admire. It is your benevolence, sir, and your zeal for softening the manners of mankind; it is the doctrine of peace and amity which you preach, that have raised my esteem for you even more than the brightness of your genius. France may claim you in the latter light, but all nations have a right to call you their countryman du côté du cœur. It is on the strength of that connection that I beg you, sir, to accept the homage of,

Sir, your most obedient humble servant.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry-hill, August 9, 1768.

You are very kind, or else you saw into my mind, and knew that I have been thinking of writing to you, but had not a pen full of matter. True, I have been in town, but I am more likely to learn news here; where at least we have it like fish, that could not find vent in London. I saw nothing there but the ruins of loo, lady Hertford's cribbage, and lord B*** like patience on a monument, smiling in grief. He is totally ruined, and quite charmed. Yet I heartily pity him. To Virginia he cannot be indifferent: he must turn their heads somehow or other. If his graces do not captivate them, he will enrage them to fury; for I take all his douceur to be enamelled on iron.

My life is most uniform and void of events, and has nothing worth repeating. I have not had a soul with me, but accidental company now and then at dinner. Lady Holderness, lady Ancram, lady Mary Coke, Mrs. Ann Pitt, and Mr. Hume, dined here the day before yesterday. They were but just gone, when George Selwyn, lord Bolingbroke, and sir William Musgrave, who had been at Hampton-court, came in, at nine at night, to drink tea. They told me, what I was very glad to hear, and what I could not doubt, as they had it from the duke of Grafton himself, that bishop Cornwallis' goes to Canterbury.

The hon. Frederick Cornwallis, seventh son of Charles fourth baron Cornwallis, was translated from the see of Lichfield and Coventry to that of Canterbury, on the death of archbishop Secker. [Ed.]

I feared it would be *** * ; but it seems he had secured all the back-stairs, and not the great stairs. As the last head of the church had been on the midwife line, I suppose goody **** had hopes; and as he had been president of an atheistical club, to be sure Warburton did not despair. I was thinking it would make a good article in the papers, that three bishops had supped with Nancy Parsons at Vauxhall, in their way to Lambeth. I am sure * * * * would have been of the number; and ****, who told the duke of Newcastle, that if his grace had commanded the Blues at Minden, they would have behaved better, would make no scruple to cry up her chastity.

The king of Denmark comes on Thursday; and I go tomorrow to see him. It has cost three thousand pounds to newfurnish an apartment for him at St. James's; and now he will not go thither, supposing it would be a confinement. He is to lodge at his own minister Dieden's.

Augustus Hervey,3 thinking it the bel air, is going to sue for a divorce from the Chudleigh. He asked lord B **** t'other day, who was his proctor, as he would have asked for his tailor. The nymph has sent him word, that if he proves her his wife he must pay her debts; and she owes sixteen thousand pounds. This obstacle thrown in the way, looks as if she was not sure of being duchess of Kingston. The lawyers say, it will be no valid plea; it not appearing that she was Hervey's wife, and therefore the tradesmen could not reckon on his paying them.

Yes, it is my Gray, Gray the poet, who is made professor of modern history; and I believe it is worth 500l. a year. I knew nothing of it till I saw it in the papers; but believe it was Stonehewer that obtained it for him.

2 Thomas Secker, archbishop of Canterbury. [Or.]

3 Augustus John Hervey, second son of lord Hervey, whom Pope satirized, and grandson of John first earl of Bristol. His lordship married privately, on the 4th August 1744, the celebrated miss Chudleigh, who, in twenty-five years afterwards, 8th March 1769, publicly espoused Evelyn Pierrepoint duke of Kingston; for which offence her ladyship was impeached before the House of Peers, and the marriage declared illegal. She subsequently retired to the Continent, where she died in 1788. His lordship succeeded to the earldom as third earl, on the 18th March 1775, and dying without issue, 22d December 1779, was succeeded by his brother Frederick Augustus bishop of Derry. [Ed.]

Yes, again; I use a bit of alum half as big as my nail, once or twice a-week, and let it dissolve in my mouth. I should not think that using it oftener could be prejudicial. You should inquire; but as you are in more hurry than I am, you should certainly use it oftener than I do. I wish I could cure my lady Ailesbury, too. Ice-water has astonishing effect on my stomach, and removes all pain like a charm. Pray, though the one's teeth may not be so white as formerly, nor t'other look in perfect health, let the Danish king see such good specimens of the last age-though, by what I hear, he likes nothing but the very present age. However, sure you will both come and look at him not that I believe he is a jot better than the apprentices that flirt to Epsom in a Tim-whisky; but I want to meet you

in town.

