plans were engrafted on or incorporated with his Calvanistic reformation; but it is certain that the number of the perpetrators of all the mischief was very inconsiderable, and two-thirds apprentices and women. Two fortunate circumstances are amazing; that a large portion of the town was not burnt, and that not a single person of any name is killed. The damage, on the contrary, is estimated at a million. I do not send you particulars, for your nephew told me you should have a journal of them from him.

The spectacle-for I was there on the blackest night, the Wednesday, was tremendous and shocking. The monster that conjured up this tempest is now manacled in the Tower.-But what a nation is Scotland; in every reign engendering traitors to the State, and false and pernicious to the Kings that favour it the most! National prejudices, I know, are very vulgar; but, if there are national characteristics, can one but dislike the soils and climates that concur to produce them?

I shall suspend the prosecution of this letter, for the papers say our ports are still shut. They will soon be re-opened, I trust; for tranquillity is restored in the capital, and in the country has not been disturbed but for one moment at Bath, though near a fortnight is elapsed since the first tumult.

Berkeley Square, Friday, 16th.

I shall change my mind, and send away this fragment to-night; as, though short, it will contain two pieces of intelligence that will give you joy, and I doubt you want some cordials.

Yesterday arrived an account of the surrender of Charlestown to Sir Henry Clinton: like the jaundice, I turn every thing to the colour of my mind, and cry, "Will it advance peace?" It certainly will have good effect here, and discourage mutineers.-I have not time to dilate more.

The King and his royal brothers are reconciled. This is my second good article.-But the best of all is, that we are perfectly tranquil; and ten days having passed since the black Wednesday, and no accounts having come of the least disturbance, except a momentary one at Bath, it is fairly to be presumed that the whole nation is shocked at the late savage tumults.

Here the scandal taken is so universal, or shame or fear, that not a single person has been or sent to inquire after the arch-incendiary. Wilkes has very sensibly ridden home on Lord George, and distinguished himself by zeal and spirit.†

One strange circumstance in the late delirium was the mixture of

* Prince William Henry Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Henry Duke of Cumberland.

† Dr. Johnson, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale of the 10th, says, "The rioters attempted the Bank. Jack Wilkes headed the party that drove them away. Jack declares, that if he be trusted with power, he will not leave a rioter alive. We frighten one another with reports that seventy thousand Scots are about to come hither with the Dukes of Gordon and Argyll, and eat us, and hang us, or drown us; but we are all at quiet."-ED.

VOL. II.-14

rage and consideration in the mob. In most of the fires they threw furniture into the street, did not burn it in the houses; nay, made several small bonfires, lest a large one should spread to buildings. They would not suffer engines to play on the devoted edifices; yet, the moment the objects were consumed, played the engines on contiguous houses on each side! It is all unaccountable, and I can yet send you no consistent narrative. Much appears to have been sudden fury, and in many places the act of few. In other lights it looks like plan and deep premeditation. Whether it will ever be unravelled, I know not; or whether, like the history of darker ages, falsehood will become history, and then distant periods conjecture that we have transmitted very blundered relations: but, when I know so little of what has passed before my own eyes, I shall not guess how posterity will form their opinions. Adieu! I have not time to say more.

LETTER CCCXXXII.

Berkeley Square, July 6, 1780.

Ir I did not think that you have a satisfaction in hearing from me, and were not unwilling to grow remiss after a perseverance of forty years, I should be disposed to devolve on your nephew the function of sending you intelligence. In good truth, I am ashamed of the of fice. We make a ridiculous figure in every light: there is no dignity or consistence any where. The Government, the Parliament, the parties, or rather the factions or rather the fractions, do and undo, cross over and figure in, and seem to have neither plan nor object.

The incoherencies of the last six months could only be described by a person accustomed to draw out dances for the stage. In December the tide ran into petitions and associations: the House of Commons voted the danger of prerogative, unvoted it again, were for satisfying the petitioners, and then did not give them a crumb of bread: then we were alarmed with Popery, and the town was set on fire: next, we were to revise toleration,-that was changed for new precautions against increase of Papists: then our Lords the Bishops were for tolerating Popery because it was decreasing: then the Chancellor declared he had always disliked the indulgence; but, in contradiction to the favourers of it, would himself favour their educating their children: and then-ay, then,-the new bill of regulations was thrown out, no body knows why or wherefore.* If you can make head or tail of all this, you are wiser than I!

