I mean your kin, is not! I am sure he is not your friend ;-well, he has had an assembly, and he would write all the cards himself, and every one of them was to desire he's company and she's company, with other curious pieces of orthography. Adieu, dear George; I wish you a merry farm, as the children say at Vauxhall. My compliments to your sisters. Yours ever.

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO GEORGE
MONTAGU, ESQ.

DEAR GEORGE, Arlington Street, July 13, 1745. WE are all Cabob'd and Caeofogoed, as my Lord D- -h says. We who formerly, you know, could any one of us beat three Frenchmen, are now so degenerated that three Frenchmen can evidently beat one Englishman. Our army is running away, all that is left to run, for half of it is picked up by three or four hundred at a time. In short, we must step out of the high pantoufles that were made by those cunning shoemakers at Poitiers and Ramillies, and go clumping about, perhaps, in wooden ones. My lady Hervey, who you know dotes upon every thing French, is charmed with the hope of these new shoes, and has already bespoke herself a pair of pigeon wood. How did the tapestry at Blenheim look? Did it glow with victory, or did all our glories look overcast?

I remember a very admired sentence in one of my lord Chesterfield's speeches, when he was

haranguing for this war; with a most rhetorical transition, he turned to the tapestry in the House of Lords, and said, with a sigh, he feared there were no historical looms at work now! Indeed, we have reason to bless the good patriots, who have been for employing our manufacturers so historically. The countess of that wise earl, with whose two expressive words I began this letter, says, she is very happy now that my lord had never a place upon the coalition, for then all this bad situation of our affairs would have been laid upon him.

Now I have been talking of remarkable periods in our annals, I must tell you what my lord Baltimore thinks one. He said to the prince t'other day, "Sir, your royal highness's marriage will be an area in English history."

If it were not for the life that is put into the town now and then by very bad news from abroad, one should be quite stupified. There is nobody left but two or three solitary regents, and they are always whisking backwards and forwards to their villas; and about a dozen antediluvian dowagers, whose carcasses have miraculously resisted the wet, and who every Saturday compose a very reverend catacomb at my old lady Stafford's. She does not take money at the door for showing them, but you pay twelve pence a piece under the denomination of card money. Wit and beauty indeed remain in the persons of Lady Townshend and Lady Caroline Fitzroy; but such is the want of taste of this age, that the former is very often forced to wrap up her wit in plain

English before it can be understood; and the latter is almost as often obliged to have recourse to the same artifices to make her charms be taken notice of.

Of beauty I can tell you an admirable story: one Mrs. Comyns, an elderly gentlewoman, has lately taken a house in St. James's Street; some young gentlemen went there t'other night.— 'Well, Mrs. Comyns, I hope there won't be the same disturbances here that there were at your other house in Air Street.'-' Lord, sir, I never had any disturbances there; mine was as quiet a house as any in the neighbourhood, and a great deal of good company came to me: it was only the ladies of quality that envied me.'-' Envied you! why, your house was pulled down about your ears.'' O dear, sir! don't you know how that happened?'-' No; pray how?'-'Why, dear sir, it was my lady "" who gave ten guineas to the mob to demolish my house, because her ladyship fancied I got women for Colonel C -y.'

My dear George, don't you delight in this story? If poor Harry comes back from Flanders, I intend to have infinite fun with his prudery about this anecdote, which is full as good as if it was true. I beg you will visit Mrs. Comyns when you come to town; she has infinite humour. Adieu, dear George, yours ever,

HOR. WALPOLE.

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO THE RIGHT HON. W. PITT.

Nov. 19, 1759.

SIR, ON my coming to town I did myself the honour of waiting on you and Lady Hester Pitt, and though I think myself extremely distinguished by your obliging note, I should be sorry to have given you the trouble of writing it, if it did not lend me a very pardonable opportunity of saying what I much wished to express, but thought myself too private a person, and of too little consequence, to take the liberty to say. In short, sir, I was eager to congratulate you on the lustre you have thrown on this country; I wished to thank you for the security you have fixed to me of enjoying the happiness I do enjoy. You have placed England in a situation in which it never saw itself, a task the more difficult, as you had not to improve but to recover. In a trifling book, written two or three years ago, I said (speaking of the name in the world the most venerable to me), "sixteen unfortunate and inglorious years, since his removal, have already written his eulogium." It is but justice to you, sir, to add, that that period ended when your administration began. Sir, don't take this for flattery; there is nothing in your power to give that I would accept,-nay, there is nothing I could envy, but what I believe you would scarce offer me-your glory. This may sound very vain and insolent, but consider, sir, what a monarch is a man who wants nothing; consider how he looks down on one who is only the most illustri

ous man in Britain. But, sir, freedoms apart, insignificant as I am, probably it must be some satisfaction to a great mind like yours, to receive incense when you are sure there is no flattery blended with it: and what must any Englishman be that could give you a minute's satisfaction, and would hesitate!

Adieu, sir,-I am unambitious, I am disinterested-but I am vain. You have by your notice, uncanvassed, unexpected, and at the period when you certainly could have the least temptation to stoop down to me, flattered me in the most agreeable manner. If there could arrive a moment, when you could be nobody, and I any body, you cannot imagine how grateful I would be. In the mean time permit me to be, as I have been ever since I had the honour of knowing you, sir, your obedient humble servant,

HOR. WALPOLE.

THE HON. HORACE WALPOLE TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, November 13, 1760. EVEN the honeymoon of a new reign don't produce events every day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and kissing hands. The chief difficulty is settled; Lord George yields the mastership of the horse to Lord Huntingdon, and removes to the great wardrobe, from whence Sir Thomas Robinson was to have gone into Ellis's place, but he is saved. The city, however, have a mind to be out of humour; a paper