of Bedford's houfes, the Seieyes, and the rest of the analytical legislators, and conftitution-venders, are quite as bufy in their trade of decompofing organization, in forming his Grace's vaffals into primary affemblies, national guards, first, fecond and third requifitioners, committees of research, conductors of the travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary tribunals, legislative hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary visitation, exactors of forced loans, and affeffors of the maximum. The din of all this smithery may fome time or other poffibly wake this noble Duke, and push him to an endeavour to fave fome little matter from their experimental philofophy. If he pleads his grants from the Crown, he is ruined at the outfet. If he pleads he has received them from the pillage of fuperftitious corporations, this indeed will stagger them a little, because they are enemies to all corporations, and to all religion. However, they will foon recover themselves, and will tell his Grace, or his learned council, that all fuch property belongs to the nation; and that it would be more wife for him, if he wishes to live the natural term of a citizen, (that is, according to Condorcet's calculation, fix months on an average,) not to pafs for an ufurper upon the national property. This is what the Serjeants at law of the Rights of Man, will fay to the puny apprentices of the common law of England. Is the Genius of Philofophy not yet known? You may as well think the Garden of the Tuilleries was well protected with the cords of ribbon infultingly ftretched by, the National Affembly to keep the fovereign canaille from intruding on the retirement of the poor King of the French, as that fuch flimfy cobwebs will ftand between the favages of the Revolution and their natural prey. Deep Philofophers are no triflers; brave Sans culottes are no formalifts. They will no more regard a Marquis of Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of Wooburn will not be more refpectable in their eyes than the Prior of Wooburn: they will make no difference between the Superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and of a Covent Garden of another defcription. They will not care a ruh whether his coat is long or fhort; whether the colour be purple or blue and buff. They will not trouble their heads, with what part of his head, his hair is cut from; and they will look with equal respect on a tonfure and a crop. Their only question will be that of their Legendre, or fome other of their legiflative butchers, How he cuts cuts up? how he tallows in the cawl or on the kidneys? Is it not a fingular phoenomenon, that whilft the Sans culotte Carcafe Butchers, and the Philofophers of the fhambles, are pricking their dotted lines upon his hide, and like the print of the poor ox that we fee in the shop windows at Charing Cross, alive as he is, and thinking po harm in the world, he is divided into rumps, and firloins, and brifkets, (and into all forts of pieces for roafting, boiling, and stewing, that all the while they are measuring him, his Grace is measuring me; is invidioufly comparing the bounty of the Crown with the deferts of the defender of his order, and in the fame moment fawning on those who have the knife half out of the fheath-poor innocent! Pleas'd to the laft, he crops the flow'ry food, No 'man lives too long, who lives to do with fpirit, and fuffer with refignation, what Providence pleases to command or inflict: but indeed they are sharp incommodities which befet old age. It was but the other day, that on putting in order fome things which had been brought here on my taking leave of London for ever, ever, I looked over a number of fine portraits, most of them of perfons now dead, but whose fociety, in my better days, made this a proud and happy place. Amongst these was the picture of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artift worthy of the fubject, the excellent friend of that excellent man from their earliest youth, and a common friend of us both, with whom we lived for many years without a moment of coldness, of peevishnefs, of jealoufy, or of jar, to the day of our final feparation. I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age; and I loved, and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very laft beat. It was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory, what part my fon in the early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious paffion with which he attached himself to all my connections, with what prodigality we both fquandered ourselves in courting almost every fort of enmity for his fake, I believe he felt, juft as I fhould have felt, fuch friendship on fuch an occafion. I took indeed of this honour, with feveral of the par first, first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom, but I was behind hand with none of them; and I am fure, that if to the eternal difgrace of this nation, and to the total annihilation of every trace of honour and virtue in it, things had taken a different turn from what they did, I fhould have attended him to the quarter-deck with no lefs good will and more pride, though with far other feelings, than I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended the justice that was done to his virtue. age, Pardon, my Lord, the feeble garrulity of which loves to diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. At my years we live in retro. fpect alone: and, wholly unfitted for the fociety of vigorous life, we enjoy, the best balm to all wounds, the consolation of friendship, in those only whom we have loft for ever. Feeling the lofs of Lord Keppel at all times, at no time did I feel it so much as on the first day when I was attacked in the House of Lords. Had he lived, that reverend form would have rifen in its place, and with a mild, parental reprehenfion to his nephew the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him that the favour of that gracious prince, who had honoured his virtues with |