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that the Emperor has marched three-score thousand men towards Holland. We shall now feel a fresh consequence of the blessed American war! It begot the late war with Holland; the remaining animosity of which, and our present impotence, will prevent us from defend. ing the Dutch and thence, when Austria, as well as France, are grown great maritime powers, we shall be a single one, and probably the weakest of the three! But as I never meddle with the book of futurity, and its commentators-guesses, I leave that matter to younger readers.

Ireland, as far as my spare intelligence extends, is a little come to its senses.* Landed property, though no genius, has discovered that Popery, if admitted to a community of votes, would be apt to inquire into the old titles of estates; and to remember, that prescription never holds against any Church-militant, especially not against the Church of Rome. You know I have ever been averse to toleration of an intolerant religion. I have frequently talked myself hoarse with many of my best friends, on the impossibility of satisfying Irish Catholics without restoring their estates. It was particularly silly to revive the subject in this age, when Popery was so rapidly declining. The world had the felicity to see that fashion passing away-for modes of religion are but graver fashions; nor will any thing but contradiction keep fashion up. Its inconvenience is discovered, if let alone; or, as women say of their gowns, it is cut and turned, or variety is sought; and some mantua-maker or priest, that wants business, invents a new mode, which takes the faster, the more it inverts its predecessor. I shall not wonder if Cæsar, after ravaging, or dividing, or seizing half Europe, should grow devout, and give it some novel religion of his own manufacture.

I have had as many disputes on the Reformation of Parliament. I do not love removing land-marks. Whether it is the leaven of which my pap was made, or whether my father's Quiela non movere is irradicable, experiments are not to my taste; but I find I am talking "about it and about it," because I really have nothing to tell you, and know nothing. I do worse than live out of the world, for I live with the old women of my neighbourhood. I read little, not bestowing my eyes without an object. In short, I am perfectly idle; and such a glutton of my tranquillity, that I had rather do nothing than discompose it. I would go out quietly; and, as one is sure of being forgotten the moment one is gone, it is as well to anticipate oblivion.

The concessions to the Romanists were rejected, but were soon after given with large additions.-ED.

VOL. II.-30

LETTER CCCCXXIX.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 2, 1784. You must not be surprised at a little inertness in my correspondence, though not yet trespassing on my regularity, when you consider the season of the year, the tranquillity of the times, and my age, which confines itself to a few elderly folk, as retired from the world as myself. Though the depth of winter, I am not yet settled in town; though I now and then lie here for a night or two, to diversify the scene, and not to live totally in the country, the air of which does not agree with me so well as that of London, purified by a million of fires. I can tell you nothing but what the Gazette has anticipated-two or three promotions, and the creation of two Marquises;* meagre articles after three wars, and as many revolutions of Administrations! This enormous capital, that must have some occupation, is most innocently amused with those philosophic play-things, air-balloons. But, as half a million of people that impassion themselves for any object are always more childish than children, the good souls of London are much fonder of the airgonauts than of the toys themselves. Lunardi, the Neapolitan Secretary, is said to have bought three or four thousand pounds in the stocks, by exhibiting his person, his balloon, and his dog and cat, at the Pantheon, for a shilling each visiter. Blanchard, a Frenchman, is his rival; and I expect that they will soon have an air-fight in the clouds, like a stork and a kite.

I do not know half so much of the war between the Austrian Eagle and the Frogs, though they say it grows very serious. The latter be. gan the attack by a deluge :† but that war is like a theatric tragedy, the principal actors seldom appear in the first scenes; the second may be opened by France and Prussia.

There has been another Fitzroyal match in my family. Lord Eustong has married my niece, Lady Maria Waldegrave, the Duchess of Gloucester's daughter. The bride has every possible merit -merit put to the test by that wretch Lord Egremont || and on him she is thus nobly revenged. Lord Euston has behaved with as much honour as the other wanted.

Dec. 5th.

As your Court is so linked with Vienna, I suppose it looks steadfastly towards the Scheld; though perhaps as much in the dark as the village of Twickenham, whither I am returned. Your Holy neighbour,

* Earl Temple, made Marquis of Rockingham; and the Earl of Shelburne, Marquis of Lansdowne.

pel.

By opening the dykes.

Between Mr. Fitzroy, eldest son of Lord Southampton, and Miss Laura Kep

Eldest son of Augustus Henry, Duke of Grafton.

Who had been engaged to her.

no doubt, rejoices that Huguenot commerce is thought a preferable morsel to the temporalities of the Church, which I suspect to have been a weighty ingredient in Cæsar's late reformation,* as they were in Luther's. Nor will he squander them, as Henry the Eighth did on his courtiers. Modern conquests, too, as well as reformations, are grown to have more substantial views than anciently, when fame and glory were the chief incentives. I do not recollect reading that, when Alexander vanquished Porus, he loaded elephants with diamonds and lacks of rubees. Since the world grew wiser, Thamas Kouli Kan carried off all the brilliants and rubies of the Mogul's golden throne; ay, and I dare to swear, the gold too. Why is so much of America, yet unpeopled, unknown? but because no hero expects to find mines in cold and desolate regions. If air-balloons could reach the moon, I believe the first inquiry of philosophers would be after the Specie in the planet. Otaheite and all the Owyhees, and New Holland and New Zealand, will be left to return to their primitive obscurity, because they have nothing more intrinsic than hogs and red feathers. Yet science pretended to make the expedition! Science is perfectly content with the very little it has learnt. The sublime legislatress of Russia, who has millions and millions of acres more than she knows what to do with, has more appetite for the plunder of Canstantinople, than for peopling and civilizing the tracts of globe she possesses as far as China. Dr. Young was not a little mistaken when he imagined that "the universal passion" of mankind was fame.

