I am heartily glad you have had your nephew; I speak in the past tense, for he will certainly be set out on his return before this can reach Florence. It was uncommon merit to take so long a journey for a moment. I have sent you one to replace him, not to compensate; for a stranger cannot rival or equal your nephew: but one who, as soon as you are acquainted with him, will be a great comfort to you, from his virtues, sense, and manners. It is a young Mr. Windham, a gentleman of Norfolk, of a very considerable estate, who is in a bad state of health, and travels for it. I am not so much acquainted with him as with his character, which is excellent; and then he is a Whig of the stamp that was current in our country in my father's time. I do not always send you a tally to the letters of recommendation I am sometimes forced to give; but that which he carries to you, I confirm by this in all points. I advise you to be intimate with him; I will warrant the safety of his connexion, and I beg you to assist him with recommendations wherever you can. He is a particular friend of my great-nephew,* Lord Cholmondeley's cousin; but one I should have liked for my own friend, if the disparity of our ages would have allowed it: or if it were a time for me to make friends, when I could only leave them behind me.

Well; but you had rather I had been talking politics, or telling you news. The scene is not mended, for another is opened. Ireland, taking advantage of the moment, and of forty thousand volunteers that they have in arms and regimented, has desired-that is, demanded-free trade. If we are not cured of our American visions at last, I hope we have learnt wisdom enough to perceive that prerogative is the weakest of all chimeras when opposed by free men in arms; it has cost us the diadem of the Colonies, as it did James II. those of three kingdoms; and therefore I trust. we shall have more sense in Ireland. We still kick at the independence of America, though we might as well pursue our title to the crown of France.

Our fleet is at sea, and a most noble one. They still talk of the reappearance of the combined fleets from Brest. It is probable that the winds of November will be the most considerable victors; for the season has been so very serene in general, that I think the equinoc

inimitable; the expression of the passions most masterly, particularly in the devotion of the Countess with the Porter, of Benedict in the scene with Martin, and the tenderness, despair, and resolution of the Countess in the last scene; in which is a new stroke of double passion in Edmund, whose right hand is clenched and ready to strike with anger, the left relents. In the scene of the children, some are evidently vulgar; the others children of rank; and the first child, that pretends to look down and does leer upwards, is charming. Only two scenes are represented in all the seven, and yet all are varied; and the ground in the first by a very uncommon effect, evidently descends and rises again. These sublime drawings, the first histories Lady Di, ever attempted were all conceived and executed in a fortnight."-ED.

George, son of Robert Cholmondeley, second son of George Earl of Cholmondeley, by Elizabeth Woffington, sister of the distinguished actress of that name: who left the whole of her fortune, acquired by her talents, to her nephew, the person here mentioned,-ED.

tial tempests, like the squadrons, have passed the autumn in harbour, and that they will all come forth together.

Lord Stormont has got the late Lord Suffolk's seals of Secretary. There were to have been other arrangements, but they are suspended; and it is said this new preferment is more likely to produce resignations than settlement: but I only tell you common report; which is not at all favourable to Lord Stormont's promotion. He has a fair character, and is a friend of General Conway; but he is a Scot, and Lord Mansfield's nephew, which the people mind much more than his character: the other advantage they will certainly pay no regard to at all. It is great pity unpopular things are done at such a mo

ment!

Well! I trust I shall see General Conway within a week; I go to town to-morrow expecting him. He has acted in his diminutive islet with as much virtue and popularity as Cicero in his large Sicily, and with much more ability as a soldier, and a commander-I am heartily glad he was disappointed of showing how infinitely more he is a hero. The conclusion of my letter on Tuesday from London.

Nov. 1, Berkeley Square.

My letter is concluded, for I have nothing to add, but that the town says Lord Gower, President of the Council, will resign. Mind, I do not warrant this, nor any thing that is not actually past.

LETTER CCCXVII.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 12, 1779.

