last of the 9th. The most material part to you is the addition of Lord Grantham as Secretary of State. He is a sort of old acquaintance of yours when he was at Vienna, and I suppose, at Madrid; though I believe you never met. He is a very agreeable pleasing man. Lord Shelburne is certainly the Minister paramount.

The moment is certainly a solemn one; the combined fleets are at the mouth of the Channel, but Lord Howe, though with inferior force, is watching them, and is very different from such old women as Harda or Darby, and has a most chosen set of officers, men, and ships; as at land we have General Conway, instead of that log of wood, Lord Amherst, whose stupidity and incapacity were past belief, though, before he was known, he was for a moment a hero; for more moments supposed a great man, the Lord knows why.

I have been here these ten days, consequently know nothing more than what you see in the papers; I must therefore owe the rest of my letter to answering yours. It is not worth while even for the sake of a paragraph, to tell you that my last morsel of gout was acquired by being blooded twice for the influenza, which I had one of the first. I am now mighty well for me.

I am quite ignorant of your nephew's late campaign in Kent, of which I know nothing but by your letter. I do but cast my eyes on the newspapers; which are detestable for their lies, blunders, and scandal, and are half filled by letters of the partisans of different factions, whose sole object is to mislead and infuse prejudices. I never look at the advertisements and paragraphs that relate to elections; and must be surfeited, you may well imagine, after sixty years, with the clamours of parties, with which I have nothing to do. Your nephew I have not seen for some time. He has, I think, a good heart; but, being a little volatile and precipitate, his honesty is apt to make him take his part without much consideration. This may draw him into difficulties, but not disreputable ones. Experience will make him more wary; and he will distrust his own judgment, when he finds it is not an infallible guide.

I do not recollect what you said of an old portrait: you told me something about one, but I forget what; you now say I have seen it -not to my knowledge. My memory and other defects tell me how old I grow. I hope at least to remember that I do forget. Ancient folks are apt to parry and palliate their decays: it is my duty to watch them, and convince myself of them; which one should think would not be difficult-but self-love is such a flatterer! Adieu!

Esq., Attorney-General; Richard Pepper Arden, Esq., Solicitor-General; Earl Temple, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and the Hon. William Wyndham Grenville, Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant.-ED.

LETTER CCCLXXXL

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 20, 1782. I DID think it long since I heard from you; but your letter of July 30th explains your silence, on your ignorance to whom you was to address yourself on the late changes. In fact, no new Secretaries of State were appointed for some time, none therefore could write to you; nor could I tell you who was your new principal, till you had one. Events there have been none to tell you; for the hide-and-seek at which the combined fleets have been playing with ours, produced none till each returned to its own home. Ours, they say, is to relieve Gibraltar, but I do not answer for the truth. I have been in town but two nights for a great while, and know no better than the newspapers what is passing. I have heard here that we have abandoned Georgia and the Royalists to the mercy of their enemies; but perhaps there is not a word of truth in it. A suburban village is no very authentic coffee-house. Our Jamaica and Leeward fleets are arrived safely. Such articles are very important in war, though they made no figure in the history of a campaign. the fleets might almost sail up hither; for we have had such incessant deluges of rain, that our quiet Thames looks like a little turbulent ocean, and seems setting up for itself too, like others of its sovereign's domi

nions.

Monsieur de Grasse has been here, and was graciously treated; which is more than it is thought he will be at home. I hope he will not be used as inhumanly as poor Admiral Byng, whose fate the French so justly condemned.*

I shall be very sorry if your attendance on the Duchess of Parma has over-fatigued you: may you be quit for the ennui which such ceremonies must create after a certain age! I never feel my antiquity so much as when I am obliged to appear at any of those functions. Courts were not made for old age; it requires all the giddy insensibility of youth not to be struck with such farces. How one should smile if one could look down on a crowd of insects acting importance, dignity, or servility! And how would one of them reciprocally smile, could they observe one of our species tottering to the last to so foolish a pantomime! The young are a sort of insects who do remark that foolishness in their seniors-and they are in the right.

