What a volume is here! and, perhaps, not a syllable of it new to you! You will, at least, excuse the intention. I wish you and I had any common acquaintance left, that we might chat of something else than kings and queens! Adieu ! P.S. The Russian minister here, I am told, has received credentials from the new government. MY DEAR LORD: 801. TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD. Strawberry Hill, August 5, 1762. As you have correspondents of better authority in town, I don't pretend to send you great events, and I know no small ones. Nobody talks of anything under a revolution. That in Russia alarms me, lest Lady Mary should fall in love with the Czarina, who has deposed her Lord Coke, and set out for Petersburgh. We throw away a whole summer in writing Britons and North Britons; the Russians change sovereigns faster than Mr. Wilkes can choose a motto for a paper. What years were spent here in controversy on the abdication of King James, and the legitimacy of the Pretender! Commend me to the Czarina. They doubted, that is, her husband did, whether her children were of genuine blood-royal. She appealed to the Preobazinski guards, excellent casuists; and, to prove Duke Paul heir to the crown, assumed it herself. The proof was compendious and unanswerable. I trust you know that Mr. Conway has made a figure by taking the castle of Waldeck. There has been another action to Prince Ferdinand's advantage, but no English were engaged. You tantalise me by talking of the verdure of Yorkshire; we have not had a teacup full of rain till to-day for these six weeks. Corn has been reaped that never wet its lips; not a blade of grass; the leaves yellow and falling as in the end of October. In short, Twickenham is rueful; I don't believe Westphalia looks more barren. Nay, we are forced to fortify ourselves too. Hanworth was broken open last night, though the family was all there. Lord Vere lost a silver standish, an old watch, and his writing-box with fifty pounds in it. They broke it open in the park, but missed a diamond ring, which was found, and the telescope, which by the weight of the case they had fancied full of money. Another house in the middle of Sunbury has had the same fate. I am mounting cannon on my battlements. Your chateau, I hope, proceeds faster than mine. The carpenters are all associated for increase of wages; I have had but two men at work these five weeks. You know, to be sure, that Lady Mary Wortley cannot live. Adieu, my dear Lord! SIR: 802. TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE. Strawberry Hill, August 5, 1762. As I had been dilatory in accepting your kind offer of coming hither, I proposed it as soon as I returned. As we are so burnt, and as my workmen have disappointed me, I am not quite sorry that I had not the pleasure of seeing you this week. Next week I am obliged to be in town on business. If you please, therefore, we will postpone our meeting till the first of September; by which time, I flatter myself we shall be green, and I shall be able to show you my additional apartment to more advantage. Unless you forbid me, I will expect you, Sir, the very beginning of next month. In the mean time, I will only thank you for the obliging and curious notes you have sent me, which will make a great figure in my second edition. 803. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ. Strawberry Hill, August 10, 1762. I HAVE received your letter from Greatworth since your return, but I do not find that you have got one, which I sent you to the Vine, enclosing one directed for you: Mr. Chute says you did not mention hearing from me there. I left your button too in town with old Richard to be transmitted to you. Our drought continues, though we have had one handsome storm. I have been reading the story of Phaeton in the Metamorphoses; it is a picture of Twickenham. Ardet Athos, taurusque Cilix, &c.; mount Richmond burns, parched is Petersham: Parnassusque biceps, dry is Pope's grot, the nymphs of Clivden are burning to blackmoors, their faces are already as glowing as a cinder, Cycnus is changed into a swan : quodque suo Tagus amne vehit, fluit ignibus aurum; my gold fishes are almost molten. Yet this conflagration is nothing to that in Russia: what do you say to a Czarina mounting her horse, and marching at the head of fourteen thousand men, with a large train of artillery, to dethrone her husband? Yet she is not the only virago in that country; the conspiracy was conducted by the sister of the Czar's mistress, a heroine under twenty! They have no fewer than two czars now in coops-that is, supposing these gentle damsels have murdered neither of them. Turkey will become a moderate government; one must travel to frozen climates if one chooses to see revolutions in perfection. "Here's room for meditation even to madness" the deposed Emperor possessed Muscovy, was heir to Sweden, and the true heir of Denmark; all the northern crowns centered in his person; one hopes he is in a dungeon, that is, one hopes he is not assassinated. You cannot crowd more matter into a lecture of morality than is comprehended in those few words. This is the fourth Czarina that you and I have seen; to be sure, as historians, we have not passed our time ill. Mrs. Anne Pitt, who, I suspect, envies the heroine of twenty a little, says, "The Czarina has only robbed Peter to pay Paul;" and I do not believe that her brother, Mr. William Pitt, feels very happy, that he cannot immediately dispatch a squadron to the Baltic to reinstate the friend of the King