nourishment; but I am apt to doubt whether

draughts of water for six weeks are capable of restoring health,

though some are strongly impregnated with mineral and other

particles. Yet you have staggered me: the Bath water by your

account is, like electricity, compounded of contradictory

qualities; the one attracts and repels; the other turns a

shilling yellow, and whitens your jaundice. I shall hope to see

you (when is that to be?) without alloy.

I must finish, wishing you three hundred and thirteen days of

happiness for the new year that is arrived this morning: the

fifty-two that you hold in commendam, I have no doubt will be

rewarded as such good intentions deserve. Adieu, my too good

friend! My direction shall talk superciliously to the

postman;(836) but do let me continue unchangeably your faithful

and sincere HORACE WALPOLE.(837)

(836) He means franking his letter by his newly-acquired title of

Earl of Orford.

(837) This is the last letter signed Horace Walpole.-E.

Letter 397 To Thomas Barrett, Esq.

Berkeley Square, May 14, 1792. (PAGE 530)

Dear Sir,

Though my poor fingers do not yet write easily, I cannot help

inquiring if Mabeuse(838) is arrived safely at Lee, and fits his

destined stall in the library. My amendment is far slower, comme

de raison, than ever; and my weakness much greater. Another fit,

I doubt, will confine me to my chair, if it does not do more; it

is not worth haggling about that.

Dr. Darwin has appeared, superior in some respects to the former

part. The Triumph of Flora, beginning at the fifty-ninth line,

is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined; and the twelve

verses that by miracle describe and comprehend the creation of

the universe out of chaos, are in my opinion the most sublime

passage in any author, or in any of the few languages with which

I am acquainted. There are a thousand other verses most

charming, or indeed are all so, crowded with most poetic imagery,

gorgeous epithets and style: and yet these four cantos do not

please me equally with the Loves of the Plants. This seems to me

almost as much a rhapsody of unconnected parts; and is so deep,

that I cannot read six lines together, and know what they are

about, till I have studied them in the long notes, and then

perhaps do not comprehend them; but all this is my fault, not Dr.

Darwin's. Is he to blame, that I am no natural philosopher, no

chemist, no metaphysician? One misfortune will attend this

glorious work; it will be little read but by those who have no

taste for poetry and who will be weighing, and criticising his

positions, without feeling the imagination, harmony, and

expression of the versification. Is not it extraordinary, dear

Sir, that two of our very best poets, Garth and Darwin, should

have been physicians? I believe they have left all the lawyers

wrangling at the turnpike of Parnassus. Adieu, dear Sir! Yours

most cordially.

(838) A capital picture by that master, then lately purchased by

Mr. Barrett.-E.

Letter 398 To Miss Hannah More.(839)

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 21, 1792. (PAGE 531)

My dear Saint Hannah,

I have frequently been going to write to you, but checked myself.

You are so good and so bad, that I feared I should interrupt some

act of benevolence on one side; and on the other that you would

not answer my letter in three months. I am glad to find, as an

Irishman would say, that the way to make you answer is not to

speak first. But, ah! i am a brute to upbraid any moment of your

silence, though I regretted it when I hear that your kind

intentions have been prevented by frequent cruel pain! and that

even your rigid abstemiousness does not remove your complaints.

Your heart is always aching for others, and your head for

yourself. Yet the latter never hinders the activity of the

former. What must your tenderness not feel now, when a whole

nation of monsters is burst forth? The second massacre of Paris

has exhibited horrors that even surpass the former.(840) Even

the Queen's women were butchered in the Thuilleries, and the

tigers chopped of the heads from the dead bodies, and tossed them

into the flames of the palace. The tortures of the poor King and

Queen, from the length of"their duration, surpass all example;