* Count de Grasse landed at Portsmouth on the 5th of August; where he, together with his officers, were most hospitably entertained by Vice Admiral Sir Peter Parker, until the Count had permission to proceed to London. During his stay in the metropolis, he took up his residence at the Royal Hotel, in Pall-Mall. The Count was the first commander-in-chief of a French fleet or army who had been prisoner in England since the reign of Queen Anne, when Marshal Tallard was taken by the Duke of Marlborough, and confined to the town and environs of Nottingham. On his return to France, the Count published a Memoire Justificatif. -ED.

VOL. II.-22.

Most things are excusable in youth, and almost all things become them. Few become the old but propriety, and that kind of quiet common-sense that avoids particularities, and dreads to make itself talked of. Thus it would be affectation in you, who wear a public character, not to conform to its duties. But when I see men late in life thrust themselves into the world's face without a call, I feel a contemptuous pity for them-but they are always punished: they find themselves misplaced; and, the more they try to adapt themselves to the tone of an age to which they belong not, the more awkwardly they succeed. Not only the fashions in dress and manners change, but the ways of thinking, nay, of speaking and pronouncing. Even the taste in beauty and wit alters. A Helen, or a Lord Rochester, perhaps, would not be approved but in one specific half-century. Sir William Temple says, that the Earl of Norwich, who had been the wit of the Court of Charles the First, was laughed at in that of Charles the Second. I myself remember that Lord Leicester,t who had rather a jargon than wit, which was much admired in his day, having retired for a few years, and returning to town after a new generation had come about, recommenced his old routine, but was taken for a driveller by the new people in fashion, who neither understood his phrases nor allusions. At least, neither man nor woman that has been in vogue must hazard an interregnum, and hope to resume the sceptre. An actor or actress that is a favourite may continue on the stage a long time; their decays are not described, at least not allowed by those who grow old along with them; and the young, who come into the world one by one, hearing such performers applauded, believe them perfect, instead of criticizing: but if they quit the stage for a few years, and return to it, a large crop of new auditors has taken possession, are struck with the increased defects, and do not submit, when in a body, to be told by the aged that such a performer is charming, when they hear and see to the con

trary.

I wrote this two days ago, but have heard nothing to add. The war seems to partake of old age, and to be grown inactive-I wish it may be grown so old as to die soon. Sir William Draper, some weeks ago, preferred a complaint in form against General Murray; but the Judge Advocate said it was not sufficiently specific. I believe

*George Goring, in 1632, created Lord Goring, and in 1644, for the great services he had rendered to Charles I., advanced to the dignity of Earl of Norwich. In the preceding year he was sent Ambassador Extraordinary to Paris. "I went to meet him," says Evelyn, "in a coach and six horses, at the palace of M. de Bassompiere, where I saw that gallant person, his gardens, terraces, and rare prospects. My Lord was waited upon by the Master of the Ceremonies, and a very great cavalcade of men of quality, to the Palace Cardinal, where he had audience of the French King, and the Queen-Regent his mother, in the Golden Chamber of Presence."-ED.

†Thomas Coke, created, in 1725, Lord Lovel of Minster-Lovel, in Oxfordshire, and, in 1744, Viscount Coke of Holkham, and Earl of Leicester; which titles became extinct at his death in 1759.-ED.

he has given one now less general; but the cause cannot be tried yet for want of Colonel Pringle, who was hostage for the transport vessels. The King's youngest son, Prince Alfred, was at the point of death this morning. He is not two years old.* Adieu!

LETTER CCCXXXLII.

Strawberry Hill, Friday evening, Aug. 30, 1782.

I HAVE this moment received from London your letter which Cardini brought, and shall send one of my servants to town to-morrow morning with this answer, and conclude he will not be set out on his return. As it will not go unless by him, I can have no difficulty of writing freely to you; and yet you will be surprised at the very little information I can give you. In short, I have totally done with politics-even with thinking on them, when I can help it. This country is absolutely lost. I mean past recovery. The phrensy of the American war was pushed so far and so long, that, besides flinging away all we had acquired in near two centuries, doors have been thrown open to a thousand collateral misfortunes. Our credit has been screwed to a pitch that imminently endangers it all. There is an enormous debt yet unprovided for; nevertheless, the vast current expense continues. Ireland has shaken us off-not unfortunately, if it goes no further; for it will flourish, which our jealousy hindered. Scotland, after doing us every mischief to the end of the last reign, and after engrossing every thing in the present, seems to be at the eve of setting up for itself too. When it was little to be expected, at least not five months before, a change happened in the spring, which delivered us at last from so criminal an Administration. The new one, it is true, was but ill-cemented, and was dissolved by Lord Rockingham's death in three months; and in three days the remainder split to pieces.†

* Prince Alfred, the King's ninth son, was born on the 22nd of September, 1780, and died on the 20th of August, 1782.-ED.