'I don't very well know what I write, for I hear a caravan on my stairs, that are come to see the house; Margaret is chattering, and the dogs barking; and this I call retirement! and yet I think it preferable to your visit at Becket. Adieu! Let me know something more of your motions before you go to Ireland, which I think a strange journey, and better compounded for: and when I see you in town I will settle with you another visit to Park-place.

Yours ever.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, Esq.

Arlington-street, August 13, 1768.

I WONDERED, indeed, what was become of you, as I had offered myself to you so long ago, and you did not accept my bill; and now it is payable at such short notice, that as I cannot find Mr. Chute, nor know where he is, whether at your brother's or the Vine, I think I had better defer my visit till the autumn, when you say you will be less hurried, and more at leisure. I believe I shall go to Ragley the beginning of September, and possibly on to lord Strafford's, and therefore I may call on you, if it will not be inconvenient to you, on my return.

I came to town to see the Danish king.1

He is as diminutive

1 Christian the Seventh, king of Denmark, who had married, on the 8th November 1766, the princess Caroline Matilda, a posthumous child of Frederick prince of Wales, and sister of his majesty king George III. [Ed.]

as if he came out of a kernel in the Fairy Tales. He is not ill made, nor weakly made, though so small; and, though his face is pale and delicate, it is not at all ugly, yet has a strong cast of the late king, and enough of the late prince of * * * * to put one upon one's guard not to be prejudiced in his favour. Still he has more royalty than folly in his air; and, considering he is not twenty, is as well as one expects any king in a puppet-show to be. He arrived on Thursday, supped and lay at St. James's. Yesterday evening, he was at the queen's and Carlton-house, and at night at lady Hertford's assembly. He only takes the title of altesse, an absurd mezzotermine, but acts king exceedingly; struts in the circle like a cock-sparrow, and does the honours of himself very civilly. There is a favourite, too, who seems a complete jackanapes; a young fellow called Holke, well enough in his figure, and about three-and-twenty, but who will be tumbled down long before he is prepared for it. Bernsdorff, a Hanoverian, his first minister, is a decent sensible man; I pity him, though I suppose he is envied. From lady Hertford's they went to Ranelagh, and to-night go to the opera. There had like to have been an untoward circumstance: the last new opera in the spring, which was exceedingly pretty, was called I Viaggiatori Ridicoli, and they were on the point of acting it for this royal traveller.

I am sure you are not sorry that Cornwallis is archbishop. He is no hypocrite, time-server, nor high-priest. I little expected so good a choice. Adieu!

Yours ever.

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Strawberry-hill, Aug. 16, 1768.

As you have been so good, my dear lord, as twice to take notice of my letter, I am bound in conscience and gratitude to try to amuse you with any thing new. A royal visitor, quite fresh, is a real curiosity-by the reception of him, I do not think many more of the breed will come hither. He came from Dover in hackney-chaises; for somehow or other the master of the horse happened to be in Lincolnshire; and the king's coaches.

having received no orders, were too good subjects to go and fetch a stranger king of their own heads. However, as his Danish majesty travels to improve himself for the good of his people, he will go back extremely enlightened in the arts of government and morality, by having learned that crowned heads may be reduced to ride in a hired chaise.

By another mistake, king George happened to go to Richmond about an hour before king Christiern arrived in London. An hour is exceedingly long; and the distance to Richmond still longer so, with all the dispatch that could possibly be made, king George could not get back to his capital till next day at noon. Then, as the road from his closet at St. James's to the king of Denmark's apartment on t'other side of the palace is about thirty miles, which posterity, having no conception of the prodigious extent and magnificence of St. James's, will never believe, it was half an hour after three before his Danish majesty's courier could go, and return to let him know that his good brother and ally was leaving the palace in which they both were, in order to receive him at the queen's palace, which you know is about a million of snail's paces from St. James's. Notwithstanding these difficulties and unavoidable delays, Woden, Thor, Friga, and all the gods that watch over the kings of the North, did bring these two invincible monarchs to each others' embraces about half an hour after five the same evening. They passed an hour in projecting a family compact that will regulate the destiny of Europe to latest posterity: and then, the Fates so willing it, the British prince departed for Richmond, and the Danish potentate repaired to the widowed mansion of his royal motherin-law, where he poured forth the fullness of his heart in praises on the lovely bride she had bestowed on him, from whom nothing but the benefit of his subjects could ever have torn him.————And here let calumny blush, who has aspersed so chaste and faithful a monarch with low amours; pretending that he has raised to the honour of a seat in his sublime council, an artisan of Hamburgh, known only by repairing the soles of buskins, because that mechanic would, on no other terms, consent to his fair daughter's being honoured with majestic embraces. So victorious over his passions is this young Scipio from the Pole, that though on Shooter's-hill he fell into an ambush laid for him by an illustrious countess, of blood-royal herself, his majesty after