Page images
PDF
EPUB

ing you to fling your pearls before swine. I even restrain myself from recommending the gentleman who travels with Mr. Edgcumbe, though I think him a sensible prudent young man. him to Lord Mount Edgcumbe. He is a youngish French ProtesI did recommend tant, of a very good gentleman's family, and left the service on, I believe, an affair of honour. He was addressed to the Duke of Richmond and to me, by the Prince de Bauffremont in the strongest terms. imaginable. He passed three years in this country in a manner that fully justified his character. He speaks and writes English well; his name is De Soyres. It was not in my power to serve him but in the manner I did; and he gives great satisfaction in his present situation. As the Mentor is so much a gentleman, I hope the Telemachus will give you no trouble. But, were it Minerva herself, I prefer your peace; and therefore pray lay yourself out in no attentions beyond what you find received with "reciprocity."* Your nephew, I hope, is not leaving you yet; in him, I am sure, neither you nor I shall be disappointed. Adieu !†

* A term used by Lord Shelburne on the peace with America, and much ridi- ' culed at that time.

+ Sir Horace Mann thus writes to Walpole at this time: "I have not heard any thing more relating to the daughter of Count Albany and Mrs. Walkinshaw; but it is said in his family that she is expected here [Florence] soon, and that the delay is owing to the preparations necessary to equip her out properly to appear first at Paris, and then here, under the new title her father has given her of Duchess d'Albany. She is not to be accompanied by her mother, who would disgrace her, but by some great lady, who must ask that honour as dame de compagnie, as the discarded Countess has, who is a chanoinesse and sister of a Prince Malsan. It will require time to settle all these matters; and, after all, there may be some difficulty in the etiquette. If the Count has not erred in his calculations, the family of Fitzjames need not be under any apprehension of their cousine being a future expense to them, for the Count purposes to marry her here, not indeed to one of the Archdukes, but to a Florentine nobleman; and to leave her twelve thousand crowns a year, a sum which would tempt any of them more than the tincture of royalty. I know the little book which was left at your house; it was composed in my neighbourhood by the persons indicated by the initials affixed to each performance, Merry and Ramsay. The first was known in England by the name of Captain, as he was then in the Horse-guards, but has since sold out, and has resided here some years. Ramsay's name is well known to you, both by his pen and pencil: he was in a decrepit state here, and died lately at Dover, on his way to London to meet General Campbell, who married his daughter, on their return from Jamaica. The third is a Swiss governor of a Mr. Dawkins, named Buignon. Mr. Ramsay promised me to cut out the last performance from all the copies he proposed to send to England, to be distributed by his sister as a tribute to his learned friends or patrons. I formerly knew Lord Mount-Edgcumbe, and shall be glad to see his son. preted what I wrote of Mr. Windham too severely. I was only offended at the vioYou interlence of his political sentiments, and the great indiscretion with which he spoke of the King, and all those whom I was obliged to respect."-From an unpublished Letter.-ED.

[ocr errors]

LETTER CCCCXXV.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 25, 1784.

I THOUGHT I had done corresponding with you about Cavalier Mozzi; but here is a letter which you must deliver to him. Good Mr. Duane came to me two days ago, and insisted on my sending it. He protests that he declared at first to Mr. Sharpe that he would accept no reward for his trouble; that he undertook it to oblige Mr. Morice, and says he has had little trouble: and, though I thought it decent to press him to accept the draft, he would not hear of it; and it is here inclosed. I own I am charmed with his handsome behaviour; it confirms the character I gave of him when I recommended him to Cavalier Mozzi, and, I think, ought to convince the latter that Mr. Duane was clear in the judgment he pronounced. Still, I must regret that my Lord was advised to make the claim, and shall never be persuaded but that Lucas had multiplied documents that it was impossible to fathom without a waste of years; but which, if they could have been probed to the bottom, would not have stood the test. All the comfort that remains is, that the duration of a law-suit would probably have cost as much to Mozzi as he has now lost.

The Parliament is risen; and, having lasted so late in the year, is not likely to meet again till after Christmas. Consequently, no events are to be expected, unless the scene should grow very serious in Ireland, as it threatens; but it is to be hoped that our American experience has taught us discretion.