On the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, all the members of the Administration resigned, with the exception of the Duke of Richmond and Lord Keppel. The following strictures on the Admiral's retention of office after the retirement of his friends, are from Horace Walpole's Unpublished Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third:

"The point that stuck most with the Duke of Richmond was his cousin and friend, Admiral Keppel, whom the zeal of Lord Rockingham and the Cavendishes on his trial, called on to fulfil his debt of gratitude. To Lord Shelburne he had no obligations; to the Duke of Richmond the same as to the Cavendishes. The Duke did prevent the Admiral's immediate resignation; but he declared he meditated it, and did intend it so much, that he satisfied the Cavendishes; and they, in their turn, chose to seem satisfied, that, by maintaining friendship with him, they might preserve opportunities of urging him to resign. This dubious conduct of Keppel led the Duke to profess the same kind of neutral ambiguity. Keppel professed to

I confess I had neither youth nor perseverance enough to form any new plan of hopes for my country. I took the resolution of abandoning even speculation and observation; and now, literally, never so much as ask a political question. I have no quarrels, no enemies. I wish most heartily well to Mr. Conway and the Duke of Richmond; I have always been civilly and obligingly treated by Lord Shelburne, therefore there is no disgust in my conduct: but I am so mortified at the fall of England, I see so little or no prospect of its ever being a great nation again, that I have not courage to hope about it. I have outlived the glory of my family and of my country. Houghton and England are alike stripped of all their honours.-But, instead of declamation, I will answer your letter.

Gibraltar, I am persuaded will follow Minorca, if not already gone. So far from the fleet being sailed to its relief, part is gone in pursuit of the Dutch to the Baltic, though the Dutch are really in the Texel. I truly do not know what has occasioned this strange management. The papers ring with dissensions in the Fleet; but the particulars I have not heard, for I have not been in London this month. Rodney, too, let the French fleet, that he had beaten and cooped up, slip out; which will probably occasion the loss of New York. The East Indies are not secure either. Mr. Fitzherbert* is gone to Paris to treat. When they have quite ruined us, perhaps they may grant us a peace.

retain the Admiralty but till the peace; the Duke the Ordnance, till he should complete his reforms. It would have been improper in Keppel to resign at that moment he had sent Admiral Pigot to supersede Lord Rodney, who had just obtained a great victory. News had come of the Quebec fleet being taken: had Keppel retired then, he would have opened new ways to his enemies of loading him with obloquy, and given them power to oppress him."

In furnishing the Hon. and Rev. Thomas Keppel with the above extract, the late lamented Lord Holland accompanied it with the following note: "Walpole calls Keppel's conduct dubious;' but his motives were avowed and correct, and he acted up to them. He gave his reasons for not resigning; and his friends who did resign never complained of them; and, when those reasons ceased, he followed their example, fulfilled his intentions, and resigned before the termination of Lord Shelburne's Ministry."

The reasons for Lord Keppel's continuing in office after the resignation of his friends are stated by his able biographer to have been these: "Two Admirals at that time employed-Barrington was one (the writer is not quite certain of the name of the other)-entertained so low an opinion of the honesty of a Tory government, that they signified to Lord Keppel their determination to keep their flags flying no longer than he retained office; Barrington (who was second in command at Gibraltar) saying, with professional bluntness, in reference to the party likely to succeed Keppel, 'I should not consider my life safe in the hands of such scoundrels! To avoid the confusion that would arise from the sudden retirement of these officers, Keppel consented to remain until the peace (the preliminaries of which were in the course of signature) was finally arranged." Life, vol. ii. p. 400.-ED.

*Alleyne Fitzherbert, Esq., afterwards created Lord St. Helen's. In March 1777, he had been appointed British Minister at Brussels, and resided at that Court till August 1782, when he was sent to Paris by the new administration with the commission of sole plenipotentiary for negotiating a peace with the Crowns of France and Spain, and the States-General of the United Provinces. To a letter writen by