To my great satisfaction, the new Lord Holland has not taken the least friendly, or even formal notice of me, on Lord Waldegrave's death. It dispenses me from the least farther connexion with him, and saves explanations, which always entertain the world more than satisfy.

Dr. Cumberland is an Irish bishop; I hope before the summer is over that some beam from your cousin's [Halifax's] portion of the triumvirate may light on poor Bentley. If he wishes it till next winter, he will be forced to try still new sunshine. I have taken Mrs. Pritchard's house [at Twickenham] for Lady Waldegrave; I offered her to live with me at Strawberry, but with her usual good sense she declined it, as she thought the children would be trouble

some.

Charles Townshend's episode in this revolution passes belief, though he does not tell it himself. If I had a son born, and an old fairy were to appear and offer to endow him with her choicest gifts, I should cry out, "Powerful Goody, give him anything but parts!"' Adieu !

845. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, April 30, 1763.

THE papers have told you all the formal changes; the real one consists solely in Lord Bute being out of office, for having recovered his fright he is still as much Minister as ever, and consequently does not find his unpopularity decrease. On the contrary, I think his situation more dangerous than ever he has done enough to terrify his friends, and encourage his enemies, and has acquired no new strength; rather has lost strength, by the disappearance of Mr. Fox from the scene. His deputies, too, will not long care to stand all the risk for him, when they perceive, as they must already, that they have neither credit nor confidence. Indeed the new administration is a general joke, and will scarce want a violent death to put an end to it. Lord Bute is very blameable for embarking the King so deep in measures that may have so serious a termination. The longer the Court can stand its ground, the more firmly will the opposition be united, and the more inflamed. I have ever thought

1 Lord Barrington, in a letter to Mr. Mitchell, of the 19th of April, says "Charles Townshend accepted the Admiralty on Thursday, and went to kiss hands the next day; but he brought Peter Burrell with him to court, and insisted he likewise should be one of the board. Being told that Lords Howe and Digby were to fill up the vacant seats at the Admiralty, he declined accepting the office destined for him, and the next day received a dismission from the King's service."-WRIGHT.

this would be a turbulent reign, and nothing has happened to make me alter my opinion.

Mr. Fox's exit has been very unpleasant. He would not venture to accept the Treasury, which Lord Bute would have bequeathed to him; and could not obtain an earldom, for which he thought he had stipulated; but some of the negotiators asserting that he had engaged to resign the Paymaster's place, which he vehemently denies, he has been forced to take up with a barony, and has broken with his associates-I do not say friends, for with the chief' of them he had quarrelled when he embarked in the new system. He meets with little pity, and yet has found as much ingratitude as he had had power of doing service.

I am glad you are going to have a great duke; it will amuse you, and a new Court will make Florence lively, the only beauty it wants. You divert me with my friend the Duke of Modena's conscientious match: if the Duchess' had outlived him, she would not have been so scrupulous. But, for Hymen's sake, who is that Madame Simonetti? I trust, not that old painted, gaming, debauched, Countess from Milan, whom I saw at the fair of Reggio!

I surprise myself with being able to write two pages of pure English; I do nothing but deal in broken French. The two nations are crossing over and figuring-in. We have had a Count d'Usson and his wife these six weeks; and last Saturday arrived a Madame de Boufflers, sçavante, galante, a great friend of the Prince of Conti, and a passionate admirer de nous autres Anglois. I am forced to live much with tout ça, as they are perpetually at my Lady Hervey's; and as my Lord Hertford goes embassador to Paris, where I shall certainly make him a visit next year-don't you think I shall be computing how far it is to Florence? There is coming, too, a Marquis de Fleury, who is to be consigned to me, as a political relation, vú l'amitié entre le Cardinal son oncle et feu monsieur mon père. However, as my cousin Fleury is not above six-and-twenty, I had much rather be excused from such a commission as showing the Tombs and the Lions, and the King and Queen, and my Lord Bute, and the Waxwork, to a boy. All this breaks in upon my

1 The Dukes of Cumberland and Devonshire.-WALPOLE.

2 She was daughter of the Regent Duke of Orleans.—WALPOLE.

3 It was that Madame Simonetti.-WALPOLE.

He was afterwards Envoy to Sweden, where he died in 1781-2. He married a Dutch woman.-WALPOLE.

5 Mademoiselle Saujon, Marquise de Boufflers, mistress of the Prince de Conti, whom she hoped to marry.-WALPOLE.

plan of withdrawing by little and little from the world, for I hate to tire it with an old lean face, and which promises to be an old lean face for thirty years longer, for I am as well again as ever. The Duc de Nivernois called here the other day in his way from Hampton Court; but, as the most sensible French never have eyes to see anything, unless they see it every day and see it in fashion, I cannot say he flattered me much, or was much struck with Strawberry. When I carried him into the Cabinet, which I have told you is formed upon the idea of a Catholic chapel, he pulled off his hat, but perceiving his error, he said, "Ce n'est pas une chapelle pourtant," and seemed a little displeased.

