Parliament opens: everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to be composed of adamant. November passes with two or three self-murders, and a new play. Christmas arrives: everybody goes out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The Parliament meets again, taxes are warmly opposed; and some citizen makes his fortune by a subscription. The Opposition languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peerage or two. Ranelagh opens, and Vauxhall: one produces scandal, and t' other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and so the year comes again to October.

FUNERAL OF GEORGE II.

(From Letter to George Montagu, Esq.)

Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying t' other night, I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it is, the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The Prince's chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that chamber. The procession through a line of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute-guns, all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day, -the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly and with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with

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some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or would; the yeomen of the guard were crying for help, oppressed by the great weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly and blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter "Man that is born of a woman was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial. The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland, heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances. He had a dark-brown Adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleasant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it nearly two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must himself so soon descend: think how unpleasant a situation! He bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance. This grave scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle. He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel, and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with his glass to spy who was or was not there, spying with one hand and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round, found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down into the vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with lights. Clavering, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit up with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order.

THE ENGLISH CLIMATE.

(From Letter to George Montagu, Esq.)

STRAWBERRY HILL, June 15th, 1768.

No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it re

quires ten years to dig you out again when you once begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first, when do your Duke and Duchess (the Argylls) travel to the North? I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see their house comfortably when they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-andforty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days. In short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening. Zephyr is a northeast wind, that makes Damon button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry, This is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and making our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again.

There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hot-house in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there is very little merit in it. I had seen so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it is most indifferent to me who is in or who is out, or which is set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it. That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the

undoing it? I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.

I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady Hinchinbrook; I heard a very bad account of her when I was last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle letters no longer; therefore, good-night!

P. S. I was in town last week and found Mr. Chute still confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more rheumatism than gout.

THE AMERICAN WAR.

(From Various Letters.)

There

THE Cabinet have determined on a civil war. is food for meditation! Will the French you converse with be civil and keep their countenances? Pray remember it is not decent to be dancing at Paris, when there is civil war in your own country. You would be like the country squire, who passed by with his hounds when the battle of Edgehill began. (1775, January 22.)

I forgot to tell you that the town of Birmingham has petitioned the Parliament to enforce the American Acts, that is, make war; for they have a manufacture of swords and muskets. (1775, January 27.)

The war with our Colonies, which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has on human affairs. A war on our own trade is popular! Both Houses are as eager for it as they were for conquering the Indies - which acquits them a little of rapine, when they are as glad of what will impoverish them as of what they fancied was to enrich them. (1775, February.)

You will not be surprised that I am what I always was, a zealot for liberty in every part of the globe, and consequently that I most heartily wish success to the Americans. They have hitherto not made one blunder; and the Administration have made a thousand, besides two capital ones, of first provoking, and, then uniting the Colonies. The latter seem to have as good heads as hearts, as we want both. (1775, September 7.)

IZAAK WALTON.

WALTON, IZAAK, an English biographer and miscellaneous writer, known as the "father of angling;" born at Stafford, August 9, 1593; died at Winchester, December 15, 1683. He went to London at an early age, where he entered into the business of "sempster," or linen-draper, and at fifty retired with a competency, and passed the remaining forty years of his life in easy quiet. His principal works are "Life of Dr. Donne " (1640); "Life of Sir Henry Wotton" (1651); "The Complete Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation" (1653), one of the great English classics; "Life of Richard Hooker" (1662); "Life of George Herbert" (1670); "Life of Bishop Sanderson" (1678), and two letters on "The Distempers of the Times" (1680).

IN PRAISE OF FISHING.

(From "The Complete Angler.")

PISCATOR. Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you. I confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to my recreation, calm and quiet; we seldom take the name of God into our mouths, but it is either to praise him or pray to him: if others use it vainly in the midst of their recreations, so vainly as if they meant to conjure, I must tell you it is neither our fault nor our custom; we protest against it. But pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make a "watery discourse, so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what I mean to

say.

And now for the Water, the element that I trade in. The Water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, Gen. i. 2, the element which God commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction. Moses, the great lawgiver and chief