don was forced to retreat, leaving a garrison in the castle, which has since yielded without firing a gun. Their numbers are now reckoned at seven thousand: old Lord Lovat1 has carried them a thousand Frasers. The French continually drop them a ship or two: we took two, with the Duke of Berwick's brother on board: it seems evident that they design to keep up our disturbances as long as possible, to prevent our sending any troops to Flanders. Upon the prospect of the rebellion being at an end, the Hessians were ordered back, but luckily were not gone; and now are quartered to prevent the rebels slipping the Duke, (who is marching to them,) and returning into England. This counter-order was given in the morning, and in the evening came out the Gazette, and said the Hessians are to go away. This doubling style in the ministry is grown so characteristic, that the French are actually playing a farce, in which harlequin enters, as an English courier, with two bundles of dispatches fastened to his belly and his back: they ask him what the one is? "Eh! ces sont mes ordres."-And what the other? "Mais elles sont mes contre-ordres."

We have been a little disturbed in some other of our politics, by the news of the King of Sardinia having made his peace: : I think it comes out now that he absolutely had concluded one with France, but that the haughty court of Spain rejected it: what the Austrian pride had driven him to, the Spanish pride drove him from. You will allow that our affairs are critically bad, when all our hopes centre in that honest monarch, the King of Prussia—but so it is; and I own I see nothing that can restore us to being a great nation but his interposition. Many schemes are framed, of making him Stadtholder of Holland, or Duke of Burgundy in Flanders, in lieu of the Silesias, or altogether, and that I think would follow-but I don't know how far any of these have been carried into propositions.

1 Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, a man of parts, but of infamous character. He had the folly, at the age of eighty, to enter into the rebellion, upon a promise from the Pretender, that he would make him Duke of Fraser. He was taken, tried, and beheaded.-D.

I see by your letters that our fomentations of the Corsican rebellion have had no better success than the French tampering in ours-for ours, I don't expect it will be quite at an end, till it is made one of the conditions of peace, that they shall give it no assistance.

The small-pox has been making great havoc in London; the new Lord Rockingham,1 whom I believe you knew when only Thomas Watson, is dead of it, and the title extinct. My Lady Conway has had it, but escaped.

2

My brother is on the point of finishing all his affairs with his countess; she is to have fifteen hundred per year; and her mother gives her two thousand pounds. I suppose this will send her back to you, added to her disappointments in politics, in which it appears she has been tampering. Don't you remember a very foolish knight, one Sir Bourchier Wrey?3 Well, you do: the day Lord Bath was in the Treasury, that one day! she wrote to Sir Bourchier at Exeter, to tell him that now their friends were coming into power, and it was a brave opportunity for him to come up and make his own. terms. He came, and is lodged in her house, and sends about cards to invite people to come and see him at the Countess of Orford's. There is a little fracas I hear in their domestic; the Abbé-Secretary has got one of the maids with child. I have seen the dame herself but once these two months, when she came into the Opera at the end of the first act, fierce as an incensed turkey-cock, you know her look, and towing after her Sir Francis Dashwood's new wife, a poor forlorn Presbyterian prude, whom he obliges to consort with her.

Adieu! for I think I have now told you all I know. I am

1 Thomas Watson, third Earl of Rockingham, succeeded his elder brother Lewis in the family honours in 1745, and died himself in 1746. The earldom extinguished upon his death; but the Barony of Rockingham devolved on his kinsman, Thomas Watson Wentworth, Earl of Malton, who was soon afterwards created Marquis of Rockingham. See antè, p. 91.

2 Lady Isabella Fitzroy, daughter of Charles, Duke of Grafton, and wife of Francis, Lord Conway, afterwards Earl of Hertford.

3 Sir Bourchier Wrey of Tawstock, in Devonshire, the fifth baronet of the family. He was member of parliament for Barnstaple, and died in 1784.-D.

Widow of Sir Richard Ellis.

very sorry that you are so near losing the good Chutes, but I cannot help having an eye to myself in their coming to England.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, March 21, 1746.

I HAVE no new triumphs of the Duke to send you: he has been detained a great while at Aberdeen by the snows. The rebels have gathered numbers again, and have taken Fort Augustus, and are marching to Fort William. The Duke complains extremely of the loyal Scotch; says he can get no intelligence, and reckons himself more in an enemy's country, than when he was warring with the French in Flanders. They profess the big professions wherever he comes, but, before he is out of sight of any town, beat up for volunteers for rebels. We see no prospect of his return, for he must stay in Scotland while the rebellion lasts; and the existence of that seems too intimately connected with the being of Scotland, to expect it should soon be annihilated.