I WENT this morning to Zoffadi's, to see his picture or portrait of the Tribune at Florence; and though my letter will not put on its boots these three days, I must write while the subject is fresh in my head. The first thing I looked for, was you-and I could not find you. At last I said, "Pray, who is that Knight of the Bath?""Sir Horace Mann."-" Impossible!" said I. My dear sir, how you have left me in the lurch!-you are grown fat, jolly, young; while I am become the skeleton of Methusalem!

The idea I always thought an absurd one. It is rendered more so by being crowded with a flock of travelling boys, and one does not know nor care whom. You and Sir John Dick, as Envoy and Consul, are very proper. The Grand-Ducal family would have been so too. Most of the rest are as impertinent as the names of churchwardens stuck up in parishes whenever a country-church is repaired and white-washed.

*Zoffani having expressed a desire of visiting Italy, George III. is said to have kindly interested himself so far as to give directions for his being recommended to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Whilst he was at Florence he painted his celebrated picture of the Florence gallery, here spoken of by Walpole.-ED.

The execution is good; most of the styles of painters happily imitated; the labour and finishing infinite; and no confusion, though such a multiplicity of objects and colours. The Titian's Venus, as the principal object, is the worst finished; the absence* of the Venus of Medici is surprising; but the greatest fault is in the statues. To distinguish them, he has made them all of a colour, not imitating the different hues of their marbles; and thus they all look alike, like casts in plaster of Paris: however, it is a great and curious work-though Zoffani might have been better employed. His talent is representing natural humour: I look upon him as a Dutch painter polished or civilized. He finishes as highly, renders nature as justly, and does not degrade it, as the Flemish school did, who thought a man vomiting, a good joke; and would not have grudged a week on finishing a belch, if mere labour and patience could have compassed it.

Mr. Windham, who I thought half-way to Florence, did not set out till last Monday. Of martial and political news I can tell you nothing new and positive. It does not appear that the combined fleets have come forth again. The mortality, I believe, has been great amongst them, and disagreement. The Spanish Admiral would not cede the post to Du Chaffaut. Daranda and Monsieur de Sartine§ were forced to go to Brest to obtain precedence for the latter. These two Civil Ministers have been principal incendiaries of the war. The present rumour is, that D'Estaing has taken Long Island, and blocked up Admiral Arbuthnot ;-but the account comes from France.

The Irish seem more temperate; and, if we are so, it is to be hoped that harmony will be restored.

There have been no more resignations or promotions. Some changes are expected-but you will have no "Anticipation" from my shop; I deal only in past wares-and even those one cannot always procure genuine. The Parliament is at hand, and may be a busy I have had the sense to make it a season of repose to myself. It is the summer that in time of war is the high-tide of anxiety to me: then I am trembling for my friends.

scene.

Well! but are you really so portly a personage as Zoffani has represented you? I envy you. Every body can grow younger and plump, but I. My brother is as sleek as an infant, and, though seventy-three, is still quite beautiful. He has a charming colour, and not a wrinkle. I told him, when Lord Orford was in danger, that he might think what he would, but I would carry him into the court of

*This was an oversight; the Venus is in the picture.

Immediately on his return with his fleet to Brest harbour, Vice-Admiral Count D'Orvilliers sent in his resignation, which was accepted. "Il est extrêmement regretté," writes Madame du Deffand to Walpole on the 2nd of October, “de toute la marine: c'est M. du Chaffaut qui le remplace."-ED.

The Spanish Ambassador at Paris.

French Minister of the Marine.

In the preceding year, Tickell's pamphlet by that title, giving drafts of speeches that would probably be made in the Parliament, and burlesquing most of the speakers, was published just before the meeting.

Chancery, and put it to the consciences of the judges, which of us two was the elder by eleven years!

Yes, it is the 16th, and not a syllable of news more. en, ma lettre ; Sir Horace expects you.

16th. Allez vous

P.S. I do allow Earl Cowper a place in the Tribune: an English earl who has never seen his earldom, and takes root and bears fruit at Florence, and is proud of a pinchbeck principality in a third country, is as great a curiosity as any in the Tuscan collection.*

Second P.S. I had just folded my letter, but not sealed it :—a knock at the door. Who do you think it was?-your nephew! Oh! how glad! Why you have flown on the wings of the winds !-So he had -in such a storm on Saturday night, that I believed it tossed him over the houses, and set him down in Berkeley Square. He looks as well as possible. I read my letter to him, and he swears your portrait is as like you as two peas! Well! then I have no idea of you!

