war, I have a mind to try my skill in foretelling peace. 'Tis sure I wish it most fervently.

Last week I was alarmed with a calamity nearer to my heart than politics. General Conway broke his arm by a fall. But I have been with him, and he is in the most favourable way possible, and has not had the smallest degree of fever.

You must reckon this short letter the second part of my last, which was short too; or as the beginning of my next, for, if ever I get my ring, I shall certainly write again to thank you, though I should have nothing else to say. I could have made this longer, but I do not like to entertain every foreign post-office with what they would not dislike.

LETTER CCCXXXVII.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 7, 1780.

PART the second behold already-for I have received the gem, which from ignorance I called a ring, and beg its pardon: it is much too large for so little an appellation, and is most beautiful too, and of exquisite sculpture. All this makes matters worse, for, the finer it is, the more I am ashamed; and therefore cannot thank you half so much as it deserves. Yet I will be very grateful, upon condition of its never having a successor. You must tell me what the connoisseurs have baptized it. Is it an Apollo or an Amazon? A handsome young god and a heroine approach so much

to the boundaries of the sexes, that they are not easily discriminated in so small an area. Mr. Morrice has fairly excused his delay. After he had put to sea, they apprehended a privateer; on which he sent back his baggage to Ostend, and with it his most valuable treasures. My gem has escaped all these perils, and arrived like the lost sheep. You cannot imagine how the Caligula, and the Bianca Capello, and Benvenuto's coffer, and the Castiglione, and all your presents, embraced and hugged it, and inquired after you. The newcomer is lodged in a glass-case in my tribune, over against Caligula.

As I wrote to you but two days ago-nay, my letter would leave London but to-night,-I have no news to add however, I may have; for this will not go hence till Tuesday morning, to be ready for that night's mail. -But I was so impatient to tell you the cameo is safe, and that your munificence is not thrown away entirely, that I could not help beginning my letter now, though the rest of my paper must depend on the charity of accident and events: and, if they will not assist it, I do not care,―go it shall; I will not owe you a moment's gratitude that I can pay. Nay, I will heap coals of fire on my own head; for all your gifts shall be entered in the printed catalogue of my collection as your presents, and then whoever reads it will cry, "Why, had he no shame ? "Oh, yes, a vast deal; and this is one of his ways of doing penance.

Oct. 9th.

Since I wrote the above, I have heard from Paris of

the death of my dear old friend Madame du Deffand, whom I went so often thither to see. It was not quite unexpected, and was softened by her great age,—eightyfour,-which forbad distant hopes; and, by what I dreaded more than her death, her increasing deafness, which, had it become, like her blindness, total, would have been living after death. Her memory only began to impair; her amazing sense and quickness, not at all. I have written to her once a-week for these last fifteen years, as correspondence and conversation could be her only pleasures.* You see that I am the most faithful letter-writer in the world-and, alas! never see those I am so constant to! One is forbidden common-place reflections on these misfortunes, because they are common-place; but is not that, because they are natural? But your never having known that dear old woman is a better reason for not making you the butt of my concern.

Lord George Gordon has just got a neighbour-I believe, not a companion; for state prisoners are not allowed to be very sociable. Laurens, lately President of the Congress, has been taken by a natural son

*Madame du Deffand died on the 24th of September, at Paris, and was buried, pursuant to her own directions, in the plainest manner, in her parish church of S. Sulpice. The whole of her manuscripts, papers, letters, and books, she left to Horace Walpole; her favourite dog, Tonton, was also sent over to him, at her especial desire. In her last letter to him, which is dated the 22nd of August, only five weeks before her death, she thus strikingly describes her condition :-" Je suis d'une faiblesse et d'un abattement excessifs: ma voix est éteinte; je ne puis me soutenir sur mes jambes ; je ne puis me donner aucun mouvement ; j'ai le cœur enveloppé : j'ai de la peine à croire que cet état ne m'annonce une fin prochaine. Je n'ai pas la force d'en être effrayée; et ne vous devant revoir de ma vie, je n'ai rien à regretter.”—ED.

of the last Lord Albemarle,* and brought to England, to London, to the Tower. He was going Ambassador to Holland, and his papers are captured too. I should think they would tell us but what we learnt a fortnight ago; and (which is more wonderful, what we would not believe till a fortnight ago) that there is an end of our American dream! Perhaps they will give us back a cranny in exchange for their negotiator.

I go again to-morrow to see General Conway, and hope to find him out of bed; and I finish my letter, that I may not run into meditations on what is uppermost in my mind,-mortality and its accidents!

At night.

I have just heard some news that you will like to hear, and which will make you hold up your head again a little vis-à-vis de M. de Barbantane. An express arrived to-day from Lord Cornwallis, who with two

* The following is from a letter written by Admiral Keppel, on the 11th, to the Marquis of Rockingham:-" Just before bed-time, Captain George Keppel surprised me with his appearance. I learnt from him that he had come home express from his admiral; that he had taken a packet-boat conveying Mr. Laurens, once President of the Congress in America, to Holland. The captain told me that he had taken out of the water (which had failed of sinking) a very large bag of papers, which he had brought home for the King's Ministers. He had been very civil to his prisoner, who, after his bad luck in being taken, found out that he had fallen into the hands of a moderate young man, and had no difficulty in talking with him. He told Captain Keppel that he should not answer any questions put to him by Ministers. The unfortunate gentleman is confined in the Tower." The capture of Mr. Laurens, or rather the recovery of the papers which had been thrown overboard, led to the discovery of a commercial treaty about to be entered into between Amsterdam and the American colonies. This induced our Government to remonstrate, and finally, on the 20th of December, to declare war against Holland. See Life, vol. ii. p. 293.-ED.

thousand men has attacked General Gates in Carolina at the head of seven thousand, and entirely defeated him, killed nine hundred, and taken one thousand prisoners; and there has since been a little codicil, of all which you will see the particulars in the to-morrow's Gazette. But it is very late, and this must go to town early in the morning. I allow you to triumph, though Gates is my godson, and your namesake.

LETTER CCCXXXVIII.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 2, 1780.

IF the word New Parliament did not impose a sort of duty on me,—at least, if you would not expect it,

-I think I should scarce write to you yet, for I have nothing to tell you but that il ne valoit pas la peine de changer. There are several new members, but no novelty in style or totality of votes. The Court may have what number it chuses to buy. It has nominated a new Speaker, Mr. Cornwall.* Sir Fletcher, who never haggles with shame, published his own disgrace, and de

* Mr. Cornwall was proposed by Lord George Germain, and Sir Fletcher Norton by Mr. Dunning. On a division the numbers were, for the former 203, for the latter 134. Mr. Wilberforce, who had been returned at the general election for Hull, gave his first vote in Parliament against the re-election of Sir Fletcher to the Chair of the House. In his Conversational Memoranda there is this entry :-" When they were all talking of Sir Fletcher's health requiring his retirement, Rigby came into the House, and said with his ordinary bluntness, 'Don't tell me about health, he has flown in the King's face, and we won't have him.""-ED.