me too well to suppose for a minute that any thing could hurt you or your nephew in my affection or esteem; much less the ravings of such an aventurière. I have received two letters from her on the subject, and I can want no other evidence to condemn her. Her behaviour is little more than absurd, and her Knight's interference y met le comble.

You may depend upon it, I shall totally drop the correspondence, but shall never own that I know a word of the matter; and I beg that you and your nephew will say that I never mentioned the affair to you, particularly not to the person whom the dame acquainted that she had complained to me. I have reasons for what I say, which I cannot explain in a letter.

I am overjoyed to see your writing so firm, and to hear you again dine at table; but I beseech you not to abate any attention to your health. My surgeon (for I have been obliged to have one for my hand) has wanted me for these two days to go out and take the air; but I have positively refused, for I got two relapses last winter by venturing out too soon. I had rather be confined ten days more than are necessary, than recommence. I have great patience whenever the fit comes; but a relapse puts me into despair. I must finish, for your letter did not arrive till past seven; mine must go to the office by nine; and, about eight, people drop in to me: but I would not lose a minute before I answered yours.

LETTER CCCCXLII.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 8, 1786.

I THINK, my dear sir, that you will be glad to hear that I am getting free from my parenthesis of gout, which, though I treat it as an interlude, has confined me above six weeks, and for a few days was very near being quite serious. It began by my middle finger of this hand, with which I am now writing, discharging a volley of chalk, which brought on gout and an inflammation, and both together swelled my arm almost to my shoulder. In short, I was forced to have a surgeon. But last week my finger was delivered of a chalk-stone as big as a large pea, and now I trust the wound will soon heal; and in every other respect I am quite well, and propose taking the air in two or three days, if the weather grows dry: but for two days we have a deluge of rain, and solid fogs after ten days of snow, and a severer frost than any of last winter. I hope you are as well as I am, without having had so grave an intermezzo. However, I do not like your inundation of English peerages ;† and I cannot enough applaud

* An English Lord, who happened to be then at Florence, and of whom Mr. Walpole had no favourable opinion,

The Duchess Dowager of Ancaster, Lord and Lady Spencer, Lord and Lady Bulkeley, were then just arrived, or were expected at Florence.

your two nephews for staying, and relieving you of so much of the load. I doubt you will have more fatigue, for I hear the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are going to Rome; and the other princely pair* are at Naples: but I hope you will not prefer etiquette to your regimen. I make it a rule, since I must be old and infirm, to plead age and ill-health against any thing that is inconvenient. You will see two other English with pleasure, as they will give you no trouble,Mrs. Damer, and her cousin Miss Campbell, daughter of poor Lady William, whom you knew. The latter has always lived with Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury, who are as fond of her as of their own. daughter; and indeed she is a very amiable, sensible young woman. In truth, the exports from this country are incredible: Franc, Nice, Switzerland, swarm with us-and not all, as you have lately experienced, raise our credit. Gaming has transported half.

I ought to have thanked you sooner for your last, as it announced some kind china from you; but, besides the hindrance of my lame hand, I wished to say I had received it, for indeed I had nothing else to tell you. My confinement, and the depopulation of London, which is still a desert, could produce but a very barren letter. I know nothing of the Continent but from our newspapers, the last intelligencein the world to be trusted. They are common-sewers of lies,. scandal, abuse, and blunders. What must Europe think of us from our travellers, and from our own accounts of ourselves?-Oh! not much worse than we deserve! The mail from France was robbed last night in Pall-Mall, at half an hour after eight-yes, in the great thoroughfare of London, and within call of the guard at the Palace. The chaise had stopped, the harness was cut, and the portmanteau was taken out of the chaise itself. A courier is gone to Paris for a copy of the despatch. What think you of banditti in the heart of such a capital? yet at Dublin, I believe, the outrages are ten times more enormous. Methinks we are not much more civilized than the ages when the Marches of Wales and Scotland were theatres of rapine.

Miss Molesworth, whom you saw a few years ago with her aunt Lady Lucan, and her cousin Lady Spencer, is just married to Mr. Pratt, Lord Camden's son.

I think this is pretty well written for a hand that has still more chalk-stones on it than joints, and its middle finger wrapped up.† In truth, I have suffered very little pain, nor lost an hour's sleep but for three nights. Confinement and debility in my limbs are grievances,

*The Duke and Duchess of Cumberland.

Walpole, however, endured his sufferings with extraordinary patience. In a letter to her sister, dated Feb. 17, 1786, Mrs. Hannah More thus writes: "I made poor Vesey go with me on Saturday to see Mr. Walpole, who has had a long ili ness. Notwithstanding his sufferings, I never found him so pleasant, so witty, and so entertaining. He said a thousand diverting things about Florio, but accused me of having imposed on the world by a dedication full of falsehood, meaning the compliment to himself. I never knew a man suffer pain with such entire patience."Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, vol. ii. p. 11.-ED.

no doubt, or I should not think the gout so violent an evil as it is reckoned; at least, in the quantity I have undergone in thirty years the total of pain has not been very considerable. It has very seldom lowered my spirits; and, the moment the fever is gone, I can sleep without end, day and night. I am complimented on my patience— but what merit is there in patience, when one is not awake, or not in much pain, and not apt to be out of humour? You I have seen patient, and never out of humour, though in torture. In fact, if people of easy fortunes cannot bear illness with temper, what are the poor to do, who have none of our comforts and alleviations? The affluent, I fear, do not consider what a benefit-ticket has fallen to their lot out of millions not so fortunate; yet less do they reflect that chance, not merit, drew the prize out of the wheel.

9th.

I have seen a person from the Custom-house, who tells me the Lively is not expected before February: when it arrives, I will thank you again for the china.

