pects. Can one believe the French negotiators are sincere, when their marshals are so false? What vexes me more is to hear you seriously tell your brother that you are always unlucky, and lose all opportunities of fighting. How can you be such a child? You cannot, like a German, love fighting for its own sake. No: you think of the mob of London, who, if you had taken Peru, would forget you the first lord mayor's day, or for the first hyæna that comes to town. How can one build on virtue and on fame too? When do they ever go together? In my passion, I could almost wish you were as worthless and as great as the king of Prussia? If conscience is a punishment, is not it a reward, too. Go to that silent tribunal, and be satisfied with its sentence.

I have nothing new to tell you. The Havannah is more likely to break off the peace than to advance it. We are not in a humour to give up the world; anzi, are much more disposed to conquer the rest of it. We shall have some cannonading, I believe, if we sign the peace. Mr. Pitt, from the bosom of his retreat, has made Beckford mayor. The duke of Newcastle, if not taken in again, will probably end his life as he began it—at the head of a mob. Personalities and abuse, public and private, increase to the most outrageous degree, and yet the town is at the emptiest. You may guess what will be the case in a month. I do not see at all into the storm: I do not mean that there will not be a great majority to vote any thing; but there are times when even majorities cannot do all they are ready to do. Lord Bute has certainly great luck, which is something in politics, whatever it is in logic: but whether peace or war, I would not give him much for the place he will have this day twelvemonth. Adieu! The watchman goes past one in the morning; and, as I have nothing better than reflections and conjectures to send you, I may as well go to bed.

of cannon employed, their execution was confined to about 400 paces; and not only the fire of the artillery, but the musquetry too, of the two opposite posts, was not intermitted a single instant for near fifteen hours. [Ed.]

To GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Strawberry-hill, October 14, 1762.

You will not make your fortune in the Admiralty at least ; your king's cousin is to cross over and figure in with George Grenville; the latter takes the Admiralty, lord Halifax the sealsstill, I believe, reserving Ireland for pocket-money; at least no new viceroy is named. Mr. Fox undertakes the House of Commons-and the peace-and the war-for if we have the first, we may be pretty sure of the second.

You see lord Bute totters; reduced to shift hands so often, it does not look like much stability. The campaign at Westminster will be warm. When Mr. Pitt can have such a mouthful as lord Bute, Mr. Fox, and the peace, I do not think that three thousand pounds a year will stop it. Well, I shall go into my old corner, under the window, and laugh; I had rather sit by my fire here; but if there are to be bullfeasts, one would go and see them, when one has a convenient box for nothing, and is very indifferent about the cavalier combatants. Adieu!

Yours ever.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry-hill, October 29, 1762.

You take my philosophy very kindly, as it was meant; but I suppose you smile a little in your sleeve to hear me turn moralist. Yet why should not I? Must every absurd young man prove a foolish old one? Not that I intend, when the latter term is quite arrived, to profess preaching; nor should, I believe, have talked so gravely to you, if your situation had not made me grave. Till the campaign is ended, I shall be in no humour to smile, For the war, when it will be over, I have no idea. The peace is a jack-o'-lanthorn that dances before one's

1 Lord Halifax was gazetted as one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state on the 14th October 1762, and the hon. George Grenville (late secretary) was gazetted as first lord, in the room of the earl of Halifax, on the 16th of that month. [Ed.]

eyes, is never approached, and at best seems ready to lead some folks into a woful quagmire.

4

As your brother was in town, and I had my intelligence from him, I concluded you would have the same, and therefore did not tell you of this last revolution, which has brought Mr. Fox again upon the scene. I have been in town but once since; yet learned enough to confirm the opinion I had conceived, that the building totters, and that this last buttress will but push on its fall. Besides the clamorous opposition already encamped, the world talks of another, composed of names not so often in mutiny. What think you of the great duke, and the little duke,' and the old duke,3 and the Derbyshire duke, banded together against the favourite? If so, it proves the court, as the late lord G **** wrote to the mayor of Litchfield, will have a majority in every thing but numbers. However, my letter is a week old before I wrote it: things may have changed since last Tuesday. Then the prospect was des plus gloomy.6 Portugal at the eve of being conquered-Spain preferring a diadem to the mural crown of Havannah-a squadron taking horse for Naples, to see whether king Carlos has any more private bowels than public, whether he is a better father than brother. If what I heard yesterday be true, that the parliament is to be put off till the 24th, it does not look as if they were ready in the green-room, and despised catcalls.