and the brutal insolence with which they were treated on the

10th, all invention. They were dragged through the Place Vendome

to see the statue of Louis the Fourteenth in fragments, and told

it was to be the King's fate; and he, the most harmless of men,

was told he is a monster; and this, after three years of

sufferings. King and Queen, and children were shut up in a room,

without nourishment, for twelve hours. One who was a witness has

come over, and says he found the Queen sitting on the floor,

trembling like an aspen in every limb, and her sweet boy the

Dauphin asleep against her knee! She has not one woman to attend

her that ever she saw, but a companion of her misery, the King's

sister, an heroic virgin saint, who, on the former irruption into

the palace, flew to and clung to her brother, and being mistaken

for the Queen, and the hellish fiends wishing to murder her, and

somebody aiming to undeceive them, she said, "Ah! ne les

d`etrompez pas!"(841) Was not that sentence the sublime of

innocence? But why do I wound your thrilling nerves with the

relation of such horrible scenes? Your blackmanity(842) must

allow some of its tears to these poor victims. For my part, I

have an abhorrence of politics, if one can so term these

tragedies, which make one harbour sentiments one naturally

abhors; but can one refrain without difficulty from exclaiming

such wretches should be exterminated? They have butchered

hecatombs of Swiss, even to porters in private houses, because

they often are, and always are called, Le Suisse. Think on

fifteen hundred persons, probably more, butchered on the

10th,(843) in the space of eight hours. Think on premiums voted

for the assassination of several princes, and do not think that

such execrable proceedings have been confined to Paris; no,

Avignon, Marseilles, etc. are still smoking with blood! Scarce

the Alecto of the North, the legislatress and the usurper of

Poland, has occasioned the spilling of larger torrents!

I am almost sorry that your letter arrived at this crisis; I

cannot help venting a little of what haunts me. But it is better

to thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy

in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have

in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Woolstoncrofts. I

am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer.

I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither

metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists on the

latter, and borrowed her title from the demon's book, which aimed

at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the

pale of my library. We have had enough of new systems, and the

world a great deal too much, already.

Let us descend to private life. Your friend Mrs. Boscawen, I

fear, is unhappy: she has lost most suddenly her son-in-law,

Admiral Leveson. Mrs. Garrick I have scarcely seen this whole

summer. She is a liberal Pomona to me--I will not say an Eve;

for though she reaches fruit to me, she will never let Me in, as

if I were a boy, and would rob her orchard.

As you interest yourself about a certain trumpery old person, I

with infinite gratitude will add a line on him. He is very

tolerably well, weak enough certainly, yet willing to be

contented; he is satisfied with knowing that he is at his best.

Nobody grows stronger at seventy-five, nor recovers the use of

limbs half lost; nor-though neither deaf nor blind, nor in the

latter most material point at all impaired; nor, as far as he can

find on strictly watching himself, much damaged as to common uses

in his intellects--does the gentleman expect to avoid additional

decays, if his life shall be further protracted. He has been too

fortunate not to be most thankful for the past, and most

submissive for what is to come, be it more or less. He forgot to

say, that the warmth of his heart towards those he loves and

esteems has not suffered the least diminution, and consequently

he is as fervently as ever Saint Hannah's most sincere friend and

humble servant, ORFORD.

(839) Now first collected.

(840) From the 2d to the 6th of September, these internal

atrocities proceeded uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for

the sake of the daily pay of a Louis to each. M. Thiers states,

that Billaud Varennes appeared publicly among the assassins, and

encouraged what were called the labourers. "My friends," said

he, "by taking the lives of villains you have saved the country.

France owes you eternal gratitude, and the municipality offers

you twenty livres apiece, and you shall be paid immediately." All

the reports of the time differ in their estimate of the number of

the victims. "That estimate," says M. Thiers, varies from six to

twelve thousand in the prisons of France." Vol. ii. p. 45.-E.

(841) This fact is confirmed by M. Thiers. "During the irruption

of the populace into the Thuilleries, on the 20th of June, Madame

Elizabeth," he says, "followed the King from window to window, to

share his danger. The people, when they saw her, took her for

the Queen. Shouts of 'There's the Austrian!' were raised in an

alarming manner. The national grenadiers, who had surrounded the

Princess, endeavoured to set the people right. 'Leave them,'

said that generous sister, 'leave them in their error, and save

the Queen!' Vol. i. p. 306.-E.

(842) An allusion to the lively interest Miss More was taking in

the abolition of the slave trade.-E.

(843) At the storming of the Thuilleries. "The Marseillais,"

says M. Thiers, "made themselves masters of the palace: the

rabble, with pikes, poured in after them, and the rest of the

scene was soon but one general massacre; the unfortunate Swiss in

vain begged for quarter, at the Same time throwing down their

arms; they were butchered without mercy." Vol. i. P. 380.-E.