After exhausting Florence and England, I questioned him about Vesuvius he repeated Sir William Hamilton's account of it to you, and I long to see it. I had not heard of the insurrection and phrenzy of the people. You would oblige me much if you would let it be transcribed, and send me a copy of his letter. As your nephew said justly, it was such a wonderful picture of nature and human nature in convulsion!

Adieu! I have not time to say more.

LETTER CCCXVIII.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 28, 1779.

I DID not forget you on the Parliament meeting, though you have not received proof of my recollection. Being ill in bed, and not able to write myself, I dictated a line to your nephew, to beg that, if any thing very particular should happen on Thursday, the first day of the session, he would write to you the next day, which would have been my post-night. Your nephew was not in town, nor was expected till to-day; and, having the gout in both feet and knees, I continued in too

The Earl married at Florence in 1775, and died in 1789. His three children were all born at Florence.-Ed.

"All public diversions," says Sir William, "ceased in an instant; and, the theatres being shut, the doors of the churches were thrown open. Numerous processions were formed in the streets, and women and children with dishevelled heads filled the air with their cries, insisting loudly upon the relicts of St. Januarius being immediately opposed to the fury of the mountain: in short, the populace began to display its usual extravagant mixture of riot and bigotry; and, if some speedy and well-timed precautions had not been taken, Naples would, perhaps, have been in more danger of suffering from the irregularities of the lower classes of inhabitants than from the angry volcano."-Ed.

much pain to write myself, or even to dictate: besides that, in that situation, I had learnt few or no circumstances of the debate, except that little or no fluctuation had happened in the quintessence of debatesnumbers on the division.* I remember a man of humour proposing that, for the convenience of the greater part, the division should always precede the debate; that, only they who liked to talk should stay and make their speeches, which he supposed never determined or altered the several votes: no compliment to oratory, and still less a panegyric on corruption and prejudice!

In fact, a very considerable defalcation from the standing majority had been expected. The inglorious and unprosperous events of the summer; the general discontent and dissatisfaction that are arisen; but, above all, the crack that has happened in the Administration itself by the resignations of Lord Gower and Lord Weymouth,† which at least implied apprehension in them that the edifice was falling, and which, being timed at the very eve of Parliament, were certainly not intended to prop it: and it having been as artfully divulged, that endeavours had been made to terrify Lord North from his post, by assuring him he could not maintain it: such a concurrence of untoward circumstances naturally suggested a vision of much diminution of the majority; and such a vision naturally is apt to realize it, by the caution of such prudent senators as love to proceed on sure ground, and absent themselves till the prospect is more clear.

Lord North, however, had courage to stand the issue of a battle; his troops were better disciplined than had been expected, and the Lords Gower and Weymouth found that no body had been frightened but themselves. What the latter feared, no mortal can guess; for he is actually run away to Longleate, and no persuasion could retain him. The deserted would not impeach him for what they had co-operated in; and, if beaten, the victorious would have spared him for the merit of having opened a gate to their success.-But enough of such a recreant!

The other deserter has not yet gone over to the enemy. He will wait, no doubt, till some new fact leads him to thinking it much more heinous than all that is past. In the mean time, to console themselves for the little mischief their flight has occasioned, their small squadron of friends affect to impute the bulk of the majority, on Thursday last, to the intemperance of the Amendment proposed by the Opposition to the Address. The vacancies are supplied by Lord Bathurst as President, and by Lord Hillsborough as Secretary of State. You must not expect, however, that the storm is quite dispersed. Disappointment is no composer to some minds.

*After a long debate, an Amendment to the Address of Thanks, which was proposed by Lord John Cavendish, was rejected by a majority of 233 to 134.—Ed.

A few days before the meeting of Parliament, Earl Gower resigned his post of President of the Council, and was succeeded by Earl Bathurst; Lord Weymouth also resigned his situation of Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and was succeeded by the Earl of Hillsborough.-ED.