Monday night, 31st. I have this moment received yours of the 13th by your third courier, with those inclosed for your nephew and mine. I imagine the former is not in town, but I shall send it to his house; the other never is, but the mere hours of his waiting; but I have sealed, directed, and sent it to the post. The monument* will not be dear, but it is ugly enough in conscience. Yet, what signifies that, or the blunders? Over the arms is a baron's coronet, I suppose to imply my Lady's barony of Clinton; yet it should not be there, for the shield containing only the arms of Walpole and some of the quarterings, makes it represent only a Baron Walpole ; that is, my brother before my father's death. To signify Lady Clinton, it ought to be her arms quartering Clinton in a shield of pretence in the middle of her husband's arms, or rather in the same manner, but in a lozenge, as a widow; for the barony did not descend to her in my brother's life. But all this would be algebra to a Florentine sculptor; nor do I wish to have it clear for whom it was designed,-nor, if known, will any English herald or antiquary probably ever see it. My Lord, in this past month, determined on an expedition to visit his new domains in Dorset and Devon shires, and his seats at Piddletown and Heanton were ordered to be aired and prepared for his reception, and Lucas was dispatched to the latter (in Devonshire) to notify his arrival, and invite the neighbouring gentry to the ceremony of inauguration. The * The one intended for Lady Orford, at Leghorn.—ED. Earl followed, arrived at Piddletown (in Dorsetshire), changed his mind, returned to his hovel at Eriswell, and left Lucas to tell the other county how perfectly his Lordship is in his senses. I have not found a tittle of news in town; therefore I shall send this away by the post to-morrow, and write again by the return of your courier, if I hear any novelty. Pray, whose is the portrait that my Lord has so tenderly redemanded? The Countess certainly did not love any picture of our family enough to lug it behind her chaise to Italy, as Lady Pomfret did Lady Bell Finch's, for which you remember she had a new frame made in every town she stopped at. Perhaps it is his grandpapa Jack Harris's, or Mr. Sewallis Shirley's, the latter of whom had some claim to be registered on the future monument. In my Lord's fit of posthumous piety he may have grown fond, too, of stepgrandfathers and fathers, though he has not yet acquired affection for those who passed for his real progenitors. After Doctors' Commons had lain fallow for a year or two, it is again likely to bear a handsome crop of divorces. Gallantry in this country scorns a mask. Maids only intrigue, wives elope. C'est l'étiquette. Two young married ladies are just gone off-no, this is a wrong term for one of them; for she has just come to town, and drives about London, for fear her adventure should be forgotten before it comes into the House of Lords. It is a Lady Worseley, sister of Lady Harrington. On hearing she was gone away with a Major Blisset, another young gentleman said, at St. James's coffee-house, "I have been very secret; but now, I think, I am at liberty to show this letter." It was couched in these laconic and sentimental terms: "I have loved Windham, I did love Graham, but now I love only you, by God." I am a little angry for my nephew, Lord Cholmondeley, who has been most talked of for her, and who is thought to have the largest pretensions to her remembrance. If you see him, you may tell him I resent her forgetfulness; we believe him in Italy. Adieu! LETTER CCCLXVII. Berkeley Square, Jan. 17, 1782. I HAVE received yours of the 29th of last month, and will answer it in this as well as I can; though I have but one hand at liberty, having been confined these ten days by the gout in the other and its elbow. I am not void of all hopes that the fit will proceed no farther; and then, though my prison may last as much longer as it has done, I shall think myself very fortunate, for it will be the shortest fit I have had these ten years; nor am I young or fond enough of the world to pant after much liberty beyond that of my limbs. There has been no public event since my last, but the French purchase of St. Eustatia from our Governor of it.* What shame there is in that transaction the buyers, I suppose, will make over to the seller, unless the Opposition borrow part of it for the Ministers. The Parliament is to meet next week, and the town expects that, before that, Lord George Germain's resignation will be notified-not that I tell you he has resigned; but such is the universal persuasion; and the last symptom on which conjectures are formed is, that his family have said he would not be at the Queen's * Secure in their inaccessible situation, the British garrison at St. Eustatia conducted themselves in so negligent a manner, that the Marquis de Bouille was induced to make an attempt to regain it. Having sailed from Martinico, he succeeded in landing, with much loss and difficulty, about four hundred men during the night of the 26th of November. Trusting to the negligence of his enemy, and the consequent probability of a surprise, the Marquis pushed forward with the utmost expedition. A division of the garrison, who were exercising in a field, mistook a body of Irish troops, which attended the French commander, for their comrades. A volley of small-arms, fired almost at their breasts, and which killed several men, was the first knowledge the soldiers at exercise had of their danger. Colonel Cockburne, the Governor, who had been taking an early ride, returning at the instant of the surprise, was made prisoner. The island was lost in a few minutes, and without the expense of a man to the enemy. The Marquis behaved with great magnanimity. A considerable sum of money, which the Governor claimed as his property, was restored to him; but a very large sum, being a remainder of the produce of the late sales, and said to be the property of Admiral Rodney and General Vaughan, became a prize to the victors. The moderation and clemency of the Marquis upon this occasion was warmly eulogized by Mr. Burke in the House of Commons. "Two British commanders," he said, "plunder every unfortunate inhabitant of the island; the Marquis de Bouille restores, as far as he can, to every man his property." In a letter to a friend, of the 24th of January, Sir Samuel Romilly makes the following reflections on the re-taking of St. Eustatia "What infamy! The Governor is too prudent undoubtedly ever to return to England; he must either drag on the load of his life in France, in the receipt (for he cannot know the enjoyment) of the wages of his treachery, or be more actively infamous, and take up arms against his country. I am birth-day to-morrow. Your nephew, I conclude, will now come to town, and send you fresher and more authentic Parliamentary intelligence than I can. We hear with some surprise of the Emperor's very rapid suffocation of nunneries.* Do not the monks regret their helpmates, and tremble for themselves? If Cæsars could tremble, I should ask if Cæsar had no apprehension for himself. Are all the Jesuits extinct that dispatched poor Ganganelli ?+ Is not the Vatican hung with sackcloth? I suppose the next thing we wrong, perhaps, to speak as if his treason were proved; but can it possibly be doubted? How unfortunate we are in our commanders; some cowards, some traitors, others brave indeed, but the slaves of party, or the more abject slaves of avarice! The Ministers have often availed themselves of some circumstances which seemed for the moment fortunate, to boast that we had Providence on our side. What will they say now? Never did the hand of Providence appear more conspicuously than at present. We took St. Eustatia like pirates, violating in the persons and property of the prisoners the law of nations; but we did not profit by our guilt. The effects seized were retaken on their passage home, and the island itself is lost in the most disgraceful manner. We encouraged treachery in the rebel Arnold, but all we gained by it was empty promises; the same treachery is retaliated on us, and what we lose by it is the only pledge we had, by which we might have purchased back the friendship of the Dutch." Life, vol. i. p. 199.-ED. The reform of the German monasteries was begun in the year 1781, by the Emperor Joseph II. The hasty manner in which he set about it, without sufficient regard to the necessities and feelings of the older inmates, who were turned adrift into the world with only small pensions, and in some cases even without any, occasioned considerable dissatisfaction at the time.-ED. + In April 1774, Clement XIV., the principal event of whose pontificate was the suppression of the order of Jesuits, was taken dangerously ill, under suspicious symptoms, and lingered on till the following September, when he died. Rumours were spread abroad that poison had been administered to him; but the post-mortem examination of the body, and the report of his physicians, did not countenance the suspicion, to which Walpole appears to have given credit.-ED. VOL. III.-NEW SERIES. 2 A |