sworn a member of the Privy Council. He died suddenly at his house in Hertford Street of a fit of the gout, on the 4th of August, 1792. His remains were interred in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.]

ANTHONY MORRIS STORER, ESQ., TO GEORGE SELWYN.

DEAR GEORGE,

Monday, October, 1779.

As your great friends do not write, perhaps the little ones may be welcome. The Duke of Queensberry is gone to Newmarket, and Carlisle is returned to town. Lady Jersey is at home every evening, and that is the rendezvous for the stray people that are in town. General Burgoyne has resigned his employments, having first asked for a court-martial, or else to act in any capacity that the King chose in his service, both which were refused. His appointments amounted, as Crawford tells me, to 3,600l. per annum, and I suppose he is perfectly exact. His farewell speech, at the latter end of the last session, obliges him to make this resignation. His eloquence has always cost him very dear.

There is a ship arrived from New York, which brings advice that Clinton is not going to the South as he first intended. This looks at first as if he were

afraid of a visit from D'Estaing, but when this ship left New York there was no expectation of the French meaning to attack that place; on the contrary, there are reports that they had put back to Martinique. I do not learn, however, what Clinton means to do instead of going to the South. This Russian Ambassador that is arrived, I hope will stand our friend, and yet it is not supposed that Russia will assist us till we are beaten. Now, if St. John were minister, he would certainly wish for our defeat, that he might gain by it the assistance of the Russians, and so, by a round-about way, get at the point we wish for.

Give my love to Mie Mie, and remember me with the greatest respect to Miss Selwyn and Mrs. Webb. Believe me, dear George, yours, &c.

A. STORER.

[General Sir Henry Clinton, whose name is so intimately connected with the War of Independence in America, was the son of George, second son of Francis, sixth Earl of Lincoln. He was born about the year 1738; obtained a company in the first regiment of Guards, in 1758; and in 1775 was advanced to be a Major-General. The military genius which he displayed on various occasions during the American war, was considered by the English Government to be of so high an order that, in January, 1778, he was appointed to succeed Sir William Howe, as Commander-in-Chief in that country.

During this, and the two following years, he obtained various successes over the Americans; but neither was his genius qualified to cope with that of Washington, nor did he command a force numerically sufficient to overcome a great and united people, who possessed, moreover, the advantage of fighting on their own soil. After his return from America, at the close of the war, Sir Henry Clinton was appointed Governor of Limerick, and in 1793 Governor of Gibraltar, in the command of which latter fortress he died, on the 23rd of December, 1795.

THE REV. DR. WARNER TO GEORGE SELWYN.

Burwood, half-past one o'clock, Sunday night, or rather Monday morning, 18 Oct., in my chamber, after a very hard day's christening, when, with so much claret in my head, I ought not to attempt any thing, but I am sure I should not sleep at all, were it possible I could prevail on myself to go to bed without thanking you,

DEAR SIR, and your honour, for your two letters, most ample and kind, which I received here this morning; and if I do not thank you for them now, it must be a day later before you can receive my thanks, which I cannot bear, though I can only thank you for them.

I must set off by daybreak to go to Windsor to meet some friends, and shall then know if

I am to go to a place, a little beyond Reading, for two or three days, and from thence to Christchurch in Hampshire, for two or three more. This, I hardly think will be the case, but if it should, I shall return immediately to my cousin, George Warner's, at Milton near Abingdon, whence I shall have the pleasure to meet you at the time appointed at Oxford, and take care of the roasted jack, and the mutton cabobbed.

*

Such a dinner as we had to-day! it was well it was a christening! One of our company told us, that he had seen a letter from Lord Macartney, of terrible complaint. Some of D'Estaing's people, in his sight, cut his star from his breast, and stripped his ribbon over his ears. You remember what West told us at Aix of his captor's sitting at table with him in his own clothes. How delicate the French are! how generous! This beast of the Geraudan !t I suppose he regretted that he could not eat Macartney.

* Lord Macartney was at this period Governor of Granada, which island, with its insufficient garrison of one hundred and fifty regulars, and two or three hundred militia, had recently fallen an easy prey to the vast naval force under D'Estaing. Lord Macartney's biographer, Sir John Barrow, has done me the favour to inform me, that the story related in the text was utterly without foundation. On the contrary, Lord Macartney experienced the greatest civility from Count D'Estaing.

A wolf of an immense size, and irregular conformation which for some time was an object of the greatest terror in the Geraudan. The following account of this extraordinary monster appeared in 1764:

Pray thank Miss Selwyn very kindly for me for her letters of the 12th and 13th, which I will answer as soon as possible. And my little Queen! why will she, for the first time, be naughty? What better lesson to her head or her hand can she take, than to think of something to say to her poor Snail?

You will all give me your commands at Milton, near Abingdon.

THE REV. DR. WARNER TO GEORGE SELWYN.

Milton, near Abingdon, Wednesday 20th [Oct. 1779]. HERE am I got, and here shall I remain waiting commands from Matson, and hoping to

"A very strange description is given in the Paris Gazette of a wild beast that has lately appeared in the neighbourhood of Langagne, and the forest of Mercoire, and has occasioned great consternation. It has already devoured twenty persons, chiefly children, and particularly young girls; and scarce a day passes without some accident. The terror it occasions prevents the wood-cutters from working in the forest. Those who have seen him say he is much higher than a wolf, low before, and his feet armed with talons. His hair is reddish, his head large, and the muzzle of it shaped like that of a greyhound; his ears are small and straight, his breast wide and of a grey colour; his back streaked with black; and his mouth, which is large, is provided with a set of teeth so very sharp, that they have taken off several heads as clean as a razor could have done. He is of amazing swiftness; but when he aims at his prey, he couches so close to the ground, that he hardly appears to be bigger than