which brags, like a bridegroom at threescore, of having forced two little fortresses that begged to be ravished, and of Arbuthnot having balked an inferior squadron. Methinks we Western powers should make peace, and not expose ourselves to the Vandals of the North, who overrun kingdoms in fewer weeks than it costs us years to take an island no bigger than half-a-crown.

The Parliament has quite left off business, though it has not shut up shop. In short, I hope your nephew writes to you, for I can find nothing to say; and where he does, is past my comprehension. If I trusted to my imagination, I should not wonder at its being worn out; but, as I have always piqued myself upon telling nothing but facts that at least I believe true, my eyes and ears are not gone; and, if there was an event no bigger than a grain of millet, I could easily know it; for those drag-nets, our newspapers, let nothing escape them, from whales to the most insignificant fry. But four days ago, the Public Advertiser informed the town that I have a field that wants draining at Strawberry Hill, which no doubt is very important intelligence! Antiquaries used to be ridiculous for recovering trifles from the havoc of time: now we have daily writers that sift the kennels, and save every straw that would be swallowed in the common sewer. Then think what thousands of loiterers we must have, who can buy and read such rubbish, in the midst of a civil war, and wars with the great nations! How contemptible we are! and, to our shame, these journals of our trifling are circulated all

over Europe! Don't you blush when you read them? And do you wonder that I have nothing to say? I have always reckoned my own letters very trifling and superficial; but two misses that correspond would be ashamed of communicating such foolish paragraphs as compose the daily lectures of the metropolis: and yet it is well when they are only foolish-more commonly they are brutal or scandalous.

Well I have been writing about nothing, and may as well finish. You see my silence is owing to no want of good will.

LETTER CCCLI.

Strawberry Hill, May 6, 1781. YES, you were in the right in your prophecy of the 21st of April, which I received yesterday. Darby has relieved Gibraltar, without opposition from the Spanish fleet, as we heard two days ago; nay, that he braved them in Cadiz. I think our conduct was not a little rash, but I am sure theirs has been as much the reverse. That of the French is not more explicable, and I can easily believe the King of Spain will resent it.

I am grieved to hear you complain of the gout, and the weakness it leaves in your hands. I wish you had adopted my bootikins. I have suffered terribly in my hands, and my fingers are full of chalkstones, and yet you see I write as well as ever but do not alarm yourself; your fits have been too rare and too slight

to disable you. One always fancies the weakness from a fit incurable; twenty years ago I imagined that I never should walk again.

Our affairs in the East I do believe are very bad ;* I am surprised they are not so everywhere but France, Spain, and Holland together, seem very feeble enemies. It seems to be a favourable moment for making peace, as it will be some honour to have kept them all at bay.

LETTER CCCLII.

Berkeley Square, May 16, 1781.

By not sending you the first rumours of Lord Cornwallis's victory over the American General, Greene, and by waiting for the confirmation, which is not yet come, though undoubted, I am able to balance accounts, though perhaps you did not desire Fortune to be so impartial. Yesterday we learnt that La Mothe Piquet, who had lain in ambush (no sea-term, I doubt,)

* On the 30th of April, Lord North had moved for a Committee of Secrecy, to enquire into the causes of the war in the Carnatic. An amendment to leave out the words "of secrecy," proposed by Mr. Fox, was warmly seconded by Mr. Burke. "We are called upon,' " he

said, "by every argument of morality and of policy, by every precept of religion and of duty, to make that justice which we reverence as public as the noon-day sun. It has been the sentiment and the sense of all ages. Let me fight with Jupiter,' says Ajax, 'but give me day-light. Let me have condemnation or let me have acquittal in the face of day.' The acquittal that is secret cannot be honourable; it leaves a stain even upon innocence. The condemnation that is secret cannot be just; it leaves a prejudice in favour of the criminal, injurious to the tribunal by whom he is tried." The amendment was negatived by 134 to 80.— Ed.

at the mouth of the Channel, had fallen in au beau milieu of our fleet from Eustatia, laden with the plunder of all nations, and has taken at least twenty of them.* The two men-of-war and two frigates that convoyed all that spoil took to their heels, and, to talk like an Irishman, are on Irish ground in one of their harbours. To-day we invented a re-capture by Darby, but he is not arrived. However, our loss of so much wealth will not comfort the King of Spain for the relief of Gibraltar, nor the Dutch for the loss of St. Eustatia; for I do not suppose that France will invite its allies to the partition, unless, like the lion in the fable, to see her seize all on different pleas,-I should say, prerogatives, to which nullum tempus, nullum plea

occurrant.

My military details are very brief, for I neither understand them, nor load my memory with them; and for your information it is better I should not, as the .quintessence is more easily digested, and can be less contested.

The Gazette of private news will lie in little room. The disconsolate widower, your friend Sir John Dick, is going to be married already; and, which is still more rash at his age, to a giantess. She is the eldest daughter of the late Sir John Clavering, and was ri

* With six sail of the line and two frigates, destined for some secret expedition, De la Motte Piquet fell in, on the 26th of April, with the St. Eustatia convoy, off the coast of Ireland, captured twenty of the merchant-ships, and returned safe with them to port. So anxious was he to secure his prizes before Admiral Darby's return, that he suffered Commodore Hotham, with six of the transports, to escape.-ED.

pened by the climate of India, like an orange to a shaddock. I suppose she intends to be a relict, and then to marry some young Gargantua.

Strawberry Hill, 17th.

I came hither this morning; but as I shall return to town to-morrow, when the post goes away, my letter will be in time, though a little ashamed of being so meagre. I doubt my despatches are grown very barren, though the field of battle is so extensive; but you must allow that our enemies are not very alert, and that we have some negative credit in not having lost more, after risking so much. As to domestic news, it is no wonder my details are lean. The House of Lords, who never fatigued themselves, are become as antiquated as their college, the Heralds' Office, and as idle. In the other House there are not many debates, and the unshaken majority renders those of little consequence. The disunion of the leaders increases this

* There had, a few days before, been a long debate in the House of Commons, on a motion of Sir George Savile for referring the Petition of the Delegated Counties for a Redress of Grievances to a Committee of the whole House. The subscribers to the petition were stated to be "freeholders" of the respective counties, not "delegates " of associations; several members having stated, that they could admit of no such characters in a constitutional point of view. Mr. Wilberforce, then in his twenty-second year, and who had been returned to the new Parliament, for Hull, thus wrote, on the 30th of April, to one of his constituents. "The papers would show you by what a trick the petition was laid upon the table. The petitioners were said to be private freeholders, and as such were gravely read over the names of Christopher Wyvill, Charles Fox, Richard Fitzpatrick, &c. They will, I have no doubt, proceed artfully; but let them once but put in their noses in their delegate capacity, and they will be hunted out as they deserve; and though I will not promise to open, I will accompany the hounds in full cry, with my Lord