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"My brother's last daughter (Charlotte Walpole) is married, and as Biddy Tipkin says:-though their story is too short for a romance, it will make a very pretty novel-nay, it is almost brief enough for a play, and very near comes within one of the unities, the space of four and twenty hours. There is in the world-particularly in my world, for he lives directly over against me, across the water-a strange brute, called the Earl of Dysart.*-Don't be frightened, it is not he. His son, Lord Huntingtower, to whom he gives but four hundred pounds a-year, is a comely young gentleman of twenty-six, who has often had thoughts of trying whether his father would not like grand-children better than his own children; as sometimes people have more grand-tenderness than paternal. All the answer he could ever get was, that the Earl could not afford, as he has five younger children, to make any settlement: but he offered, as a proof of his inability and kindness, to lend his son a large sum of money, at low interest. This indigent has thirteen thousand pounds a-year, and sixty thousand pounds in the funds. The money and ten of the thirteen thousand in land are entailed on Lord Huntingtower. The young Lord, it seems, has been in love with Charlotte for some months, but thought so little of inflaming her, that yesterday fortnight she did not know him by sight. On that day he came and proposed himself to my brother, who with much surprise heard his story, but excused himself from giving an answer. He said he would never force the inclinations of his children; he did not believe his daughter had any engagement or attachment, but she might have: he would send for her and know her mind. She was at her sister Waldegrave's, to whom, on receiving the notification, she said, very sensibly- if I was but nineteen, I would refuse point-blank; I do not like to be married in a week to a man I never

saw.

But I am two-and-twenty; some people say I am handsome, some say I am not: but I believe the truth is, I am likely to be at large and to go off soon.-It is dangerous to refuse so great a match.' Take notice of the married in a week; the love that was so many months in ripening could not stay above a week. She came and

* Lionel Tolmache, third Earl.

saw the impetuous lover, and I believe was glad she had not refused point-blank, for they were married last Thursday. I tremble a little for the poor girl; not to mention the oddness of the father, and twenty disagreeable things that may be in the young man, who has been kept and lived entirely out of the world; he takes her fortune, ten thousand pounds, and cannot settle another shilling upon her till his father dies, and then promises only a thousand a-year. Would one venture one's happiness, and one's whole fortune for the chance of being Lady Dysart! If Lord Huntingtower dies before his father, she will not have sixpence. Sure my brother has risked too much."*

In a subsequent letter he says:—

"Lord Huntingtower wrote to offer his father eight thousand pounds of Charlotte's fortune if he would give them one thousand a-year at present and settle a jointure on her. The Earl returned this truly laconic, for being so unnatural an answer :—

"LORD HUNTINGTOWER,-I answer your letter as soon as I receive it: I wish you joy: I hear your wife is very accomplished. "Yours,

666
"DYSART.'

"I believe my Lady Huntingtower must contrive to make it convenient for me that my Lord Dysart should die-and then he will. I expect to be a very respectable personage in time, and to have my tomb set forth, like the Lady Margaret Douglas, that I had four Earls to my nephews, though I never was one myself. Adieu. I must go govern the nation."†

Edward, the only son of Sir Edward Walpole, joined the army, and of him Horace has preserved a curious and not uninteresting anecdote.

"He was on the expedition to St. Maloes; a party of fifty men appearing on a hill, he was despatched to reconnoitre with only eight men. Being stopped by a brook, he prepared to leap it; an old serjeant dissuaded him, from the inequality of the numbers.

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said the boy, 'I will tell you what; our profession is bred up to so much regularity, that any novelty terrifies them,-with our light English horses we will leap the stream, and I'll be d―d if they don't run.' He did so and they did so. However he was not content, but insisted that each of his party should carry back a prisoner before them. They had got eight, when they overtook an elderly man, to whom they offered quarter, bidding him lay down his arms. He replied they were English-the enemies of his king and country; that he hated them, and had rather be killed. My nephew hesitated a moment and then said, 'I see you are a brave fellow, and don't fear death, but very likely you fear a beating-if you don't lay down your arms this instant, my men shall drub you as long as they can stand over you!' The fellow directly flung down his arms in a passion. The Duke of Marlborough sent my brother word of this, adding, it was the only clever action in their whole exploit. Indeed I am pleased with it; for besides his spirit, I don't see, with this thought and presence of mind, why he should not make a general."

This gallant young man subsequently attained the rank of Colonel.

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CHAPTER III.

THE WITS.

THE age in which Horace Walpole flourished produced a number of men moving in what was considered the best society, who became known amongst their contemporaries by the title of "the Wits." They gained this designation in consequence of each individual of the group having distinguished himself by a facility in the expression of quaint, droll, or brilliant thoughts. Some were merely pleasant conversationalists, others can only be considered as humourists, a few were happy in the construction of droll verses and impromptu double entendres-but the number was very small, who either on paper or viva voce, made any very brilliant contributions to the stock of ideas which constituted the common intellectual property about the middle of the last century.

If the pretensions of a majority of these pretenders to "wit" are narrowly looked into, we shall have some trouble in making out, to the reader's

satisfaction, their claims to the title. But we must not allow the luxuriant growth which has resulted from the cultivation of this quality amongst us, within these last few years, to make us slight its more humble manifestations a hundred years ago. What is easily furnished to us once a-week by the wits of this age, those of the last would have found it impossible to supply in a year. They could not boast of a "Punch," for they possessed neither manufactory nor raw material for it and as regards social pleasantry-the talent for which is rather too ostentatiously paraded-we may look in vain through the whole circle of jesting celebrities for the brilliance of a Barham, or the facility of a Hook.

A quick sense of the ludicrous and a ready appreciation of the droll, is pretty generally diffused in all communities; and the supply of puns, burlesques, parodies, and epigrams, is usually found to be tolerably extensive at almost every period. Such, however, are merely the low farces of the drama-its genteel comedy requires higher intelligence and a more elevated audience. The names of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, Charles Townshend and Horace Walpole, might, it is possible, redeem a host of pretenders, whose sole claims to the rank of sayers of good things, must be found in a large fund of animal spirits, or a fund of impudence still more considerable.

Wit may make a great deal of what is thoroughly worthless obtain admiration-it possesses the art of

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