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Pray send me back by your nephew what other letters, too, you have of mine. On perusing the whole series, I can safely repeat, that, as far as I knew at the time, I have never given you false information, nor acted sentiments which you afterwards found had not been mine; but, as my life has been uniform to its first and only principles, it was not likely that I should go farther than being prudent (not the colour of my character,) and, had I talked differently, my conduct at the very time would have contradicted my assertions.

LETTER CCCIX.

Strawberry Hill, July 7, 1779.

How much larger the war will be for the addition of Spain, I do not know. Hitherto it has produced no events but the shutting of our ports against France and the junction of nine ships from Ferrol with the French squadron. They talk of a great navy getting ready at Cadiz, and of mighty preparations in the ports of France for an embarkation. As all this must have been foreseen, I suppose we are ready to resist all attacks.

The Parliament rose last Saturday, not without an open division in the Ministry: Lord Gower, President of the Council, heading an opposition to a bill for doubling the Militia, which had passed the Commons, and throwing it out; which Lord North as publicly resented. I make no comments on this, because I really know nothing of the motives. Thoroughly convinced that all my ideas are superannuated, and too old to learn new lessons, I only hear what passes, pretend to understanding nothing, and wait patiently for events as they present themselves. I listen enough to be able to acquaint you with facts of public notoriety; but attempt to explain none of them, if they do not carry legibility in the van. Your nephew, who lives more in the world, and is coming to you, will be far more master of the details. He called here some few days ago, as I was going out to dinner, but has kindly promised to come and dine here before he sets out. His journey is infinitely commendable, as entirely undertaken to please you. It will be very comfortable too, as surely the concourse of English must much abate, especially as France is interdicted. Travelling boys and self-sufficient governors would be an incumbrance to you, could you see more of your countrymen of more satisfactory conversation. Florence probably is improved since it had a Court of its own, and there must be men a little more enlightened than the poor Italians. Scarcely any of the latter that ever I knew but, if they had parts, were buffoons. I believe the boasted finesse of the ruling clergy is pretty much a traditionary notion, like their jealousy. More nations than one live on former characters after they are totally changed. I have been often and

much in France. In the provinces they may still be gay and lively; but at Paris, bating the pert étourderie of very young men, I protest I scarcely ever saw any thing like vivacity-the Duc de Choiseul alone had more than any hundred Frenchmen I could select. Their women are the first in the world in every thing but beauty; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philosophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs-I need not say superlatively disagreeable. The rest are amazingly ignorant in general, and void of all conversation but the routine with women. My dear and very old friend is a relict of a better age, and at nearly eightyfour has all the impetuosity that was the character of the French. They have not found out, I believe, how much their nation is sunk in Europe;-probably the Goths and Vandals of the North will open their eyes before a century is past. I speak of the swarming empires that have conglomerated within our memories. We dispelled the vision twenty years ago: but let us be modest till we do so again.

I just now receive two letters from you at once, which I suppose came by Mrs. Pitt's messenger, with Sir William Hamilton's assurances of the good disposition of the King of Spain: but they have proved as vain as the letters to the Grand-Duchess; yet I still think we might have kept him in temper if we had so pleased.

9th.

The Duke of Ancaster is dead of a scarlet fever contracted by drinking and rioting, at two-and-twenty. He was in love with my niece Lady Horatia, the Duchess's third daughter, and intended to marry her. She is a beautiful girl, like her mother, though not of so sublime a style of beauty. I much doubt whether she would have been happy with him; for, though he had some excellent qualities, he was of a turbulent nature, and, though of a fine figure, his manners were not noble.t Fortune seems to have removed him, to complete her magnificent bounties to one family. Do you remember old Peter Burrell, who was attached to my father? His eldest granddaughter is married to a Mr. Bennet, a man of large estate; the second, to Lord Algernon Percy; the third, to Lord Percy; and the youngest, the only one at all pretty, to Duke Hamilton. Lady Priscilla Elizabeth Bertie, eldest sister of the Duke of Ancaster, fell in love with their brother, and would marry him, not at all at his desire; but her father, the Duke of Ancaster, had entailed his whole estate. on his two daughters, after his son, to the total disinherison of his

* Madame du Deffand.