I interest myself little in novelties, but I own I have some remains of curiosity from ancient impressions. Pray send me the sequel of the Count Albany and Lady Charlotte Fitzcharles, his daughter, the new Duchess.* I shall like to know, too, whether the Cardinal assumes

In a letter to Walpole, dated Florence, September 18th, Sir Horace Mann says, "The affair relating to Count Albany and his natural daughter is drawing to a conclusion Lady Charlotte Stuart (not Fitz-Charles,) to which her father has on this occasion added the title of Duchess of Albany, is supposed to be on the road hither, attended by two ladies and two gentlemen, and is expected in the beginning of next month. The Count is very busy in furnishing his house with all the valuables that he has lately received from Rome that his father left, which are numer ous and costly; besides these, he has received a large quantity of plate, and his share of his mother's jewels, except the great ruby, and one lesser, which were pawned by the republic of Poland for a very large sum to his grandfather Sobieski, with a power, it is said, of redeeming them in the space of a hundred years, which are nearly elapsed. These, therefore, the Cardinal would not trust to his brother, being persuaded that, if he could find a purchaser, he would sell them, or even part with them for a large rente viagère, to an Empress of Russia or some other Court; but it is not probable that he will ever have the disposal of them, and that, when they fall to the Cardinal, he will rather give them to the Madonna di Loretto than to his niece, with whose adoption he is not pleased, nor was consulted about it. Nobody can foresee what the Cardinal will do with his crown after his brother's death. The Pope cannot permit him to wear it, as he never acknowledged or permitted the elder brother to assume it. You may remember the struggle which I

the royal title when his brother dies. I recollect but two King Cardinals, Henry of Portugal and the Cardinal of Bourbon, whom the League called Charles the Tenth, but who attained the crown no more than the Cardinal of York will do. If the Count himself has any feeling left, he must rejoice to hear that the decendants of many of his martyrs are to be restored to their forfeited estates in Scotland, by an Act just passed.*

As this was meant but for a cover to the inclosed, I will not pique myself on making it longer, when I have no more materials. In good truth, I may allow myself a brief epistle now and then. I have been counting how many letters I have written to you since I landed in England in 1741: they amount-astonishing !-to above eight hundred; and we have not met in three and forty years! A correspondence of near half a century is, I suppose, not to be parallelled in the annals of the post-office.

LETTER CCCCXXVI.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 30, 1784.

I Do not recollect having ever been so totally at a stand for want of matter since our correspondence began. The Duchess of Gloucester, in her last to me, told me that my letters contain nothing but excuses for having nothing to say; so, you see, my silence is not particular to you. I can only appeal to my usual vouchers, the newspapers, who let no event escape them; and I defy you to produce one they have told you that was worth knowing. I cannot fill my paper, as they do, with air-balloons; which, though ranked with the invention of

then had with the Marquis D'Aubterre, the French Ambassador at Rome, which be never forgave, and some years after expressed himself to the Marquis de Barbantane, who questioned him about it, in these words: Ha! Monsieur le Marquis, je croyais faire le plus beau coup possible, mais je ne fis qu'un pas de clerc. Ce diable de M. Mann m'avait prévenu, et gâta mon projet ;' which was to take the Pope by surprise. But in my letters to old Cardinal Albani, which were read in the Consistory held on that subject, I asserted that the French Ambassador could not have received orders from his Court, whose engagements with that of England had made it inconsistent with its honour to insist upon it; that the Ambassador had laid a snare for the Pope, which he might avoid by only waiting for an answer from Paris, which I was very sure would bring a disavowal of the Ambassador's conduct. That encouraged the Pope to tell him, that, if his master would be the first, he would be the second, to acknowledge him under the titles he contended for. The answer from France was such as I foretold; and General Conway, who was then Secretary of State, conveyed to me the King's approbation of what I had done. From all this I conclude that no future Pope will permit the Cardinal York to instal himself King of England."--(From an unpublished Letter of Sir Horace Mann. -ED.)

*The bill for restoring the estates forfeited in 1745 was introduced to Parliament by Mr. Dundas, and passed with little difficulty; it omitted from its provisions those forfeited under similar circumstances in 1715.-ED.

*

navigation, appear to me as childish as the flying kites of schoolboys. I have not stirred a step to see one; consequently, have not paid a guinea for gazing at one, which I might have seen by only looking up into the air. An Italian, one Lunardi, is the first airgonaut that has mounted into the clouds in this country. So far from respecting him as a Jason, I was very angry with him: he had full right to venture his own neck, but none to risk the poor cat, who, not having proved a martyr, is at least better entitled to be a confessor than her master Dædalus. I was even disappointed after his expedition had been prosperous; you must know, I have no ideas of space: when I heard how wonderfully he had soared, I concluded he had arrived within a stone's throw of the moon-alas! he had not ascended above a mile and a-half-so pitiful an ascension degraded him totally in my conceit. As there are mountains twice as high, what signifies flying, if you do not rise above the top of the earth? any one on foot may walk higher than this man-eagle! Well! now you know all that I know-and was it worth telling?

