I think there is nothing else very new: Mr. Young puns, and Dr. Gem does not: Lorenzi blunders faster than one can repeat. Voltaire writes volumes faster than they can print, and I buy china faster than I can pay for it. I am glad to hear you have been two or three times at my Lady Hervey's. By what she says of you, you may be comforted, though you miss the approbation of Madame de Valentinois. Her golden apple, though indeed after all Paris has gnawed it, is reserved for Lord Holdernesse! Adieu! Yours ever, H. WALPOLE.

1047. TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

Paris, March 10, 1766.

THERE are two points, Madam, on which I must write to your ladyship, though I have been confined these three or four days with an inflammation in my eyes. My watchings and revellings had, I doubt, heated my blood, and prepared it to receive a stroke of cold, which in truth was amply administered. We were two-and-twenty at the Maréchale du Luxembourg's, and supped in a temple rather than in a hall. It is vaulted at top with gods and goddesses, and paved with marble; but the god of fire was not of the number. However, as this is neither of my points, I shall say no more of it.

I send your ladyship Lady Albemarle's box, which Madame Geoffrin brought to me herself yesterday. I think it very neat and charming, and it exceeds the commission but by a guinea and half. It is lined with wood between the two golds, as the price and necessary size would not admit metal enough without, to leave it of any solidity.

mention so late. I am Lord Hertford sent me

The other point I am indeed ashamed to more guilty than even about the scissors. word a fortnight ago, that an ensigncy was vacant, to which he should recommend Mr. Fitzgerald. I forgot both to thank him and to acquaint your ladyship, who probably know it without my communication. I have certainly lost my memory! This is so idle and young, that I begin to fear I have acquired something of the fashionable man, which I so much dreaded. It is to England then that I must return to recover friendship and attention? I literally wrote to Lord Hertford, and forgot to thank him. Sure I did not use to be so abominable! I cannot account for it: I am as black as ink, and must turn-Methodist, to fancy that repentance can wash me

white again. No, I will not; for then I may sin again, and trust to the same nostrum.

I had the honour of sending your ladyship the funeral sermon on the Dauphin, and a tract to laugh at sermons: "Your bane and antidote are both before you." The first is by the Archbishop of Toulouse,' who is thought the first man of the clergy. It has some sense, no pathetic, no eloquence, and, I think, clearly no belief in his own doctrine. The latter is by the Abbé Coyer,' written livelily, upon a single idea; and, though I agree upon the inutility of the remedy he rejects, I have no better opinion of that he would substitute. Preaching has not failed from the beginning of the world till to-day, not because inadequate to the disease, but because the disease is incurable. If one preached to lions and tigers, would it cure them of thirsting for blood, and sucking it when they have an opportunity? No; but when they are whelped in the tower, and both caressed and beaten, do they turn out a jot more tame when they are grown up? So far from it, all the kindness in the world, all the attention, cannot make even a monkey (that is no beast of prey) remember a pair of scissors or an ensigncy.

Adieu, Madam! and pray don't forgive me, till I have forgiven myself. I dare not close my letter with any professions; for could you believe them in one that had so much reason to think himself Your most obedient humble servant?

1048. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, March 12, 1766.

I CAN write but two lines, for I have been confined these four or five days with a violent inflammation in my eyes, and which has prevented my returning to Madame Roland. I did not find her at home, but left your letter. My right eye is well again, and I have been to take air.

How can you ask leave to carry anybody to Strawberry? May

1 Brionne de Lomenie, Archbishop of Toulouse, and afterwards Cardinal de Lomenie, or as he was nicknamed by the populace of Paris, "Cardinal de l'Ignominie," was great-nephew to Madame du Deffand. He was arrested at the commencement of the Revolution, and escaped the guillotine by dying in one of the prisons at Paris in 1794. WRIGHT.

2 This pamphlet of the Abbé Coyer, which was entitled 'On Preaching,' produced a great sensation in Paris at the time of its publication. The Abbé died in 1782.— WRIGHT.

not you do what you please with me and mine? Does not Arlington-street comprehend Strawberry? why don't you go and lie there if you like it? It will be, I think, the middle of April before I return; I have lost a week by this confinement, and would fain satisfy my curiosity entirely, now I am here. I have seen enough and too much of the people. I am glad you are upon civil terms with Habiculeo. The less I esteem folks the less I would quarrel with them.

I don't wonder that Colman and Garrick write ill in concert, when they write ill separately; however, I am heartily glad the Clive shines. Adieu! Commend me to Charles-street. Kiss Fanny, and Mufti, and Ponto for me, when you go to Strawberry dear souls, I long to kiss them myself.

1049. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, March 21, 1766.

You make me very happy in telling me you have been so comfortable in my house. If you would set up a bed there, you need never go out of it. I want to invite you, not to expel you. April the tenth my pilgrimage will end, and the fifteenth, or sixteenth, you may expect to see me, not much fattened with the flesh-pots of Egypt, but almost as glad to come amongst you again as I was to leave you.