You bid me to send you the flower of brimstone, the best thing published in this season of outrage. I should not have waited for orders, if I had met with the least tolerable morsel. But this opposition ran stark mad at once, cursed, swore, called names, and has not been one minute cool enough to have a grain of wit. Their prints are gross, their papers scurrilous; indeed the authors abuse one another more than any body else. I have not seen a single ballad or epigram. They are as seriously dull as if the controversy was religious. I do not take in a paper

1 Of Cumberland. [Or.] 2 Of Bedford. [Or.] 3 Of Newcastle. [Or.] 4 Of Devonshire. [Or.] 5 John Stuart, earl of Bute. [Or.]

6 On the 29th October 1762, orders were given for 3,000 additional light troops to march to Portsmouth, and embark immediately for Lisbon, in consequence of a letter from the king of Portugal, under his own hand, in which he pressed in the most pathetic terms for further succour from the English court. [Ed.]

of either side, and being very indifferent, the only way of being impartial, they shall not make me pay till they make me laugh, I am here quite alone, and shall stay a fortnight longer, unless the parliament prorogued lengthens my holidays. I do not pretend to be so indifferent, to have so little curiosity, as not to go and see the duke of Newcastle frightened for his country-the only thing that never yet gave him a panic. Then I am still such a schoolboy, that though I could guess half their orations, and know all their meaning, I must go and hear Cæsar and Pompey scold in the Temple of Concord. As this age is to make such a figure hereafter, how the Gronoviuses and Warburtons would despise a senator that deserted the forum when the masters of the world harangued! For, as this age is to be historic, so of course it will be a standard of virtue too; and we, like our wicked predecessors, the Romans, shall be quoted, till our very ghosts blush, as models of patriotism and magnanimity. What lectures will be read to poor children on this æra! Europe taught to tremble, the great king humbled, the treasures of Peru diverted into the Thames, Asia subdued by the gigantic Clive! for in that age men were near seven feet high; France suing for peace at the gates of Buckingham-house, the steady wisdom of the duke of Bedford drawing a circle round the Gallic monarch, and forbidding him to pass it till he had signed the cession of America; Pitt, more eloquent than Demosthenes, and trampling on proffered pensions like I don't know who; lord Temple sacrificing a brother to the love of his country; Wilkes as spotless as Sallust, and the Flamen Churchill knocking down the foes of Britain with statues of the gods!-Oh! I am out of breath with eloquence and prophecy, and truth and lies: my narrow chest was not formed to hold inspiration! Į must return to piddling with my painters: those lofty subjects are too much for me. Good night!

Yours ever.

P.S. I forgot to tell you that Gideon, who is dead worth more than the whole land of Canaan, has left the reversion of all his milk and honey, after his son and daughter and their children, to the duke of Devonshire, without insisting on his taking the name, or even being circumcised.

7 Charles Churchill the poet. [Or.]

Lord Albermarle is expected home in December. My nephew Keppel is bishop of Exeter, not of the Havannah, as you may imagine, for his mitre was promised the day before the

news came.

MADAM,

TO THE RIGHT HON. LADY HERVEY.

Strawberry-hill, Oct. 31, 1762.

It is too late, I fear, to attempt acknowledging the honour madame de Chabot' does me; and yet, if she is not gone, I would fain not appear ungrateful. I do not know where she lives, or I would not take the liberty again of making your ladyship my penny-post. If she is gone, you will throw my note into the fire.

Pray, madam, blow your nose with a piece of flannel-not that I believe it will do you the least good-but, as all wise folks think it becomes them to recommend nursing and flannelling the gout, I imitate them; and I don't know any other way of lapping it up, when it appears in the person of a running cold. I will make it a visit on Tuesday next, and shall hope to find it tolerably vented,

I am, madam,

your ladyship's most faithful servant.

P.S. You must tell me all the news, when I arrive, for I know nothing of what is passing. I have only seen in the papers, that the cock and hen doves that went to Paris not having been able to make peace, there is a third dove3 just flown thither to help them.

8 Frederick Keppel, youngest brother of George, earl of Albemarle, who commanded at taking the Havannah, had married Laura, eldest daughter of sir Edward Walpole. [Or.]

1 Lady Mary Chabot, daughter of William, third lord and second earl of Stafford, and wife of Guy, count Rohan-Chabot died without issue in 1769, [Ed.]

The duke and duchess of Bedford. [Or.]

3 Mr. Hans Stanley. [Or.]