*When Sir George Savile's bill for securing the Protestant religion from any encroachments of Popery, by restraining Papist from teaching the children of Protestants, was brought up from the Commons, the Lords in general, including the right reverend bench, appeared much on the side of toleration; but several of the peers considering it as a great ind gnity to Parliament to pass a bill which carried all the appearance of being forced upon them by outrage and threat, upon its being

The next chapter is that of the rioters, whose trials are begun. A score have been tried, and most of them condemned. They are apprentices, women, a black girl, and two or three escaped convicts. And these Catilines, without plan, plot, connexion, or object, threw a million of inhabitants into consternation, burnt their houses about their ears, besieged the Parliament, drove it to adjourn for ten days, and have saddled the capital with ten thousand men; and still terrify us so dreadfully, that we dare not dismiss two camps at our gates, lest a Negro miss, and her regiment of street-walkers, should overturn the State. Not a Frenchman, not an American, appears to have had a finger in a single outrage. Oh! we are a magnanimous people! and Europe must wait with awe for the result of this campaign of bonfires! I am so ashamed of this dénouement of a tragedy that was horrible to behold from the number of conflagrations, and which becomes ridiculous when one perceives how easily it might have been prevented or suppressed,* that I shall beg to be excused from saying any more upon it, and shall change it for a private subject, that is very agreeable to me; and, when the public stands in a contemptible light, domestic events rise in importance.

Lord Egremont,† who has for some time been in love with my niece Lady Maria Waldegrave, the Duchess's second daughter, has at last had an audience, and demanded her. He is eight-and-twenty, is handsome, and has between twenty and thirty thousand a-year. You may imagine he was not rejected by either mother or daughter. The daughter, with a charming person, is less beautiful than either of her sisters, though more liked by most men. She has spirit, a' great deal of wit, and the sagacity and good-sense of her father, with constant good-humour and cheerfulness. We are all happy with this, alliance, and Lord Egremont's family shows general satisfaction. I, who live to see so many strange events, did not expect formerly that Sir William Windham'st grandson would marry Sir Robert Walpole's great-grand-daughter, to the equal content of both houses. The Duke and Duchess, with the little Prince and Princess, the

brought up to be reported, it was contrived to set it aside, without giving it a direct negative, by moving that it should be read a third time on that day week: which, being carried, had the effect of a previous question, as it was known that a prorogation would take place in the interim.-ED.

* In his account of the riots to Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson says, "I walked with Dr. Scott to look at Newgate, and found it in ruins. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the Sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place! The King said in council, that the magistrates had not done their duty, but that he would do his own;' and a proclamation was published. There has, indeed, been a universal panic; from which the King was the first that recovered."-Ed.

† George Windham, second Earl of Egremont.

Sir William Windham, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the end of the reign of Queen Anne, was a principal leader of the Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole.

bride, her sisters, Lady Egremont, and her son the bridegroom, were all at Ranelagh together last night. I satisfied myself with seeing them at Gloucester-house before they went. The company, I hear, were pleased with this exhibition; and in truth, it was worth seeing. The Duchess's beauty still marks her as the principal object. But is not my letter like one of Shakspeare's historic plays-insurrections, a marriage, trials, a Court-pageant ?-It is amusement to one who looks on all, as I do, with tranquil eyes, and whose plan it certainly never was to be included in any royal drama. It was one of Fortune's caprices, who loves to throw her vanities into the lap of one who never stirred an inch to seek or meet them. To-morrow I shall return alone to my little hill; pleased that my family are happy, but mourning for the disgraces of England. A little while, and Eng land and my family will be no more my care!

LETTER CCCXXXIII.

Berkeley Square, July 24, 1780.