LETTER CCCCXLIV.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 13, 1786.

IF I was to talk of what has occupied most of my thoughts for these last three months, it would be of myself; but that is not a subject with which I ought to harass others, and therefore I shall be brief on it. A finger of each hand has been pouring out a hail of chalk-stones and liquid chalk; and the first finger, which I hoped exhausted, last week opened again and threw out a cascade of the latter, exactly with the effort of a pipe that bursts in the street: the gout followed, and has swelled both hand and arm; and this codicil will cost me at least three weeks. I must persuade myself, if I can, that these explosions will give me some repose; but there are too many chalk-eggs in the other fingers not to be hatched in succession.

I have had no occasion at least, my dear sir, to double my lamentation on your account. Mrs. Damer and Miss Campbell have sent Lady Ailesbury the most pleasing accounts of your health, and the warmest encomiums on your and your nephew's kindness to them. I must thrust myself into a share of the gratitude; for, with all their merit and your benevolence, I do not believe you forgot the pleasure you was giving me.

There are reports that the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are going to Rome, but we do not know it certainly. Our newspapers have been pleased twice lately to kill his Royal Highness; but though they murder characters and reputations, they cannot take away lives; and indeed they themselves are so lost to all credit, that even the first notification made no impression.

Though the Parliament has been some time opened, it does not furnish a paragraph. There have been three or four times some angry speeches, but no long debate or division. The Opposition seems very inactive, but promises some vivacity on Indian affairs. Mr. Eden's desertion has been the chief topic of politics, and on his subject the newspapers have been so profuse that I can make no additions to them.

Since I began this, I have received yours of the 28th past; and though your account of yourself is exceedingly welcome and pleasing, I am much grieved that your excellent nephews are leaving you: I am sure they cannot help it, for they have shown how much they prefer attending and saving you trouble. For trouble, I hope you will totally dispense with it: your age, indispostion, and fifty years of exertion of duties, benevolence, and attentions to all the world, demand and claim a quietus; and, if I have any weight with you, I enjoin your taking it out. If their RR. HH. of Gloucester pass through Florence, I do hope and beg that with all your public and private zeal you will not exert a strength you have not in doing honours; they, I am sure, will not expect it from you; and, when one's own health is at stake, dignities are a joke. When I am ill, I look on Royalties as I do when I see them on the stage, as pageants void of reality what signifies whether they are composed of velvet and ermine, or of buckram and tinsel? If death opens one's eyes to the emptiness of glories here, sickness surely ought at least to open one eye. Your sweet nature does not think so roughly as mine, and therefore I prescribe stronger doses to you, which I hope self-preservation will persuade you to follow. Mr. Dutens* was here yesterday, and talked to me for an hour on all your good qualities; and charmed me by describing how the people of Florence, as you pass along the streets, show you to one another with fondness and respect.

I am obliged to you for your accounts of the House of Albany;† but that extinguishing family can make no sensation here when we have other guess-matter to talk of in a higher and more flourishing race and yet were rumour-ay, much more than rumour, every voice in England-to be credited, the matter, somehow or other, reaches even from London to Rome. I know nothing but the buzz of the day, nor can say more upon it: if I send you a riddle, fame, or echo from so many voices, will soon reach you and explain the enigma; though I hope it is essentially void of truth, and that appearances rise from a much more common cause.

The swelling of my hand is much abated since I began to dictate this yesterday. The day has been so vernal, that my surgeon would

*A French Protestant clergyman, who had been employed in the embassy at Turin under Mr. Mackenzie and Lord Mountstuart, and author of several works. †The Pretender's family.

The connexion of the Prince of Wales with Mrs. Fitzherbert.

have persuaded me to take the air; but I am such a coward about relapses, that I would not venture. Adieu!

LETTER CCCCXLV.

Berkeley Square, March 16, 1786. YOUR short letter on losing your two amiable nephews gave me great pain for you, my dear sir. As Sir Horace generally hires post-winds, I expected him the next day: but as the snow had engaged the whole stable of east-winds for this last month, he is not arrived yet, nor Ginori's china neither, which ought to have been here in February; and which disappointment contributed to delay my thanks, though I can say already that

Tuis nunc Omnia plena

Muneribus.

Two additional causes have concurred in my silence: I had nothing new to tell you; and, till within these ten days, my poor lame and cold hands could not move a pen. Our second winter has been bitter; and, though my chalk-mines were exhausted for the present, I did not dare to stir out, nor have yet been abroad in a morning but three times; and yesterday we had a new codicil of snow. Our great roads, spacious and level as they are, are almost impassable.

London has been very calm, both politically and fashionably. Mr. Pitt lost a question, by the Speaker's vote only, on a large plan of fortifications which the Minister had adopted to please the Duke of Richmond. Most other debates roll on the affair of Mr. Hastings, who is black-washed by the Opposition, and is to be white-washed by the House of Commons. I do not know who is guilty or innocent; but I have no doubt but India has been blood-washed by our countrymen!

The present subject of the day comes from a country where there reigns as little equity, and more avowed barbarism, than in India. The hero is a Mr. Fitzgerald, grandson of Lord Hervey, and consequently nephew of his Eminence the Episcopal Earl of Bristol—nor is the nepotism unworthy of the uncle. England, as well as Ireland, has long rung with Fitzgerald's exploits, who has just committed murders that would be almost unparalleled, if a few years ago he had not attempted the life of his own father, who was defended by another son-and yet neither father nor brother were much better than the assassin. The particulars of the present tragedy are too long for a letter, and unnecessary, as they are all in the newspapers. By this time Fitzgerald is hanged, or rescued, or dead of his wounds; for the friends of the murdered broke into the prison, and gave Fitzgerald many wounds, but did not despatch him, as he has long worn