in seeing them refuse a dispensation for a match with a heretic to our wretched James the First, at the instigation of old Mother Bellarmine! That part is very new to us, and, if Lord Clarendon came to the knowledge of it, he suppressed it; for, though a sincere Protestant, he had so much of the Church in him, that, like the motto on their bells, "Fear God, honour the King," he was always swinging between both. I like the author, too, for touching on the knavery of two of my noble authors, the good Earls of Salisbury* and Northampton ;† and still more so for the justly bitter things he says of Louis XIII. and Richelieu. He is rather too severe on Henry IV. and Sully; if the first was too easy and good-humoured, and the latter too œconomic a politician to be strictly just, one may rejoice rather than weep when nations have no worse reproaches to make to their governors. The part that diverted me the most, in a ludicrous light, was the Court of the Archbishop of Florence condemning the Parliament of England to pay eight millions two hundred thousand pounds sterling to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland,--another of my noble authors! One would think that Court had existed in the present age, when foreigners thinkI fear I must now say thought-there could be no end of our wealth. I wonder such stupendous ideas of our opulence did not weigh with Paul the Fifth to grant the dispensation, in spite of conscientious Bellarmine. Be it remembered for once, that churchmen were more scrupulous than rapacious.

I asked you whether there was any picture of Camilla Martelli. I have found a print of her, among the hundred heads of the House of Medici, by Allegrini. You cannot imagine how pleased I am to find that I have lost so little either of my Italian or of my memory of Florence, after so long a disuse. I am sorry you never mention any

*Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, "who had the good fortune," says Walpole in his Royal and noble Authors, "to please both Queen Elizabeth and King James the First; who, like the son of the Duke of Lerma, had the uncommon fate of succeeding his own father as Prime Minister: and who, unlike that son of Lerma, did not, though treacherous to every body else, supplant his own father."-ED.

"Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, younger son of the famous Earl of Surrey, said to be the most learned among the nobility, and the most noble among the learned. Lady Bacon, the severe and froward, but upright mother of Sir Francis, often warns her son against him, calling Howard 'a dangerous intelligencing man, and no doubt a subtle papist inwardly, a very instrument of the Spanish papists! Pretending courtesy, he worketh mischief perilously. I have long known him and observed him. His workings have been stark naught. In another place she calls him 'subtiliter subdolus, and a subtle serpent.' Sir Henry Weldon speaks of him as the grossest flatterer alive." Royal and Noble Authors.-ED.

Robert Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, “called," says Walpole, “the natural son, probably the legitimate son, of the great Earl of Leicester. He was ed. ucated under Sir Thomas Chaloner, the accomplished governor of Prince Henry, and distinguished his youth by martial achievements, and by useful discoveries in the West Indies, but it was the House of Medici, those patrons of learning and talents, who fostered this enterprising spirit, and who were amply rewarded for their munificence by his projecting the free port of Leghorn. He flourished in their court, and that of the Emperor, who declared him Duke of Northumberland; a dukedom remarkably confirmed to his widow, whom Charles the First, in 1644, created Duchess Dudley.”—ED.

of my acquaintance there: no doubt, most of them are gone off; but you would oblige me by naming such as are still alive. This letter is a parenthesis between our present momentous politics, written in the holidays, in the solitude and silence of Strawberry. I shall finish it in town, whither I shall go in two days, expecting to hear new disasters.

Monday night, 31st.

I have this moment received yours of the 13th by your third courier, with those inclosed for your nephew and mine. I imagine the former is not in town, but I shall send it to his house; the other never is, but the mere hours of his waiting; but I have sealed, directed, and sent it to the post. The monument* will not be dear, but it is ugly enough in conscience. Yet, what signifies that, or the blunders? Over the arms is a baron's coronet, I suppose to imply my Lady's barony of Clinton; yet it should not be there, for the shield containing only the arms of Walpole and some of the quarterings, makes it represent only a Baron Walpole; that is, my brother before my father's death. To signify Lady Clinton, it ought to be her arms quartering Clinton in a shield of pretence in the middle of her husband's arms, or rather in the same manner, but in a lozenge, as a widow; for the barony did not descend to her in my brother's life. But all this would be algebra to a Florentine sculptor;-nor do I wish to have it clear for whom it was designed,-nor, if known, will any English herald or antiquary probably ever see it. My Lord, in this past month, determined on an expedition to visit his new domains in Dorset and Devon shires, and his seats at Piddletown and Heanton were ordered to be aired and prepared for his reception, and Lucas was despatched to the latter (in Devonshire) to notify his arrival, and invite the neighbouring gentry to the ceremony of inauguration. The Earl followed, arrived at Piddletown (in Dorsetshire,) changed his mind, returned to his hovel at Eriswell, and left Lucas to tell the other county how perfectly his Lordship is in his senses.

