them, but you would want too many keys: and indeed I want some myself; for, as there are continually allusions to Parlia ntary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirized heroes even by sight: however, the poetry and wit make amends, for they are superlative.

News I have none, wet or dry, to send you: politics are stagnated, and pleasure is not come to town. You may be sure I am glad that Cæsar is baffled; I neither honour nor esteem him. If he is prefer. ring his nephew✶ to his brother, it is using the latter as ill as the rest of the world.

Mrs. Damer is again set out for the Continent to-day, to avoid the winter, which is already begun severely; we have had snow twice. Till last year, I never knew snow in October since I can remember; which is no short time. Mrs. Damer has taken with her her cousin Miss Campbell, daughter of poor Lady William, whom you knew and who died last year. Miss Campbell has always lived with Lady Ailesbury, and is a very great favourite and a very sensible girl. I believe they will proceed to Italy, but it is not certain. If they come to Florence, the Great-Duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him some thing of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than any thing in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful one in the world, next to the Ponte di Trinità,† and was principally designed by her father, General Conway. Lady Spencer draws-incorrectly indeed, but has great expression. Italy probably will stimulate her, and improve her attention. You see we blossom in ruin! Poetry, painting, statuary, architecture, music, linger here,

on this sea encircled coast, (Gray,)

as if they knew not whither to retreat farther for shelter, and would not trust to the despotic patronage of the Attilas,§ Alarics, Amalasuntas of the North! They leave such heroic scourges to be decorated by the Voltaires and D'Alemberts of the Gauls, or wait till by the im provement of balloons they may be transported to some of those millions of worlds that Herschell is discovering every day; for this new Columbus has thrown open the great gates of astronomy, and neither Spanish inquisitors nor English Nabobs will be able to torture and ransack the new regions and their inhabitants. Adieu!

* The Emperor was supposed to be endeavouring to get the eldest son of his brother the Great-Duke elected King of the Romans.

† At Florence.

Lavinia Bingham, daughter of Charles Lord Lucan, and wife of John second Earl Spencer, with whom she was then in Italy.

Frederic II., King of Prussia, Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, Catherine II., Empress of Russia, who had usurped and divided great part of Poland.

LETTER CCCCXLI.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 4, 1785. You and I, dear sir, have long out-friend-shipped Orestes and Pylades. Now I think we are like Castor and Pollux; when one rises, t'other sets; when you can write, I cannot. I have got a very sharp attack of the gout in my right hand, which escaped last year, but is paying its arrears now: however, I hope the assessment will not be general on all my limbs. Your being so well is a great collateral comfort to me. The behaviour of your nephew is charming and unparallelled: by the way, so is Mr. Croft's; and, in a moneygetting man, very extraordinary. I don't mean, that I expect economy for another from a prodigal.

For the Signora,† who has been so absurd as to quarrel with your nephew, all I will say in a letter is, that it is a kind of indiscretion I should not have expected from her. I will take no notice of knowing it; but I shall drop her correspondence, as I had done at Paris. You know I tried to serve her; but alas! how often are you punished by my most harmless intentions! I wonder how our Ministers abroad have patience with the extravagances of their compatriots: I have not, I am sure. Well! I will plant her there with a slight alteration of the two last lines of Paradise Lost:

The world is all before her, where to choose
Her place of rest-Im-providence her guide.

On your political rumours I shall not descant, though they announce, on one side, an intention of opening a vast scene; and, on the other, a determination to embarrass it: but as I recede from life, I look at distant objects through the diminishing end of a telescope, which reduces them to a point. On this side of our asterism I know nothing. My own chamber, and the next, contain my whole map; and two sides of a sheet of paper are volume enough for its history. Adieu !

LETTER CCCCXLII.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 13, 1785.

I HAVE this minute received yours of the 25th of last month; and though I cannot write with my own hand, (which, however, is vastly better, and getting well,) I must say a few words. You surely know

* A banker.

An English Lady mentioned in the preceding letter.

A report that the Empress of Russia was going to send a fleet against Constantinople, and that the Kings of Spain and France had enjoined the King of Naples to shut his ports against it.

me too well to suppose for a minute that any thing could hurt you or your nephew in my affection or esteem; much less the ravings of such an aventurière. I have received two letters from her on the subject, and I can want no other evidence to condemn her. Her behaviour is little more than absurd, and her Knight's interference y met le comble.

You may depend upon it, I shall totally drop the correspondence, but shall never own that I know a word of the matter; and I beg that you and your nephew will say that I never mentioned the affair to you, particularly not to the person whom the dame acquainted that she had complained to me. I have reasons for what I say, which I cannot explain in a letter.

I am overjoyed to see your writing so firm, and to hear you again dine at table; but I beseech you not to abate any attention to your health. My surgeon (for I have been obliged to have one for my hand) has wanted me for these two days to go out and take the air; but I have positively refused, for I got two relapses last winter by venturing out too soon. I had rather be confined ten days more than are necessary, than recommence. I have great patience whenever the fit comes; but a relapse puts me into despair. I must finish, for your letter did not arrive till past seven; mine must go to the office by nine; and, about eight, people drop in to me: but I would not lose a minute before I answered yours.

LETTER CCCCXLIII.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 8, 1786.