Letter 399 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, August 31, 1792. (PAGE 533)

Your long letter and my short one crossed one another upon the

road. I knew I was in your debt; but I had nothing to say but

what you know better than I; for you read all the French papers,

and I read none, as they have long put me out of all patience:

and besides, I hear so much of their horrific proceedings, that

they quite disturb me, and have given me what I call the French

disease; that is, a barbarity that I abhor, for I cannot help

wishing destruction to thousands of human creatures whom I never

saw. But when men have worked themselves up into tigers and

hyenas, and labour to communicate their appetite for blood, what

signifies whether they walk on two legs or four, or whether they

dwell in cities, or in forests and dens? Nay, the latter are the

more harmless wild beasts; for they only cranch a poor traveller

now and then, and when they are famished with hunger: the others,

though they have dined, cut the throats of some hundreds of poor

Swiss for an afternoon's luncheon. Oh! the execrable nation! I

cannot tell you any new particulars, for Mesdames de Cambis and

d'Hennin, my chief informers, are gone to Goodwood to the poor

Duchesse de Biron, of whose recovery I am impatient to hear; and

so I am of the cause of her very precipitate flight and panic.

She must, I think, have had strong motives; for two years ago I

feared she was much too courageous, and displayed her intrepidity

too publicly. If I did not always condemn the calling bad people

mad people, I should say all Paris had gone distracted: they

furnish provocation to every species of retaliation, by

publishing rewards for assassination of Kings and generals, and

cannot rest without incensing all Europe against them.

The Duchess of York gave a great entertainment at Oatlands on her

Duke's birthday; sent to his tradesmen in town to come to it, and

allowed two guineas apiece to each for their carriage; gave them

a dance, and opened the ball herself with the Prince of Wales. A

company of strollers came to Weybridge to act in a barn: she was

solicited to go to it, and did out of charity, and carried all

her servants. Next day a Methodist teacher came to preach a

charity sermon in the same theatre, and she Consented to hear it

on the same motive; but her servants desired to be excused, on

not understanding English. "Oh!" said the Duchess, "but you went

to the comedy, which you understood less, and you shall go to the

sermon;" to which she gave handsomely, and for them. I like

this.

Tack this to my other fragment, and then, I trust, I shall not be

a defaulter in correspondence. I own I am become an indolent

poor creature: but is that strange? With seventy-five years over

my head, or on the point of being so; with a chalk-stone in every

finger; with feet so limping, that I have been but twice this

whole summer round my own small garden, and so much weaker than I

was, can I be very comfortable, but when sitting quiet and doing

nothing? All my strength consists in my sleep, which is as

vigorous as at twenty: but with regard to letter-writing, I have

so many to write on business which I do not understand, since the

unfortunate death of my nephew, that, though I make them as brief

as possible, half-a-dozen short ones tire me as much as a long

One to an old friend; and as the busy ones must be executed, I

trespass on the others, and remit them to another day. Norfolk

has come very mal-apropos into the end of my life, and certainly

never entered into my views and plans; and I, who could never

learn the multiplication table, was not intended to transact

leases.. direct repairs of farm-houses, settle fines for church

lands, negotiate for lowering interest on mortgages, etc. In

short, as I was told formerly, though I know several things, I

never understood any thing useful. Apropos, the letter of which

Lady Cecilia Johnstone told you is not at all worth your seeing.

It was an angry one to a parson who oppresses my tenants, and

will go to law with them about tythes. She came in as I was

writing it; and as I took up the character of parson myself, and

preached to him as pastor of a flock which it did not become him

to lead into the paths of law, instead of those of peace, I

thought it would divert and showed it to her. Adieu! I have been

writing to you till midnight, and my poor fingers ache. Yours

ever.

Letter 400 To Miss Hannah More.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1793. (PAGE 535)

My holy Hannah, WITH your innate and usual goodness and sense,

you have done me justice by guessing exactly at the cause of my

long silence. You have been apt to tell me that my letters

diverted you. How then could I write, when it was impossible but

to attrist you! when I could speak of nothing but unparalleled

horrors! and but awaken your sensibility, if it slumbered for a

moment! What mind could forget the 10th of August and the 2d of

September; and that the black and bloody year 1792 has plunged

its murderous dagger still deeper, and already made 1793 still

more detestably memorable! though its victim(844) has at last

been rewarded for four years of torture by forcing from him every

kind of proof of the most perfect character that ever sat on a

throne. Were these, alas! themes for letters? Nay, am I not

sure that you have been still more shocked by a crime that passes

even the guilt of shedding the blood of poor Louis, to hear of

atheism avowed, and the avowal tolerated by monsters calling

themselves a National Assembly! But I have no words that can

reach the criminality of such inferno-human beings, but must

compose a term that aims at conveying my idea of them.

