rious a manner, after such tried services and repeated obligations, must have had the most abominable lies told him of me. I will indubitably take the first occasion that shall present itself of making my whole conduct towards him known, and that of his creatures. I care not a rush about his fortune, but I will not part with my character, which I prefer to all he has ; and had much rather lose the former, were it likely to come to me, than the latter.

I know no news—in fact I have been entirely taken up with this affair. The accession of fortune to my lord makes not the slightest change in my resolutions, it rather strengthens them; for I should despise myself if his additional wealth could make me stoop to flatter a madman.

P.S. Poor Lady Dick* is dead, and Mrs. Pitt; the latter in a madhouse.

LETTER CCCXLVII.

Strawberry Hill, Feb. 26, 1781.

An

I SHALL not weary you again with saying any more about my nephew. I have done with him! affair is going to take place that is not unconnected with him, and that gives me some satisfaction. Lord Walpole's eldest son, who at present stands in the light of heir-apparent to both branches of the family, and whom Lord O. is at least bound to my late uncle

* Wife of Sir John Dick, formerly consul at Leghorn. VOL. III.-NEW SERIES.

U

to make his heir in succession, is going to marry one of my numerous nieces, Lady Mary Churchill's younger daughter.* It is a match of love; she is a very fine girl, but without a shilling. Lord Walpole dislikes the match much, entirely on that last defect: but the son is a most honourable young man ; and the father, who is good-natured, has at last given his consent. Thus, if Lord O.'s madness and the villainy of his counsellors (and, I must add, his own want of principle) does not reverse what he promised, all the descendants of my father, the author of the greatness of the whole family, will not be deprived of his fortune. My sister Malpas's posterity, to whom it ought first to descend after my brother and me, will be defrauded; but, plundered as Houghton is, the possessors will still look up to the memory of its illustrious founder. But how weak are these visions about ancestors and descendants! and how extraordinarily weak am I to harbour them, when I see that a madman, a housemaid, and an attorney can baffle all the views Sir Robert himself had entertained! Could he foresee that his grandson would sell his collection of pictures; or that his grand-daughter would marry the King's brother?--Yet, if one excluded visions and attended only to the philosophy of reflection,—if one always recollected how transitory are all the glories in the imagination, how insipid, how listless would life be! Are fame or science more real? Would we

The marriage of the Honourable Horatio Walpole with Sophia, the daughter of Lady Mary Churchill, took place in July.-ED.

know what is passed, on the truth of what history can we depend? Would we step without the palpable world, what do we learn but by guess, or by that most barren of all responses, calculation? Is anything more lean than the knowledge we attain by computing the distance or magnitude of a planet? If we could know more of a world than its size, would not its size be the least part of our contemplation? mean is, that it matters not with what visions, provided they are harmless, we amuse ourselves; and that, so far from combating, I often love to entertain them. When one has outlived one's passions and pursuits, one should become inactive or morose if one's second childhood had not its rattles and fables like the first.

All I

I am the more willing to play with local and domestic baby-houses, as the greater scene is still more comfortless; though what is one's country but one's family on a larger scale? What was the glory of immortal Rome, but the family pride of some thousand families? All sublunary objects are but great and little by comparison. You and I have lived long enough to see Houghton and England emerge, the one from a country gentleman's house to a palace, the other from an island to an empire; and to behold both stripped of their acquisitions, and lamentable in their ruins. I will push the comparison between large and petty objects no farther, though both have compounded the present colour of my mind. I came hither yesterday, but left nothing new in town. The follies of

a great capital are only new in the persons of their favourites. The fanatic Lord George Gordon was the reigning hero a fortnight ago: the French dancers, Vestris and his son, have dethroned him, and are the reigning bubbles in the air at this moment. On Thursday was sevennight there was an opera for the sufferers by the late dreadful calamities at Barbadoes and Jamaica; the theatre was not half full. Last Thursday was the benefit of Vestris and son; the house could not receive or contain the multitudes that presented themselves. Their oblations amounted to fourteen hundred pounds.

You talk of Dutch prizes: a late storm has paid them in a moment, and thrown into their arms, at least driven and wrecked on their coast, one of our newly arrived Indiamen, worth two hundred thousand pounds. We consoled ourselves with the revolt of a large body of Washington's troops; but, when Sir Henry Clinton invited them to his standard, they impolitely bound his messengers hand and foot, and sent them to the Congress.* We are apt to sing Io Pœan too soon, and only show how much we want good news, by accepting everything as such; though the second report generally proves sinister.

In the January of this year, on the occasion above referred to, though smarting under their supposed wrongs, and surrounded by the dangers to which they had rendered themselves liable, the Insurgents not only rejected the favourable offers held out to them by Sir Henry Clinton, but, to show their irreconcilable enmity to the mother country, delivered up the unhappy men who had acted as his agents.-Ed.

LETTER CCCXLVIII.

March 13, 1781.

I HAVE just received your three lines of Feb. 28 by your courier, and hurry to reply, lest he should call for my answer before it is finished. I have indeed nothing to tell you that might not go through all the inquisitions and post-offices in Europe; for I can only send you my own vague conjectures or opinions. The guns are going off for the conquest of Eustatia by Rodney, which is just arrived.* It may be a good circumstance towards disposing the Dutch to peace; and perhaps to balance what your despatch brings, which is probably an attempt or design on Minorca. We imagine, too, that the grand fleet sailed yesterday at last, which is to relieve Gibraltar, and annihilate the combined squadrons.

Last week the stocks rose six per cent. in two days. It was given out that the Emperor and Empress had offered their mediation, and that all parties had accepted it, and that Sir Joseph Yorke was to depart on wings of winds to Vienna to conclude the peace.

* In February, the British fleet and army, under the commands of Sir George Rodney and General Vaughan, appearing suddenly before and surrounding the island of St. Eustatia, the Dutch governor, ignorant of the rupture between England and Holland, surrendered it; only recommending the town and inhabitants to British clemency. The wealth found in the place excited the astonishment of the conquerors. The value of the commodities was estimated at more than three millions sterling, and two hundred and fifty vessels of all descriptions were taken in the bay, besides six frigates.-ED.