I THINK, my dear sir, that you will be glad to hear that I am getting free from my parenthesis of gout, which, though I treat it as an interlude, has confined me above six weeks, and for a few days was very near being quite serious. It began by my middle finger of this hand, with which I am now writing, discharging a volley of chalk, which brought on gout and an inflammation, and both together swelled my arm almost to my shoulder. In short, I was forced to have a surgeon. But last week my finger was delivered of a chalk-stone as big as a large pea, and now I trust the wound will soon heal; and in every other respect I am quite well, and propose taking the air in two or three days, if the weather grows dry: but for two days we have a deluge of rain, and solid fogs after ten days of snow, and a severer frost than any of last winter. I hope you are as well as I am, without having had so grave an intermezzo. However, I do not like your inundation of English peerages ;† and I cannot enough applaud

*An English Lord, who happened to be then at Florence, and of whom Mr. Walpole had no favourable opinion.

The Duchess Dowager of Ancaster, Lord and Lady Spencer, Lord and Lady Bulkeley, were then just arrived, or were expected at Florence.

-

your two nephews for staying, and relieving you of so much of the load.. I doubt you will have more fatigue, for I hear the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are going to Rome; and the other princely pair* are at Naples: but I hope you will not prefer etiquette to your regimen. I make it a rule, since I must be old and infirm, to plead age and ill-health against any thing that is inconvenient. You will see two other English with pleasure, as they will give you no trouble,Mrs. Damer, and her cousin Miss Campbell, daughter of poor Lady William, whom you knew. The latter has always lived with Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury, who are as fond of her as of their own daughter; and indeed she is a very amiable, sensible young woman.. In truth, the exports from this country are incredible: Franc, Nice,. Switzerland, swarm with us-and not all, as you have lately experienced, raise our credit. Gaming has transported half.

I ought to have thanked you sooner for your last, as it announced some kind china from you; but, besides the hindrance of my lame hand, I wished to say I had received it, for indeed I had nothing else to tell you. My confinement, and the depopulation of London, which is still a desert, could produce but a very barren letter. I know nothing of the Continent but from our newspapers, the last intelligence in the world to be trusted. They are common-sewers of lies, scandal, abuse, and blunders. What must Europe think of us from our travellers, and from our own accounts of ourselves?-Oh! not much worse than we deserve! The mail from France was robbed last night in Pall-Mall, at half an hour after eight-yes, in the great thoroughfare of London, and within call of the guard at the Palace. The chaise had stopped, the harness was cut, and the portmanteau was taken out of the chaise itself. A courier is gone to Paris for a copy of the despatch. What think you of banditti in the heart of such a capital? yet at Dublin, I believe, the outrages are ten times more enormous. Methinks we are not much more civilized than the ages when the Marches of Wales and Scotland were theatres of rapine.

Miss Molesworth, whom you saw a few years ago with her aunt Lady Lucan, and her cousin Lady Spencer, is just married to Mr.. Pratt, Lord Camden's son.

I think this is pretty well written for a hand that has still more chalk-stones on it than joints, and its middle finger wrapped up.† In truth, I have suffered very little pain, nor lost an hour's sleep but for three nights. Confinement and debility in my limbs are grievances,

*The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland.

+ Walpole, however, endured his sufferings with extraordinary patience. In a letter to her sister, dated Feb. 17, 1786, Mrs. Hannah More thus writes: "I made poor Vesey go with me on Saturday to see Mr. Walpole, who has had a long illness. Notwithstanding his sufferings, I never found him so pleasant, so witty, and so entertaining. He said a thousand diverting things about Florio, but accused me of having imposed on the world by a dedication full of falsehood, meaning the compliment to himself. I never knew a man suffer pain with such entire patience."Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 11.-Ed.

no doubt, or I should not think the gout so violent an evil as it is reckoned; at least, in the quantity I have undergone in thirty years the total of pain has not been very considerable. It has very seldom lowered my spirits; and, the moment the fever is gone, I can sleep without end, day and night. I am complimented on my patiencebut what merit is there in patience, when one is not awake, or not in much pain, and not apt to be out of humour? You I have seen patient, and never out of humour, though in torture. In fact, if people of easy fortunes cannot bear illness with temper, what are the poor to do, who have none of our comforts and alleviations? The affluent, I fear, do not consider what a benefit-ticket has fallen to their lot out of millions not so fortunate; yet less do they reflect that chance, not merit, drew the prize out of the wheel.

9th.

I have seen a person from the Custom-house, who tells me the Lively is not expected before February: when it arrives, I will thank you again for the china.

LETTER CCCCXLIV.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 13, 1786.

Ir I was to talk of what has occupied most of my thoughts for these last three months, it would be of myself; but that is not a subject with which I ought to harass others, and therefore I shall be brief on it. A finger of each hand has been pouring out a hail of chalk-stones and liquid chalk; and the first finger, which I hoped exhausted, last week opened again and threw out a cascade of the latter, exactly with the effort of a pipe that bursts in the street: the gout followed, and has swelled both hand and arm; and this codicil will cost me at least three weeks. I must persuade myself, if I can, that these explosions will give me some repose; but there are too many chalk-eggs in the other fingers not to be hatched in succession.

I have had no occasion at least, my dear sir, to double my lamentation on your account. Mrs. Damer and Miss Campbell have sent Lady Ailesbury the most pleasing accounts of your health, and the warmest encomiums on your and your nephew's kindness to them. I must thrust myself into a share of the gratitude; for, with all their merit and your benevolence, I do not believe you forgot the pleasure you was giving me.

There are reports that the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are going to Rome, but we do not know it certainly. Our newspapers have been pleased twice lately to kill his Royal Highness; but though they murder characters and reputations, they cannot take away lives; and indeed they themselves are so lost to all credit, that even the first notification made no impression.