For the future it will be sufficient to call them the French; I

hope no other nation will ever deserve to be confounded with

them!

Indeed, my dear friend, I have another reason for wishing to burn

my pen entirely: all my ideas are confounded and overturned; I do

not know whether all I ever learned in the seventy first years of

my seventy-five was not wrong and false: common sense, reasoning,

calculation, conjecture from analogy and from history of past

events, all, all have been baffled; nor am I sure that what used

to be thought the result of experience and wisdom was not a mass

of mistakes. Have I not found, do I not find, that the invention

of establishing metals as the signs of property was an useless

discovery, or at least only useful till the art of making paper

was found out? Nay, the latter is preferable to gold and silver.

If the ores were adulterated and cried down, nobody

would take them in exchange. Depreciate paper as much as you

will, and it will still serve all the purposes of barter.

Tradesmen still keep shops, stock them with goods, and deliver

their commodities for those coined rags. Poor Reason, where art

thou?

To show you that memory and argument are Of no value, at least

with me, I thought a year or two that this papermint would soon

blow UP, because I remembered that when Mr. Charles Fox and one

or two more youths of brilliant genius first came to light, and

into vast debts at play, they imparted to the world an important

secret which they had discovered. It was, that nobody needed to

want money, if they would pay enough for it. Accordingly, they

borrowed of Jews at vast usury: but as they had made but an

incomplete calculation, the interest so soon exceeded the

principal, that the system did not maintain its ground for above

two or three years. Faro has proved a more substantial

speculation. But I miscarried in applying my remembrance to

the assignats, which still maintain their ground against that

long-decried but as long-adored corrupter of virtue, gold.(845)

Alack! I do not hear that virtue has flourished more for the

destruction of its old enemy!

Shall I add another truth? I have been so disgusted

and fatigued by hearing of nothing but French massacres, etc.

and found it so impossible to shift conversation to any other

topic, that before I had been a month in town, I wished Miss

Gunning would revive, that people might have at least one other

subject to interest the ears and tongues of the public. But no

wonder universal attention is engrossed by the present portentous

scene! It seems to draw to a question, whether

Europe or France is to be depopulated; whether civilization can

be recovered, or the republic of Chaos can be supported by

assassination. We have heard of the golden, silver, and iron

ages; the brazen one existed while the French were only

predominantly insolent. What the present age will be

denominated, I cannot guess'. Though the paper age would be

characteristic, it is not emphatic enough, nor specifies the

enormous sins of the fiends that are the agents. I think it may

be styled the diabolical age -. the Duke of Orleans has

dethroned Satan, who since his fall has never instigated such

crimes as Orleans has perpetrated.(846)

Let me soften my tone a little, and harmonize your poor mind by

sweeter accents. In this deluge of triumphant enormities, what

trails of the sublime and beautiful may be gleaned! Did

you hear of Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister? a saint like

yourself. She doted on her brother, for she certainly knew his

soul. In the tumult in July, hearing the populace and the

poissardes had broken into the palace, she flew to the King, and

by embracing him tried to shield his person. The populace took

her for the Queen, cried out "Voil`a cette chienne, cette

Autrichienne!" and were proceeding to violence. Somebody to

save her, screamed "Ce n'est pas la Reine, c'est--"

The Princess said, "Ah! mon Dieu! ne les d`etrompez

pas." If that was not the most sublime instance of perfect

innocence ready prepared for death, I know not where to find one.

Sublime indeed, too, was the sentence of good Father Edgeworth,

the King's confessor, who, thinking his royal penitent a little

dismayed just before the fatal stroke, cried out "Montez, digne

fils de St. Louis! Le ciel vous est ouvert." The holy martyr's

countenance brightened up, and he submitted at once. Such

victims, such confessors as those, and Monsieur do Malesherbes,

repair some of the breaches in human nature made by Orleans,

Condorcet, Santerre, and a legion of evil spirits.

