STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 6, 1770.
I don't know whether Wilkes is subdued by his imprisonment, or waits for
the rising of Parliament, to take the field; or whether his dignity of
Alderman has dulled him into prudence, and the love of feasting; but
hitherto he has done nothing but go to City banquets and sermons, and
sit at Guildhall as a sober magistrate. With an inversion of the
proverb, "Si ex quovis Mercurio fit lignum!" What do you Italians think
of Harlequin Potesta?[1] In truth, his party is crumbled away strangely.
Lord Chatham has talked on the Middlesex election till nobody will
answer him; and Mr. Burke (Lord Rockingham's governor) has published a
pamphlet[2] that has sown the utmost discord between that faction and
the supporters of the Bill of Rights. Mrs. Macaulay[3] has written
against it. In Parliament their numbers are shrunk to nothing, and the
session is ending very triumphantly for the Court. But there is another
scene opened of a very different aspect. You have seen the accounts from
Boston. The tocsin seems to be sounded to America. I have many visions
about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming
upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to
be kept in subjection to half a dozen exhausted nations in Europe. As
the latter sinks, and the others rise, they who live between the eras
will be a sort of Noahs, witnesses to the period of the old world and
origin of the new. I entertain myself with the idea of a future senate
in Carolina and Virginia, where their future patriots will harangue on
the austere and incorruptible virtue of the ancient English! will tell
their auditors of our disinterestedness and scorn of bribes and
pensions, and make us blush in our graves at their ridiculous
panegyrics. Who knows but even our Indian usurpations and villanies may
become topics of praise to American schoolboys? As I believe our virtues
are extremely like those of our predecessors the Romans, so I am sure
our luxury and extravagance are too.
[Footnote 1: Podesta was an officer in some of the smaller Italian
towns, somewhat corresponding to our mayor. The name is Italianised from
the Roman Potestas--
Hajus, quo trahitur, praetextam sumere mavis,
An Fidenarum, Gabiorumque esse Potestas.
(Juv., x. 100).]
[Footnote 2: The pamphlet is, "Thoughts on the Present Discontents,"
founding them especially on the unconstitutional influence of "the
King's friends."]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Macaulay was the wife of a London physician, and
authoress of a "History of England" from the accession of James I. to
that of George I., written in a spirit of the fiercest republicanism,
but long since forgotten.]
What do you think of a winter Ranelagh[1] erecting in Oxford Road, at
the expense of sixty thousand pounds? The new bank, including the value
of the ground, and of the houses demolished to make room for it, will
cost three hundred thousand; and erected, as my Lady Townley[2] says,
_by sober citizens too_! I have touched before to you on the incredible
profusion of our young men of fashion. I know a younger brother who
literally gives a flower-woman half a guinea every morning for a bunch
of roses for the nosegay in his button-hole. There has lately been an
auction of stuffed birds; and, as natural history is in fashion, there
are physicians and others who paid forty and fifty guineas for a single
Chinese pheasant; you may buy a live one for five. After this, it is
not extraordinary that pictures should be dear. We have at present three
exhibitions. One West,[3] who paints history in the taste of Poussin,
gets three hundred pounds for a piece not too large to hang over a
chimney. He has merit, but is hard and heavy, and far unworthy of such
prices. The rage to see these exhibitions is so great, that sometimes
one cannot pass through the streets where they are. But it is incredible
what sums are raised by mere exhibitions of anything; a new fashion, and
to enter at which you pay a shilling or half-a-crown. Another rage, is
for prints of English portraits: I have been collecting them above
thirty years, and originally never gave for a mezzotinto above one or
two shillings. The lowest are now a crown; most, from half a guinea to a
guinea. Lately, I assisted a clergyman [Granger] in compiling a
catalogue of them; since the publication, scarce heads in books, not
worth threepence, will sell for five guineas. Then we have Etruscan
vases, made of earthenware, in Staffordshire, [by Wedgwood] from two to
five guineas, and _ormoulu_, never made here before, which succeeds so
well, that a tea-kettle, which the inventor offered for one hundred
guineas, sold by auction for one hundred and thirty. In short, we are at
the height of extravagance and improvements, for we do improve rapidly
in taste as well as in the former. I cannot say so much for our genius.
Poetry is gone to bed, or into our prose; we are like the Romans in
that too. If we have the arts of the Antonines,--we have the fustian
also.
[Footnote 1: _"A winter Ranelagh._"--the Pantheon in Oxford Street.]
[Footnote 2: Lady Townley is the principal character in "The Provoked
Husband."]
[Footnote 3: West, as a painter, was highly esteemed by George III.,
and, on the death of Sir J. Reynolds, succeeded him as President of the
Royal Academy.]
Well! what becomes of your neighbours, the Pope and Turk? is one Babylon
to fall, and the other to moulder away? I begin to tremble for the poor
Greeks; they will be sacrificed like the Catalans, and left to be
impaled for rebellion, as soon as that vainglorious woman the Czarina
has glutted her lust of fame, and secured Azoph by a peace, which I hear
is all she insists on keeping. What strides modern ambition takes! _We_
are the successors of Aurungzebe; and a virago under the Pole sends a
fleet into the Aegean Sea to rouse the ghosts of Leonidas and
Epaminondas, and burn the capital of the second Roman Empire! Folks now
scarce meddle with their next door neighbours; as many English go to
visit St. Peter's who never thought of stepping into St. Paul's.
I shall let Lord Beauchamp know your readiness to oblige him, probably
to-morrow, as I go to town. The spring is so backward here that I have
little inducement to stay; not an entire leaf is out on any tree, and I
have heard a syren as much as a nightingale. Lord Fitzwilliam, who, I
suppose, is one of your latest acquaintance, is going to marry Lady
Charlotte Ponsonby, Lord Besborough's second daughter, a pretty,
sensible, and very amiable girl. I seldom tell you that sort of news,
but when the parties are very fresh in your memory. Adieu!
_MASQUERADES IN FASHION--A LADY'S CLUB._