During the rejoicings for the acquittal of Admiral Keppel in the preceding February, the youthful Duke was taken amongst the rioters, and passed the night in the watch-house. The most amiable and engaging manners were nevertheless said to have distinguished his private life, and the expectations of his country were raised high from the experience which the short period of his public conduct had given.-See Life of Keppel, vol. ii. p. 192.-ED.

brother Lord Brownlowe, the present Duke;-and the grandson of Peter Burrell, a broken merchant, is husband of the Lady Great Chamberlain of England, with a barony and half the Ancaster estate. Old Madam Peter is living, to behold all this deluge of wealth and honours on her race. The Duchesses of Ancaster have not been less singular. The last three were never sober. The present Duchess Dowager was natural daughter of Panton, a disreputable horsejockey of Newmarket; and the new Duchess was some lady's woman, or young lady's governess. Fortune was in her most jocular moods when she made all these matches, or had a mind to torment the Heralds' office.*

11th.

Last night I received from town the medal you promised me on the Moorish alliance. It is at least as magnificent as the occasion required, and yet not well executed. The medallist Siriez, I conclude, is grandson of my old acquaintance Louis Siriez of the Palazzo Vecchio.

Yesterday's Gazette issued a proclamation on the expected invasion from Havre, where they are embarking mightily. Some think the attempt will be on Portsmouth. To sweeten this pill, Clinton has taken a fort and seventy men-not near Portsmouth, but New York; and there were reports at the latter that Charlestown is likely to surrender. This would be something, if there were not a French war and a Spanish war in the way between us and Carolina. Sir Charles Hardy is at Torbay with the whole fleet, which perhaps was not part of the plan at Havre: we shall see, and you shall hear, if any thing passes.

Friday night, July 16th.

Your nephew has sent me word that he will breakfast with me tomorrow, but shall not have time to dine. I have nothing to add to the foregoing general picture. We have been bidden even by proclamation to expect an invasion, and troops and provisions have for this week been said to be embarked. Still I do not much expect a serious descent. The French, I think, have better chances with less risk. They may ruin us in detail. The fleet is at present at home or very near, and very strong; nor do I think that the French plan is activity-but it is idle to talk of the present moment, when it will be some time before you receive this. I am infinitely in more pain

*For an extended notice of the Burrell family, see Wraxall's Posthumous Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 21.-ED.

Between the Great-Duke of Tuscany and the Emperor of Morocco.

A French silversmith settled at Florence.

D'Orvilliers, having effected a junction with the Spanish fleet, and appeared off Plymouth with sixty sail of the line, a proclamation was issued on the 9th of July, commanding all horses and cattle to be driven from the coast. Great consternation prevailed along the whole line of the coast, and many who had the means withdrew into the interior.-ED.

about Mr. Conway, who is in the midst of the storm in a nutshell, and I know will defend himself as if he was in the strongest fortification in Flanders-and, which is as bad, I believe the Court would sacrifice the island to sacrifice him. They played that infamous game last year on Keppel, when ten thousand times more was at stake. They look at the biggest objects through the diminishing end of every telescope; and, the higher they who look, the more malignant and mean the eye.

I send you "The Mysterious Mother," and a pair of bootikins; you shall have large supplies if they prove of service-yet I would not have you even try them, unless attacked in your head or stomach. You can never have much gout in your limbs, as it attacks you so late, and little fits will prolong your life. You must put them on at night and tie them as tight as you can bear, the flannel next to your flesh, the oilskin over. In the morning before you rise, you must dry your feet with a hot napkin, and put on a pair of warm stockings freshly aired; over the bootikins at night, a pair of thread stockings.