The tide of horrors has hurried me much too far, before I have

vented a note of my most sincere concern for your bad account of

your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish your frame were as

sound as your soul and understanding. What can I recommend? I am

no physician but for my own flimsy texture; which by studying,

and by contradicting all advice, I have drawn to this great age.

Patience, temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in

short, you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety,

too much rigour towards yourself, and too much sensibility for

others. Is not it possible to serve mankind without feeling too

great pity? Perhaps I am a little too much

hardened, I am grown too little alarmed for the health of my

friends, from being become far more indifferent to life; I look

to the nearness of' my end, as a delivery from spectacles of wo.

We have even amongst us monsters, more criminal, in speculation

at least, than the French. They had cause to wish for correction

of a bad government; though, till taught to dislike it,

three-fourths of the country, I maintain, adored theirs. We have

the perfectest ever yet devised; but if to your numerous readings

of little pamphlets. you would add one more, called "Village

Politics,"(847) infinitely superior to any thing on the subject,

clearer, better stated, and comprehending the whole mass of

matter in the shortest compass, you will be more mistress of the

subject than any man in England. I know Who wrote it, but will

not tell you, because you did not tell me.

(844) On the 21st of January, Louis the Sixteenth had been

beheaded in the Place Louis Quinze, erected to the memory of his

grandfather. M. Thiers thus concludes his account of this

horrible event:--"At ten minutes past ten, the carriage stopped.

Louis rising briskly, stepped out into the Place. Three

executioners came up; he refused their assistance, and stripped

off his clothes himself; but, perceiving that they were going to

bind his hands, he betrayed a movement of indignation, and seemed

ready to resist. M. Edgeworth, whose every expression was then

sublime, gave him, a last look, and said, 'I Suffer this outrage,

as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be your

reward.' At these words the victim, resigned and submissive,

suffered himself to be bound and conducted to the scaffold. All

at once, Louis took a hasty step, separated himself from the

executioners, and advanced to address the people. 'Frenchmen,'

said he, in a firm voice, 'I die innocent of the crimes which

are imputed to me; I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray

that my blood may not fall upon France.' He would have continued

but the drums were instantly ordered to beat: their rolling

drowned the voice of the Prince, the executioners laid hold of

him, and M. Edgeworth took his leave in these memorable words,

''Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!' As soon as the blood

flowed, furious wretches dipped their pikes and their

handkerchiefs in it spread themselves throughout Paris, shouted

Vive la Republique! vive la nation! and even went to the gates of

the Temple to display their brutal and factious joy." Vol. ii. p.

228.-E.

(845) "The causes which at this time put assignats apparently on

a par with specie were the following. A law forbade, under heavy

penalties, the traffic in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss

of the assignat against money: another law decreed very severe

penalties against those who, in purchases, should bargain for

different prices according as payment was to be made in paper or

in cash: by a last law, it was enacted, that hidden gold, silver,

or jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to the

informer. Thenceforth people could neither employ specie in

trade nor conceal it; it became troublesome; it exposed the

holders to the risk of being considered suspected persons; they

began to be afraid of it, an(l to find the assignat preferable

for daily use." Thiers, vol. iii. p. 213.-E.

(846) Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who had

relinquished his titles and called himself Philippe Egalit`e, and

become a member of the National Convention, in giving his vote

for the death of his kinsman, had read these words:--"Exclusively

governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have

resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is

for death!" The atrocity of this vote occasioned great agitation

in the -assembly; it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate

of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th of November,

in the same year, the Duke was himself brought before the

revolutionary tribunal, and condemned on account of the

suspicions which he had excited in all parties. "Odious," says

M. Thiers "to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins and the

Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets which afford some

consolation for an unjust death. A universal disgust, an

absolute scepticism were his last sentiments; and he went to the

scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was

drawn along the Rue St. Honor`e, he beheld his palace with a dry

eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of

life," Vol. iii, P. 205--E.

(847) A little work which Miss More had Just published

anonymously. The sale of it was enormous. Many thousands were

sent by government to Scotland and Ireland. Several persons

printed large editions Of it at their own expense; and in London

Only many hundred thousands were circulated.-E.

Letter 401 To Miss Hannah More.

Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.(page 538)

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues, my

excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you correct them.

I scolded you for your modesty in not acquainting me with your

"Village Politics" even after they were published; and you have

already conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another

piece of which you are in labour. Still I se there wanted your

ghostly father, the )Bishop of London, to join you to be quite

shameless and avow your natural child.(848) I do approve his

doctrine: calling it by your own name will make its fortune. If,

like Rousseau, you had left your babe among the enfans trouv`es,

it might never be heard of more than his poor issue have been;

for I can but observe that the French patriots, who have made

such a fuss with his ashes, have not taken the smallest pains to

attempt to discover his real progeny, which might not have been

impossible by collating dates and circumstances. I am proud of

having imitated you at a great distance, and been persuaded, much

against my will and practice, to let my name be put to the second

subscription for the poor French clergy, as it was thought it

might tend to animate that consumptive contribution.

I am impatient for your pamphlet, not only as being yours, but

hoping it will invigorate horror against French atheism, which, I

am grieved to say did not by any means make due impression. very

early apply to your confessor, to beg he would enjoin his clergy

to denounce that shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to

you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch

Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing

judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might

startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to suggest

the hint to them.

24th.

I must modify the massacre of Manuel; he has been a good deal

stabbed, but will, they say, recover.(849) Perhaps it is better

that some of those assassins should live to acknowledge, that "Do

not to others what you would not have done to you" is not so

silly a maxim as most of the precepts of morality and Justice

have lately been deemed by philosophers and legislators--titles

self-assumed by men who have abolished all other titles; and who

have disgraced and debased the former denomination, and under the

latter have enjoined triple perjuries, and at last cannot fix on

any code which should exact more forswearing. I own I am pleased

that that ruffian pedant Condorcet's new constitution was too

clumsy and unwieldy to go down the throats of those who have

swallowed every thing else. I did but just cast my eyes on the

beginning and end, and was so lucky as to observe the hypocrite's

contradiction: he sets out with declaration of equality, and

winds up with security of property; that is, we will plunder

every body, and then entail the spoils on ourselves and our

(wrong) heirs.(850)

Well! that bloody chaos seems recoiling on themselves! It looks

as if civil war was bursting out in many provinces, and will

precipitate approaching famine. When, till now, could one make

such a reflection without horror to one's self? But, alas! have

not the French brought it to the question, whether Europe or

France should be laid desolate'! Religion, morality, justice,

have been stabbed, torn up by the roots: every right has been

trampled under foot. Marriage has been profaned and undermined

by law; and no wonder, that, amidst such excesses, the poor arts

have shared in the common ruin! And who have been the

perpetrators of, or advocates for, such universal devastation?

Philosophers, geometricians, astronomers--a Condorcet, a Bailly,

a Bishop of Autun, and a Doctor Priestley, and the last the

worst. The French had seen grievances, crying grievances! yet

not under the good late King. But what calamities or dangers

threatened or had fallen on Priestley, but want of papal power,

like his predecessor Calvin? If you say his house was burnt -but

did he intend the fire should blaze on that side of the street?

Your charity may believe him innocent, but your understanding

does not. Well! I am glad to hear he is going to America; I

hope he will not bring back scalping, even to that National

Assembly of which he was proud of being elected a member! I doubt

if Cartouche would have thought it an honour. It was stuck up in

Lloyd's coffeehouse lately, that the Duke of Orleans was named

"Chef de la R`epublique." I thought it should be "Chef de la Lie

publique."

(848) Miss More had informed Walpole, that she was occupied in

writing her "Remarks" on the atheistical speech of M. Dupont,

made in the National Convention; and to which the Bishop of

London had recommended her to put her name.-E.

(849) Manuel was deeply implicated in the massacres of 1792; in

consequence of which he was nominated a deputy to the National

Convention. He resigned his seat in January 1793, and retired to

Montargis, where he narrowly escaped assassination. He was

afterwards seized as a suspected person. On being brought before

the revolutionary tribunal, he reminded his judges of his

services, and desired it might be engraved on his tombstone, that

he had occasioned the events of the 10th of August. He was

guillotined in November 1793.-E.

(850) In the following July, Condorcet was accused of being an

accomplice with Brissot, and, to save his life, concealed himself

in the house of Madame Verney, where he remained eight months.