of Prussia. I cannot afford to live less than fifty years more; for so long, I suppose, at least, it will be before the court of Petersburgh will cease to produce amusing scenes. Think of old Count Biren, formerly master of that empire, returning to Siberia, and bowing to Bestucheff, whom he may meet on the road from thence. I interest myself now about nothing but Russia ; Lord Bute must be sent to the Orcades before I shall ask a question in English politics; at least I shall expect that Mr. Pitt, at the head of the Preobazinski guards, will seize the person of the prime minister for giving up our conquests to the chief enemy of this nation. My pen is in such a sublime humour, that it can scarce condescend to tell you that Sir Edward Deering is going to marry Polly Hart, Danvers's old mistress; and three more baronets, whose names nobody knows, but Collins, are treading in the same steps. My compliments to the house of Montagu-upon my word I congratulate the General and you, and your Viceroy [Earl of Halifax], that you escaped being deposed by the primate of Novogorod. 804. TO SIR HORACE MANN. Arlington Street, Aug. 12, 1762. A PRINCE OF WALES [George IV.] was born this morning; the prospect of your old neighbour [the Pretender] at Rome does not improve; the House of Hanover will have numbers in its own family sufficient to defend their crown-unless they marry a Princess of Anhalt Zerbst.' What a shocking tragedy that has proved already! There is a manifesto arrived to-day that makes one shudder! This northern Athaliah, who has the modesty not to name her murdered husband in that light, calls him her neighbour; and, as if all the world were savages, like Russians, pretends that he died suddenly of a distemper that never was expeditious; mocks Heaven with pretensions to charity and piety; and heaps the additional inhumanity on the man she has dethroned and assassinated, of imputing his death to a judgment from Providence. In short, it is the language of usurpation and blood, counselled and apologised for by clergymen! It is Brunehault and an archbishop! I have seen Mr. Keith's first despatch; in general, my account was tolerably correct; but he does not mention Ivan. The conspiracy advanced by one of the gang being seized, though for another crime; they thought themselves discovered. Orloff, one of them, hurried to the Czarina, and told her she had no time to lose. She was ready for anything; nay, marched herself at the head of fourteen thousand men and a train of artillery against her husband, but not being the only Alecto in Muscovy, she had been aided by a Princess Daschkaw, a nymph under twenty, and sister to the Czar's mistress. It was not the latter, as I told you, but the Chancellor's wife, who offered up the order of St. Catherine. I do not know how my Lord Buckingham [the English Minister at St. Petersburgh] feels, but unless to conjure up a tempest against this fury of the north, nothing could bribe me to set my foot in her dominions. Had she been priestess of the Scythian Diana, she would have sacrificed her brother by choice. It seems she does not degenerate; her mother was ambitious and passionate for intrigues; she went to Paris, and dabbled in politics with all her might. 1 The Czarina Catherine II. was Princess of Anhalt Zerbst.-WALPOLE. The world had been civilising itself till one began to doubt whether ancient histories were not ancient legends. Voltaire had unpoisoned half the victims to the Church and to ambition. Oh! there never was such a man as Borgia; the league seemed a romance. For the honour of poor historians, the assassinations of the Kings of France and Portugal, majesties still living in spite of Damien and the Jesuits, and the dethronement and murder of the Czar, have restored some credibility to the annals of former ages. Tacitus recovers his character by the edition of Petersburgh. We expect the definitive courier from Paris every day. Now it is said that they ask time to send to Spain. What? to ask leave to desert them! The Spaniards, not so expeditious in usurpation as the Muscovites, have made no progress in Portugal. Their absurd manifestoes appeared too soon. The Czarina and Princess Daschkaw stay till the stroke is struck. Really, my dear Sir, your Italy is growing unfashionably innocent,-if you don't take care, the Archbishop of Novogorod will deserve, by his crimes, to be at the head of the Christian Church. I fear my friend, good Benedict,' infected you all with his virtues. You see how this Russian revolution has seized every cell in my head-a Prince of Wales is passed over in a line, the peace in another line. I have not even told you that the treasure of the Hermione, reckoned eight hundred thousand pounds, passed the end of my street this morning in one-and-twenty waggons. Of the Havannah I could tell you nothing if I would; people grow impatient at not hearing from thence. Adieu! You see I am a punctual correspondent when Empresses commit murders. SIR: 805. TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE. Strawberry Hill, August 19, 1762. I AM very sensible of the obligations I have to you and Mr. Masters, and ought to make separate acknowledgments to both; but, not knowing how to direct to him, I must hope that you will kindly be once more the channel of our correspondence; and that you will be so good as to convey to him an answer to what you communicated from him to me, and in particular my thanks for the most obliging offer he has made me of a picture of Henry VII.; of 1 Pope Benedict XIV. -WALPOLE. |