I have not found a tittle of news in town; therefore I shall send this away by the post to-morrow, and write again by the return of your courier, if I hear any novelty.

Pray, whose is the portrait that my Lord has so tenderly re-demanded? The Countess certainly did not love any picture of our family enough to lug it behind her chaise to Italy, as Lady Pomfret did Lady Bell Finch's, for which you remember she had a new frame made in every town she stopped at. Perhaps it is his grandpapa Jack Harris's, or Mr. Sewallis Shirley's, the latter of whom had some claim to be registered on the future monument. In my Lord's fit of posthumous piety he may have grown fond, too, of step-grandfathers and fathers, though he has not yet acquired affection for those who passed for his real progenitors.

* The one intended for Lady Orford, at Leghorn.-ED.

After Doctor's Commons had lain fallow for a year or two, it is again likely to bear a handsome crop of divorces. Gallantry in this country scorns a mask. Maids only intrigue, wives elope. C'est l'étiquette. Two young married ladies are just gone off-no, this is a wrong term for one of them; for she has just come to town, and drives about London, for fear her adventure should be forgotten before it comes into the House of Lords. It is a Lady Worseley, sister of Lady Harrington. On hearing she was gone away with a Major Blisset, another young gentleman said, at St. James's coffeehouse, "I have been very secret; but now, I think, I am at liberty to show this letter." It was couched in these laconic and sentimental terms: "I have loved Windham, I did love Graham, but now, I love only you, by God." I am a little angry for my nephew, Lord Cholmondeley, who has been most talked of for her, and who is thought to have the largest pretensions to her remembrance. If you see him, you may tell him I resent her forgetfulness; we believe him in Italy. Adieu!

LETTER CCCLXVII.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 17, 1782.

I HAVE received yours of the 29th of last month, and will answer it in this as well as I can; though I have but one hand at liberty, having been confined these ten days by the gout in the other and its elbow. I am not void of all hopes that the fit will proceed no farther; and then, though my prison may last as much longer as it has done, I shall think myself very fortunate, for it will be the shortest fit I have had these ten years; nor am I young or fond enough of the world to pant after much liberty beyond that of my limbs.

There has been no public event since my last, but the French purchase of St. Eustatia from our Governor of it.* What shame

* Secure in their inaccessible situation, the British garrison at St. Eustatia conducted themselves in so negligent a manner, that the Marquis de Bouille was induced to make an attempt to regain it. Having sailed from Martinico, he suc ceeded in landing, with much loss and difficulty, about four hundred men during the night of the 26th of November. Trusting to the negligence of his enemy, and the consequent probability of a surprise, the Marquis pushed forward with the ut most expedition. A division of the garrison, who were exercising in a field, mistook a body of Irish troops, which attended the French commander, for their comrades. A volley of small-arms, fired almost at their breasts, and which killed seve ral men, was the first knowledge the soldiers at exercise had of their danger. Colonel Cockburne, the Governor, who had been taking an early ride, returning at the instant of the surprise, was made prisoner. The island was lost in a few mi nutes, and without the expense of a man to the enemy. The marquis behaved with great magnanimity. A considerable sum of money, which the Governor claimed as his property, was restored to him; but a very large sum, being a remainder of the produce of the late sales, and said to be the property of Admiral Rodney and General Vaughn, became a prize to the victors. The moderation and clemency

there is in that transaction the buyers, I suppose, will make over to the seller, unless the Opposition borrow part of it for the Ministers. The Parliament is to meet next week, and the town expects that, before that, Lord George Germain's resignation will be notified-not that I tell you he has resigned, but such is the universal persuasion; and the last symptom on which conjectures are formed is, that his family have said he would not be at the Queen's birthday to-morrow. Your nephew, I conclude, will now come to town, and send you fresher and more authentic Parliamentary intelligence than I can.