There does seem to be a storm still brewing in Ireland, though a favourable turn has happened. The people of property have found out there is no joke in putting votes into the hands of the Catholics.† They were Irish heads that did not make that discovery a little sooner. Can there be a greater absurdity than Papists voting for Members of Parliament? It will be well for those who invited them to that participation, if they can satisfy them without granting it! How often I reflect on my father's Quieta non movere! It seems to me, from all I have seen of late years, to be the soundest maxim in politics ever pronounced. Think of a reformation of Parliament by admitting Roman Catholics to vote at elections! and that that preposterous idea should have been adopted by Presbyterians! That it was sanctified by a Protestant Bishop is not strange; he would call Mussulmen to poll, were there any within the diocess of Derry.

Your Lord Paramount seems to be taking large strides towards Holland ; but of that you probably know more than I do,-at least, you cannot know less. The old gentlewomen in my neighbourhood, the only company I have, study no map but that of Tendre in Clelia ; but they relate the adventures of that country in a different style from Mademoiselle Scudery; they put as many couple together, but not quite with such honourable intentious as she did. In short, you may perceive that I can send you no intelligence but folly and lies from

*This aerial voyage was performed in London, September 15th, 1784, by Vincent Lunardi, whoa scended from the Artillery-Ground, taking with him a dog, a cat, and a pigeon; he descended in a meadow near Ware, in Hertfordshire.-ED.

The admission of Romanists to the elective franchise in Ireland gave great dissatisfaction to the Protestants of the middle and lower class, who had previously the preference as tenants on account of their exclusive right of voting.-ED. Dr. Frederic Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry.

The Emperor Joseph II. quarrelled with the Dutch for the navigation of the Scheldt.

|| A writer of French romances in the 17th century, remarkable chiefly for the extravagant length and exaggerated style of her productions.-ED.

newspapers, or scandal from beldams; I do not listen to the latter, nor mind the former. I pay you my monthly quit-rent, though in truth it is not worth a pepper-corn.

*

Sir William Hamilton, just before he set out, gave me a small printed account of the Reale Galleria di Firenze accresciuta, &c. By it I perceive, that, though the Great-Duke has dispersed the group of the Niobe like our riot-act, and left them staring in strange attitudes like the mob on such an occasion, he has assembled all the outlying parts of the Medicean collection, and made great purchases himself and new-arranged the whole. This is praiseworthy, but seems a little contradicted by selling so much of the Guarda-roba; not that I blame him I am sure, who, thanks to you, have profited by it. The little book promises an ampler account. Should such appear, I should be glad to have it, on strict condition of paying for it; otherwise, you know you exclude me from troubling you with any commission: my house is full of your spoils already, and by your munificence is a Galleria Reale itself.

I shall now be expecting your nephew soon, and, I trust, with a perfectly good account of you. The next time he visits you, I may be able to send you a description of my Galleria,-I have long been preparing it, and it is almost finished,-with some prints, which, however, I doubt, will convey no very adequate idea of it. In the first place, they are but moderately executed: I could not afford to pay our principal engravers, whose prices are equal to, nay, far above, those of former capital painters. In the next, as there is a solemnity in the house, of which the cuts will give you an idea, they cannot add the gay variety of the scene without, which is very different from every side, and almost from every chamber, and makes a most agreeable contrast; the house being placed almost in an elbow of the Thames, which surrounds half, and consequently beautifies three of the aspects. Then my little hill, and diminutive enough it is, gazes up to royal Richmond; and Twickenham on the left, and Kingstonwick on the right, are seen across bends of the river, which on each hand appears like a Lilliputian seaport. Swans, cows, sheep, coaches, post-chaises, carts, horsemen, and foot-passengers, are continually in view. The fourth scene is a large common-field, a constant prospect of harvest and its stages, traversed under my windows by the great road to Hampton Court; in short, an animated view of the country. These moving pictures compensate the conventual gloom of the inside; which, however, when the sun shines, is gorgeous, as he appears all crimson and gold and azure through the painted glass. Now, to be quite fair, you must turn the perspective, and look at this vision through the diminishing end of the telescope; for nothing is so small as the whole, and even Mount Richmond would not reach up to Fiesole's shoe-buckle. If your nephew is still with you, he will confirm the truth of all the pomp, and all the humility, of my description. I grieve that you would ne

* Particularly from the Villa Medici at Rome.

« PreviousContinue »