Your Madame Roland is not half so fond of me as she tells me; I have been twice at her door, left your letter and my own direction, but have not received so much as a message to tell me she is sorry she was not at home. Perhaps this is her first vision of Paris, and it is natural for a Frenchwoman to have her head turned with it; though what she takes for rivers of Emerald, and hotels of ruby and topaz, are to my eyes, that have been purged with euphrasy and rue, a filthy stream, in which everything is washed without being cleaned, and dirty houses, ugly streets, worse shops, and churches loaded with bad pictures. Such is the material part of this paradise; for the corporeal, if Madame Roland admires it, I have nothing to say; however, I shall not be sorry to make one at Lady Frances Elliot's. Thank you for admiring my deaf old woman [Lady Suffolk]; if I could bring my old blind one [Madame du Deffand] with me, I should

1 Mrs. Clive played in the clever comedy of the 'Clandestine Marriage,' the joint production of Colman and Garrick, then (1766) recently produced.-CUNNINGHAM.

resign this paradise as willingly as if it was built of opal, and designed by a fisherman, who thought that what makes a fine necklace would make a finer habitation.

We did not want your sun; it has shone here for a fortnight with all its lustre ; but yesterday a north wind, blown by the Czarina herself I believe, arrived, and declared a month of March of full age. This morning it snowed; and now, clouds of dust are whisking about the streets and quays, edged with an east wind, that gets under one's very shirt. I should not be quite sorry if a little of it tapped my lilacs on their green noses, and bade them wait for their master.

The Princess of Talmond sent me this morning a picture of two pug-dogs, and a black and white greyhound, wretchedly painted. I could not conceive what I was to do with this daub, but in her note she warned me not to hope to keep it. It was only to imprint on my memory the size, and features, and spots of Diana, her departed greyhound, in order that I might get her exactly such another. Don't you think my memory will return well stored, if it is littered with defunct lap-dogs. She is so devout that I did not dare send her word, that I am not possessed of a twig of Jacob's broom, with which he streaked cattle as he pleased.

T'other day, in the street, I saw a child in a leading-string, whose nurse gave it a farthing for a beggar; the babe delivered its mite with a grace and a twirl of the hand. I don't think your cousin Twitcher's first grandson will be so well-bred. Adieu! Yours ever.

1050. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Paris, March 21, 1766.

You are not very just to me, my dear Sir, in suspecting me of neglecting you. Do you think Paris has turned my head, or could make me, what England never could, forget you? Was not it so when I first arrived here? and did not you find at last that it was the post's fault, not mine? I shall be in London by the middle of April, and then I trust our correspondences will have no more interruptions: but sure you ought to distrust anything sooner than a friendship so unalterable as mine.

We do not yet actually know the last step of the repeal of the Stamp Act, but have all reason to conclude that it passed in the most satisfactory manner for the Ministry, as, on the second reading in the House of Lords, it was carried by a majority of thirty-four, though no greater majority was expected than of five or six. The

blood-thirsty protested, and intended to protest again on the last stage; an evident symptom of their despair; and a most foolish step, as it is marking out their names to the odium of the nation, and delivering down an attestation of their tyrannic principles to posterity. Lord Lyttelton drew the first, and I hope it will be bound up hereafter with his Persian Letters, to show on what contradictory principles his lordship can oppose.

Grenville is fallen below contempt; Sandwich and his parson Anti-Sejanus' are hooted off the stage. Mr. Pitt's abilities, I am told, have shone with greater lustre than ever, and with more variety. There is a report here that he has actually accepted the Administration. I do not believe that he has yet, though I am sure no French wishes coined the report. I could not have believed, if I had not come hither, how much they dread him.

Well! all this paves the way to what I wish, liberty to my country and liberty to me. Tranquillity bounds my ambition. To see Grenville, and such wretches, grovelling in the mire, gilds the peaceable scene. How many wretches have I lived to see England escape! Thank God I am not philosopher enough not to be grateful for it! I would not wrestle like the savants here, against any powers beyond those of this world. I may spurn pigmies of my own size; but do not question what I cannot fathom. Gods of stone, or kings of flesh, are my derision; but of all gods that were ever invented, the most ridiculous is that old lumpish god of the Grecian sophists, whom the modern literati want to reinstate the god Matter. It would be like a revolution in England in favour of the late Pretender after he was bedridden.

If you receive any one of my letters, pray assure Sir James Macdonald that I have answered his; but when they miscarry to you, I have less hopes of one reaching him. Direct your next to Arlington-street.

1051. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Paris, April 3, 1766.

ONE must be just to all the world: Madame Roland, I find, has been in the country, and at Versailles, and was so obliging as to call on me this morning, but I was so disobliging as not to be awake. I

1 One Scott, a clergyman, employed by Lord Sandwich to write in the newspapers against Mr. Pitt. He signed his papers Anti-Sejanus.-WALPOLE. He is the 'Cinna' and 'Panurge' of Goldsmith's 'Haunch of Venison.'-CUNNINGHAM.