I RECEIVED yours of June 30th, and have this moment got that of the 8th of this month, which tells me how opportunely mine appeared to disperse M. de Barbantan's fictitious visions. It will be fortunate if I am able hereafter to contradict the superstructure he shall raise on the junction of the fleets of Bourbon, to the amount of thirty-six sail, in the West Indies; where, I doubt, Sir George Rodney is far from superior. We entertain some visions too; and, since the reduc tion of Charlestown, look on America as at our feet. We reckon, too, on Spain's desertion of the family compact;-but the junction of their fleets is no capital confirmation. I do know that we have fallen away extremely by living on such airy sustenance. For these three, or four, or five years we have dined on meals to come, and had little to pick but the bones of provisions we have lost. As I have

* Alicia, daughter of Lord Carpenter, Countess-Dowager of Egremont. She married secondly Count Bruhl, Minister from Saxony, and was Lady of the Bed chamber to Queen Charlotte.

Dr. Franklin, writing on the 26th from Paris to a friend in America, says, "You seem to be too much affected with the loss of Charlestown. The enemy's affairs will not be much advanced by it. They have successively been in possession of the capitals of five provinces, but were not therefore in possession of the provinces themselves. The cannon will be recovered with the place; if not, our furnaces are constantly at work in making more. The destroying of our ships by the English is only like shaving our beards, which will grow again: their loss of provinces is like the loss of a limb, which can never again be united to their body." -Ed.

It appears by a letter written by Sir George Rodney to the Admiralty, from St. Christopher's, that violent disagreements existed between the Spanish and French admirals: that the Spaniards absolutely refused to co-operate with them in any enterprise whatever; and that the sickness and mortality in both fleets had reduced them very much. See Mundy's Life of Rodney, vol. ii. p. 364.—Ed.

nothing new to communicate or announce in the political line, I am glad to quit so disagreeable a theme.

I cannot control your ingenious plea against the ex-post-facto law that I should wish to establish, on the occasion of a second present that you are sending me-or rather a thousandth present; but I do earnestly beg it may be the last. Mr. Morrice is confined at Paris by the gout, or at least was when I heard of him; so, I cannot particularize my thanks yet: though, the more I like what he brings me, the less I shall be able to refrain from scolding you. You deserve that I should serve you as Mrs. Bracegirdle, the vestal actress, treated the old Lord Burlington, with whom he was in love in vain. One day he sent her a present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake; that it was true the letter was for her, but the china for his lady, to whom he must carry it. Lord! the Countess was so full of gratitude when her husband came home to dinner! Observe, after the ex-post-facto crystal, the next munificence goes to Linton à la Bracegirdle; and I do not think I am very modest to begin only then.

I must notify the rupture of our great match, which I announced in my last. Lord Egremont, who proves a most worthless young fellow, and is as weak and irresolute, has behaved with so much neglect and want of attention, that Lady Maria heroically took the resolution of writing to the Duchess, who was in the country, to desire her leave to break off the match. The Duchess, who had disliked the conduct of her future son-in-law, but could not refuse her consent to so advantageous a match, gladly assented; but the foolish boy, by new indiscretion, has drawn universal odium on himself. He instantly published the rupture, but said nothing of Lady Maria's having been the first to declare off; and thus every body thinks he broke off the match, and condemns him ten times more than would have been the case if he had told the truth, though he was guilty enough in giving the provocation. We are all charmed with the sense and spirit of my niece, who would not risk so probable a chance of unhappiness, though the fortune was so great, and she could not dislike his person. Still these three charming girls inherit more of their mother's beauty than of her fortune. Each has missed one of the first matches in this country; Lady Laura Lord Carmarthen,* Lady Maria Lord Egremont, Lady Horatia the Duke of Ancaster, after each had proposed and been accepted! The fate of young women of quality is hard in other countries they are shut up till their parents have bargained for, without consulting, them; here they are exposed to the addresses of every coxcomb that has a title or an estate to warrant his impertinence.

* Son of the Duke of Leeds. The marriage was broken off, the Duke not being able to make an adequate provision; Lord Carmarthen having children by his first wife, on whom the whole estate was settled. The Duke of Ancaster died just as the marriage was determined upon. Lady Laura was afterwards inarried to her first cousin, Lord Chewton, son of the Earl of Waldegrave.