Having at length learned that death was denounced against all who

harboured a proscribed individual, he fled in disguise from

Paris. He wandered about for some time, until, driven by hunger,

he entered a small public-house at Clamar, where he was arrested

as a suspicious person, and thrown into prison. On the following

morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his

room, having apparently swallowed poison, which he always carried

about with him.-E.

Letter 402 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, June 13, 1793. (page 540)

I thank you much for all your information--some parts made me

smile: yet, if what you heard of your brother proves true, I

rather think it deplorable! How can love of money, or the still

vainer of all vanities, ambition of wearing a high but most

insignificant office, which even poor Lord Salisbury could

execute, tempt a very old man, who loves his ease and his own

way, to stoop to wait like a footman behind a chair, for hours,

and in a court whence he had been cast Ignominiously? I believe

I have more pride than most men alive: I could be flattered by

honours acquired by merit, or by some singular action of `eclat;

but for titles, ribands, offices of no business, which any body

can fill, and must be given to many, I should just as soon be

proud of being the top squire in a country village.(851) It is

only worse to have waded to distinction through dirt, like Lord

Auckland.(852) All this shifting of scenes may, as you say, be

food to the Fronde --Sed defendit numerus. It is perfectly

ridiculous to use any distinction of parties but the ins and the

outs. Many years ago I thought that the wisest appellations for

contending factions ever assumed, were those in the Roman empire,

who called themselves the greens and the blues: it was so easy,

when they changed sides, to slide from one colour to the other;

and then a blue might plead that he had never been true blue, but

always a greenish blue; and vice versa. I allow that the

steadiest party-man may be staggered by novel and unforeseen

circumstances. The outrageous proceedings of the French

republicans have wounded the cause of liberty, and will, I fear,

have shaken it for centuries; for Condorcet and such fiends are

worse than the imperial and royal dividers of Poland. But I do

not see why detestation of anarchy and assassination must

immediately make one fall in love with garters and seals.

I am sitting by the fire, as I have done ever since I came

hither; and since I do not expect warm weather in June, I am

wishing for rain, or I shall not have a mouthful of hay, nor a

noseful of roses. Indeed, as I have seen several fields of hay

cut, I wonder it has not brought rain, as usual. My creed is,

that rain is good for hay, as I conclude every climate and its

productions are suited to each other. Providence did not trouble

itself about its being more expensive to us to make our hay over

and over; it only took care it should not want water enough.

Adieu!

(851) On the 29th of this month, the Earl of Hertford was created

a Marquis. He died on the 14th of June, in the following year,

at the age of seventy-five.-E.

(852) On the 23d of May, William Eden, Lord Auckland, had been

created an English peer.-E.

Letter 403 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.

Strawberry Hill, Wednesday night, late, July 17, 1793. (page 541)

I am just come from dining with the Bishop of London at Fulham,

where I found Lord and Lady Frederick Campbell, who told me of

the alarm you had from hearing some screams that you thought Lady

Ailesbury's, and the disorder brought upon you by flying to

assist her. I do not at all wonder at your panic, and rejoice it

was not founded, and that you recovered so soon. I am not going

to preach against your acting so naturally: but as you have some

complaint on your breast, I must hope you will remember this

accident, and be upon Your guard against both sudden and rapid

exertions, when you have not a tantamount call. I conclude the

excessive heat we have had for twelve complete days contributed

to overpower you.

It is much cooler to-day, yet still delicious; for be it known to

you that I have enjoyed weather worthy of Africa,(853) and yet

without swallowing mouthfuls of musquitos, nor expecting to hear

hyenas howl in the village, nor to find scorpions in my bed.

Indeed, all the way I came home, I could but gaze at the felicity

of my countrymen. The road was one string of stage-coaches

loaded within and without with noisy jolly folks, and chaises and

gigs that had been pleasuring in clouds of dust; every door and

every window of every house was open, lights in every shop, every

door with women sitting in the street, every inn crowded with

jaded horses, and every alehouse full of drunken topers; for you

know the English always announce their sense of heat or cold by

drinking. Well! it was' impossible not to enjoy such a scene of

happiness and affluence in every village, and amongst the lowest

of the people; and who are told by villanous scribblers, that

they are oppressed and miserable. New streets, new towns, are

rising every day and every where; the earth is covered with

gardens and crops of grain.