We hear with some surprise of the Emperor's very rapid suffocation of nunneries.* Do not the monks regret their helpmates, and tremble for themselves? If Cæsars could tremble, I should ask if Cæsar had no apprehension for himself. Are all the Jesuits extinct that despatched poor Ganganelli ? Is not the Vatican hung with sackcloth? I suppose the next thing we shall hear will be, that those pillars of toleration, the King of Prussia and the Czarina, have opened asylums on the road for all those chaste doves that choose to leave their first spouse. The next century will most probably exhibit a

of the Marquis upon this occasion was warmly eulogized by Mr. Burke in the House of Commons. "Two British commanders," he said, "plunder every unfortunate inhabitant of the island; the Marquis de Bouille restores, as far as he can, to every man his property." In a letter to a friend, of the 24th of January, Sir Samuel Romilly makes the following reflections on the re-taking of St. Eustatia-" What infamy! The Governor is too prudent undoubtedly ever to return to England; he must either drag on the load of his life in France, in the receipt (for he cannot know the enjoyment) of the wages of his treachery, or be more actively infamous, and take up arms against his country. I am wrong, perhaps, to speak as if his treason were proved; but can it possibly be doubted! How unfortunate we are in our commanders; some cowards, some traitors, others brave indeed, but the slaves of party, or the more abject slaves of avarice! The Ministers have often availed themselves of some circumstances which seemed for the moment fortunate, to boast that we had Providence on our side. What will they say now? Never did the band of Providence appear more conspicuously than at present. We took St. Eustatia like pirates, violating in the persons and property of the prisoners the law of nations; but we did not profit by our guilt. The effects seized were retaken on their passage home, and the island itself is lost in the most disgraceful manner. We encouraged treachery in the rebel Arnold, but all we gained by it was empty promises; the same treachery is retaliated on us, and what we lose by it is the only pledge we had, by which we might have purchased back the friendship of the Dutch." Life, vol. i. p. 199.-ED.

* The reform of German monasteries was begun in the year 1781, by the Emperor Joseph II. The hasty manner in which he set about it, without sufficient regard to the necessities and feelings of the older inmates, who are turned adrift into the world with only small pensions, and in some cases even without any, occasioned considerable dissatisfaction at the time.-ED.

In April 1774, Clement XIV., the principal event of whose pontificate was the suppression of the order of Jesuits, was taken dangerously ill, under suspicious symptoms, and lingered on till the following September, when he died. Rumours were spread abroad that poison had been administered to him; but the post-mortem examination of the body, and the report of his physicians, did not countenance the suspicion, to which Walpole appears to have given credit.-ED.

very new era, which the close of this has been, and is, preparing. The annihilation of the Jesuits paved the way. Popery totters, though we preposterously stepped in to save it; but when old follies grow exploded, what can save them? not their own gibberish nor legerdemain, which gave them success. This is no impeachment to new impostures; but for the old, I would not answer how far the Revolution may extend.

The enfranchisement of America will be another capital feature of the New Era, and, sooner or later, will extend beyond British colonies. Whether mankind will be advantaged by these bouleversemens, I am not so clear; I mean, in their capacity of Reason and Liberty, -charters seldom obtained and confirmed without much bloodshed. Soldiers, I fear, will not be laid aside, though Priests may; and then what signifies whether one is chained or murdered by a fellow in a black coat, or a fellow in a red one?

18th.

Lord George Germain has indubitably resigned, it is said, to be a peer; and that the office will not be filled up, its province being gone. His second tome has not been brilliant, but has made the first the more remembered-no advantage neither. What reasons he assigns for retirement I have not heard; his associates nor the public wished him to stay. The next chapter will be his principal enemy Lord Sandwich's, who has numerous foes too, but more friends.

LETTER CCCLXVIII.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 7, 1782. I ANTICIPATED Lord George Germain's exit before it was complete : nay, it is not yet, though imminent.* It is not, I believe, entirely a

* Disagreeing with the other members of the cabinet on the future conduct of the war, Lord George Germain, on the 11th of February, resigned his office of one of the Principal Secretaries of State, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Viscount Sackville. The particulars attending this elevation are thus given by Sir Nathaniel Wraxall; who professes to have received them from Lord George's mouth on the day they took place,-"The separation between the Sovereign and the Secretary was not unaccompanied by emotion on both sides. After regretting the unfortunate events that had dictated the measure, and thanking Lord George for his services, his Majesty added, 'Is there any thing that I can do to express my sense of them!' 'Sir,' answered he, if your Majesty is pleased to raise me to the dignity of a peerage, it will by the best proof of your approbation of my past exertions.' By all means,' said the King; I think it is very proper.' Then, Sir,' rejoined Lord George, if you agree to my request, I hope you will not think it unbecoming or unreasonable in me to ask another favour. It is to create me a viscount; as, should I be only raised to the dignity of a baron, my own secretary, my lawyer, and my father's page will all take rank of me.' The King, expressing a wish to know the names of the persons alluded to, 'The first,' replied Lord George,