The Duchess Dowager of Ancaster, Lady Elizabeth Burrell, and the new Duke and Duchess, have all written to Lady Horatia, acknowledging that the late Duke was to have married her. The two first have expressed themselves in the tenderest manner; the others wrote only for form. The Mother-Duchess approves of my niece going into mourning, which she does for six months. The poor young man, his father's absurd will not standing good, made a new, and most rational one four years ago, in which he gives the seat of the family and 5000l. to the present Duke and to the title, and adds 1800l. a-year to his mother's jointure. Such symptoms of sense and feeling double

the loss.

Adieu! my dear sir. In what manner we are to be undone, I do not guess; but I see no way by which we can escape happily out of this crisis-I mean, preserve the country and recover the Constitution. I thought for four years that calamity would bring us to our senses : but alas! we have none left to be brought to. We shall now suffer a great deal, submit at last to a humiliating peace, and people will be content. So adieu, England! it will be more or less a province or kind of province to France, and its viceroy will be, in what does not concern France, its despot-and will be content too! I shall not pity the country: I shall feel only for those who grieve with me at its abject state; or for posterity, if they do not, like other degraded nations, grow callously reconciled to their ignominy.

LETTER CCCX.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 4, 1779.

I EMPLOY a secretary, to spare one of my eyes, which is tormented with an inflammation. As it comes by fits, I impute it to my old ene

my the gout; who, of all distempers, is the greatest harlequin. This charge is not made to avoid an unwillingness of owning that the breach may have been made by the general foe, old age; though its ally, the gout, may take advantage of the weak place.

I sent you a long letter by your nephew: it leaves me nothing to add but events, and of them there have been none, except the safe arrival of our great West Indian fleet, worth between two and three millions. I don't know why the fleets of Bourbon suffered it to pass quietly, unless to return the compliment of our not meddling with their Domingo fleet. We heard last week that Gibraltar was invested: not more is confirmed than that great preparations are making in Spain for the siege. We, or at least I, do not know what numbers of the latter's ships have joined the French: they certainly out-number Sir Charles Hardy's squadron; yet so noble a navy as his we never set forth, and it will cost them destruction to master it. They threaten us mightily from Havre and St. Maloes; but we are prepared, and I think they will prefer cheaper laurels elsewhere.

This is but a negative description; and merely in compliance with your desire of frequent letters. Private news we have none, but what I have long been bidden to expect, the completion of the sale of the pictures at Houghton to the Czarina. The sum stipulated is forty or forty-five thousand pounds, I neither know nor care which; nor whether the picture-merchant ever receives the whole sum, which probably he will not do, as I hear it is to be discharged at three payments -a miserable bargain for a mighty empress! Fresh lovers, and fresh, will perhaps intercept the second and third payments. Well! adieu to Houghton! about its mad master I shall never trouble myself more. From the moment he came into possession, he has undermined every act of my father that was within his reach, but, having none of that great man's sense or virtues, he could onlylay wild hands on lands and houses; and, since he has stripped Houghton of its glory, I do not care a straw what he does with the stone or the acres. The happiness my father entailed on this country has been thrown away in as distracted a manner, but his fame will not be injured by the insanity of any of his successors. We have paid a fine for having cut off the entail, but shall not so easily suffer a recovery.

General Conway is still in his little island, which I trust is too diminutive to be descried by an Armada. I do not desire to have him achieve an Iliad in a nutshell.

5th.

You perceive my eye is better, but I must not use it much. Yesterday came an account of the conquest of St. Vincent by the French.*

* In June, during the absence of the British fleet, a handful of French from Martinico under the command only of a naval lieutenant, estimated at four hundred and fifty men, not above half of whom were regulars, having ventured to land upon the island of St. Vincent, garrisoned by seven companies of regular troops, the island was delivered up to them, without the firing of a single shot on either side.-ED.

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