We rejoice at the victories of the King of Sardinia, whom we thought lost to our cause. To-day we are to vote subsidies to the Electors of Cologne and Mentz. I don't know whether they will be opposed by the Electoral Prince ;1 but he has lately erected a new opposition, by the councils of Lord Bath, who has got him from Lord Granville: the latter and his faction act with the court.

I have told you to the utmost extent of my political knowledge; of private history there is nothing new. Don't think, my dear child, that I hurry over my letters, or neglect writing to you; I assure you I never do, when I have the least grain to lap up in a letter: but consider how many chapters of correspondence are extinct: Pope and poetry are dead! Patriotism has kissed hands on accepting a place: the Ladies O. and T.2 have exhausted scandal both in their persons and conversations: divinity and controversy are grown good Christians,

The Prince of Wales.

2 Orford and Townshend.-D.

say their prayers and spare their neighbours; and I think even self-murder is out of fashion. Now judge whether a correspondent can furnish matter for the common intercourse of the post!

Pray what luxurious debauch has Mr. Chute been guilty of, that he is laid up with the gout? I mean, that he was, for I hope his fit has not lasted till now. If you are ever so angry, I must say, I flatter myself I shall see him before my eagle, which I beg may repose itself still at Leghorn, for the French privateers have taken such numbers of our merchantmen, that I cannot think of suffering it to come that way. If you should meet with a good opportunity of a man-of-war, let it comeor I will postpone my impatience. Adieu!

P. S. I had sealed my letter, but break it open, to tell you that an account is just arrived of two of our privateers having met eight-and-twenty transports going with supplies to the Brest fleet, and sunk ten, taken four, and driven the rest on shore.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, March 28, 1746.

I DON'T at all recollect what was in those two letters of mine, which I find you have lost: for your sake, as you must be impatient for English news, I am sorry you grow subject to these miscarriages; but in general, I believe there is little of consequence in my correspondence.

The Duke has not yet left Aberdeen, for want of his supplies; but by a party which he sent out, and in which Mr. Conway was, the rebels do not seem to have recovered their spirits, though they have recruited their numbers; for eight hundred of them fled on the first appearance of our detachment, and quitted an advantageous post. As much as you know, and as much as you have lately heard of Scotch finesse, you will yet be startled at the refinements that nation have made upon their own policy. Lord Fortrose,' whose father was

' William Mackenzie, fifth Earl of Seaforth, the father of Kenneth

in the last rebellion, and who has himself been restored to his fortune, is in Parliament and in the army: he is with the Duke his wife and his clan with the rebels. The head of the Mackintosh's is acting just the same part. The clan of the Grants, always esteemed the most Whig tribe, have literally in all the forms signed a neutrality with the rebels. The most honest instance I have heard, is in the town of Forfar, where they have chosen their annual magistrates; but at the same time entered a memorandum in their town-book, that they shall not execute their office "till it is decided which King is to reign."

The Parliament is adjourned for the Easter holidays. Princess Caroline is going to the Bath for a rheumatism. The Countess, whose return you seem so much to dread, has entertained the town with an excellent vulgarism. She happened one night at the Opera to sit by Peggy Banks,1 a celebrated beauty, and asked her several questions about the singers and dancers, which the other naturally answered, as one woman of fashion answers another. The next morning Sir Bourchier Wrey sent Miss Banks an opera-ticket, and my lady sent her a card, to thank her for her civilities to her the night before, and that she intended to wait on her very soon. Do but think of Sir B. Wrey's paying a woman of fashion for being civil to my Lady O.! Sure no apothecary's wife in a market-town could know less of the world than these two people! The operas flourish more than in any latter years; the composer is Gluck, a German: he is to have a benefit, at which he is to play on a set of drinking-glasses, which he modulates with water: I think I have heard you speak of having seen some such thing.

Lord Fortrose, had been engaged in the rebellion of 1715, and was attainted. He died in 1740. In consequence of his attainder, his son never assumed the title of Seaforth, but continued to be called Lord Fortrose, the second title of the family. He was member of parliament in 1741 for the burghs of Fortrose, &c. and in 1747 and 1754, for the county of Ross. He died in 1762. His only son, Kenneth, was created Viscount Fortrose, and Earl of Seaforth in Ireland.-D.

1 Margaret, sister of John Hodgkinson Banks, Esq.; married, in 1757, to the Hon. Henry Grenville, fifth son of the Countess Temple, who was appointed governor of Barbadoes in 1746, and ambassador to the Ottoman Porte in 1761.-D.