9th, Berkeley Square again.

I saw a gentleman this morning who had just received a letter from his brother at Paris, which says France is determined to defend the Dutch, and is preparing to march two armies, under Broglio and Maillebois, one of which is destined to Alsace. I don't pretend to guess whether that interposition will prevent or extend war. The time when is of consequence only to those in being; and, therefore, there is more meaning than appears at first in our form of prayer, "Give peace in our time, O Lord!" The world will never be long free from that scourge, war; and whether the passions put on the mast, or throw it off, mankind will be equally sacrificed. Adieu !

LETTER CCCCXXX.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 4, 1785.

I HAD the great satisfaction last week of receiving your letter, my dear sir, written with your own hand to confirm the progress of your recovery; but I was not able to answer it myself, being confined to my bed by a severe fit of the gout too. I could only dictate a few

*Destruction of convents.

lines to your nephew, to beg he would express my joy and thanks to you, and tell you why I did not write myself. Indeed he had the kindness to send me word that he had received one too from you by the same post, and with the same good news. Poor young man! while you thought him fox-hunting, he was prisoner also to the same illness, but less slight than ours. I told him we formed a triangle of gouty correspondence. I have since received another from you, of December 18th: but indeed I have not wanted consolations, for Monsieur de Soyres sent me word from Florence of your amendment, and Lord and Lady Mount-Edgcumbe have been so friendly as to furnish me constantly with the accounts they receive of you from their son—a clear proof that he was satisfied with the marks of attention you were capable of giving him, I have not seen them yet; for, like you, I have not been allowed to see company and talk, nor indeed could I to be heard. Though I have never had the gout in my stomach, yet my breast is so weak that it is always the part principally affected, and, consequently, whence I conclude my dissolution will come. You, I fear, have suffered dreadfully, though you do not say so: your patience, and calmness, and good humour are just what they were five and forty years ago. I am happy that your stamina are as strong too as they were: they must be, to have weathered such an attack! Indeed, I have great comfort in your tranquillity and resignation about the event. I, who have gone through so many more of these assaults, who wonder how I have stood them, and who always expect the next to be the conclusive one, have often called it dying à plusieurs reprises. I am not impatient for what must happen; but, when one has tried on death so often, it must be more familiar to one. Could I choose, it should come at once at the beginning of a fit: I dread the ceremonial, and to know one's house is full of relations and inquirers. My exit I hope will be in the country; there I always keep my illness as secret as I can,

You perceive I am writing to you with a lame hand, and with the only one I have at liberty; the other, muffled up, just holds my paper. I am now weary, and shall go to bed; but, knowing I could not write much at once, I had the precaution to begin my letter three days before the post, and shall add to it at leisure.

5th.

I resume my letter, rather to finish than to add to it. A correspondence between two sick bed-chambers at the distance of a thousand miles must be very lifeless. What news can we tell one another but how we rested last night? and that last night will have been a fortnight ago when the post arrives. Kings and Empresses, of whom we were forced to talk from want of reciprocal acquaintance in our several residences, must be out of our thoughts; can we care what interludes they are playing when we are quitting the theatre? We see them in their true light, and know that they too in a little time

must leave their crowns and sceptres to be worn by formers.

The pantomime carrying on at Florence and Rome is enter. So, the Pope, who would not grant the title of King to the Prete allows his no-Majesty to have created a Duchess; and the Cara. of York, who is but a rag of the Papacy, and who must think h brother a King, will not allow her title! Well! it is well they have not power to do worse, nor can spill the blood of others in their foolish squabbles.

Lord Mount-Edgcumbe has been here this evening. I assure you, it is impossible to be more satisfied than he is with your attentions to his son; who has written, that, to the last moment of his stay at Florence, there was no mark of friendship you omitted, nor any service you did not render him. I know better than they can how much he was obliged to you.-Heavens! attentions for travelling boys when one is on the rack! Oh! my dear sir, I will recommend no more to you, lest they should find you in a fit of the gout. You never did too little, but often too much, and more than your health and constitution could bear. Adieu!

LETTER CCCCXXXI.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 2, 1785.

that

I WOULD not write to you again, my dear sir, till I could tell you I was quite recovered; and that I could not say with any truth till within these few days, for I had a relapse, of which I was much worse than from the first attack. The gout passed out of my limbs into my bowels, was sent back, changed itself into a cough, and fell on my lungs; but all are gone, and I am so well, that I should have taken the air to-day in my coach if it had not been too hard a frost. In short, we are both met again on this side of the world; for one may call it meeting, as an Englishman and a Frenchman would seem countrymen if they met in the deserts of Tartary: formerly oneshould have said, in India; but there the two nations have proved that they are not such familiar friends..

Your last would have made me uneasy by your still remaining in bed, had it not all been written by your own hand; and had not you kindly foreseen my apprehension, and told me kindly, I hope truly, that you remained there only in complaisance to your physician. We are both deceptions: who that saw you in your youth, or me from my infancy till now, would have believed that we should live, after men grown, to correspond for four and forty years? For my part, I suppose that Hercules, if he had not gone mad, would have died of a consumption. We have both renewed our leases, and I hope our correspondence will still become much more venerable; for its longevity. We are certainly epistolary patriarchs.

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