My poor niece [Lady Waldegrave] does not forget her Lord, though by this time I suppose the world has. She has taken a house here, at Twickenham, to be near me. Madame de Boufflers has heard so much of her beauty, that she told me she should be glad to peep through a grate anywhere to get a glimpse of her, but at present it would not answer. I never saw so great an alteration in so short a period; but she is too young not to recover her beauty, only dimmed by grief that must be temporary. Adieu! my dear Sir.

Monday, May 2nd, Arlington Street.

The plot thickens: Mr. Wilkes is sent to the Tower for the last 'North Briton';' a paper whose fame must have reached you. It said Lord Bute had made the King utter a gross falsehood in his last speech. This hero is as bad a fellow as ever hero was, abominable in private life, dull in Parliament, but, they say, very entertaining in a room, and certainly no bad writer, besides having had the honour of contributing a great deal to Lord Bute's fall. Wilkes fought Lord Talbot in the autumn, whom he had abused; and lately in Calais, when the Prince de Croy, the Governor, asked how far the liberty of the press extended in England, replied, I cannot tell, but I am trying to know. I don't believe this will be the only paragraph I shall send you on this affair.

846. TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, May 1, 1763.

I FEEL happy at hearing your happiness; but, my dear Harry, your vision is much indebted to your long absence, which

Makes bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.

1 No. 45.-CUNNINGHAM.

I mean no offence to Park-place, but the bitterness of the weather makes me wonder how you can find the country tolerable now. This is a May-day for the latitude of Siberia! The milkmaids should be wrapped in the motherly comforts of a swan-skin petticoat. In short, such hard words have passed between me and the north wind to-day, that, according to the language of the times, I was very near abusing it for coming from Scotland, and to imputing it to Lord Bute. I don't know whether I should not have written a 'North Briton' against it, if the printers were not all sent to Newgate, and Mr. Wilkes to the Tower-ay, to the Tower, tout de bon. The new Ministry are trying to make up for their ridiculous insignificance by a coup d'éclat. As I came hither yesterday, I do not know whether the particulars I have heard are genuine-but in the Tower he certainly is, taken up by Lord Halifax's warrant for treason; vide the North Briton' of Saturday was se'nnight. It is said he refused to obey the warrant, of which he asked and got a copy from the two messengers, telling them he did not mean to make his escape, but sending to demand his Habeas-corpus, which was refused. He then went to Lord Halifax, and thence to the Tower; declaring they should get nothing out of him but what they knew. All his papers have been seized. Lord Chief Justice Pratt, I am told, finds great fault with the wording of the warrant.

I don't know how to execute your commission for books of architecture, nor care to put you to expense, which I know will not answer. I have been consulting my neighbour, young Mr. Thomas Pitt,' my present architect: we have all books of that sort here, but cannot think of one which will help you to a cottage or a greenhouse. For the former you should send me your idea, your dimensions; for the latter, don't you rebuild your old one, though in another place? A pretty green-house I never saw; nor without immoderate expense can it well be an agreeable object. Mr. Pitt thinks a mere portico without a pediment, and windows removable in summer, would be the best plan you could have. If so, don't you remember something of that kind, which you liked, at Sir Charles Cottrel's at Rousham? But a fine green-house must be on a more exalted plan. In short, you must be more particular, before I can be at all so.

I called at Hammersmith yesterday about Lady Ailesbury's tubs; one of them is nearly finished, but they will not both be completed

Afterwards [1784] created Lord Camelford.-WAlpole.

these ten days. Shall they be sent to you by water? Good-night to her ladyship and you, and the infanta,' whose progress in waxen statuary I hope advances so fast, that by next winter she may rival Rackstrow's old man. Do you know that, though apprised of what I was going to see, it deceived me, and made such impression on my mind, that, thinking on it as I came home in my chariot, and seeing a woman steadfastly at work in a window in Pall-mall, it made me start to see her move. Adieu !

Arlington Street, Monday night.

The mighty commitment set out with a blunder; the warrant directed the printer, and all concerned (unnamed) to be taken up. Consequently Wilkes had his Habeas-corpus of course, and was committed again; moved for another in the Common-Pleas, and is to appear there to-morrow morning. Lord Temple being, by another strain of power, refused admittance to him, said, "I thought this was the Tower, but find it is the Bastille." They found among Wilkes's papers an unpublished North Briton,' designed for last Saturday. It contained advice to the King not to go to St. Paul's on the thanksgiving, but to have a snug one in his own chapel; and to let Lord George Sackville carry the sword. There was a dialogue in it too between Fox and Calcraft: the former says to the latter, "I did not think you would have served me so, Jemmy Twitcher."

SIR:

847. TO SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

Strawberry Hill, May 2, 1763.

I FORBORE to answer your letter for a few days, till I knew whether it was in my power to give you satisfaction. Upon inquiry, and having conversed with some who could inform me, I find it would be very difficult to obtain so peremptory an order for dismissing fictitious invalids (as I think they may properly be called), as you seem to think the state of the case requires; by any interposition of mine, quite impossible. Very difficult I am told it would be to get them dismissed from our Hospitals when once admitted, and subject to a clamour which, in the present unsettled state of government, nobody

1 Anne Seymour Conway [Mrs. Damer], whose genius for sculpture has since distinguished itself in more durable materials.-BERRY.