that family for their civilities to me. But how gracious the Princess has been to you! I am quite jealous of her dining with you : I remember what a rout there was to get her for half of half a quarter of an hour to your assembly.

The Bishop of London is dead; having, luckily for his family, as it proves, refused the archbishoprick.1 We owe him the justice to say, that though he had broke with my father, he always expressed himself most handsomely about him, and without any resentment or ingratitude.

Your brothers are coming to dine with me; your brother Gal. is extremely a favourite with me: I took to him for his resemblance to you, but am grown to love him upon his own fund.

The peace is still in a cloud: according to custom, we have hurried on our complaisance before our new friends were at all ready with theirs. There was a great Regency kept in town, to take off the prohibition of commerce with Spain: when they were met, somebody asked if Spain was ready to take off theirs?" Oh, Lord! we never thought of that!" They sent for Wall, and asked him if his court would take the same step with us? He said, "he believed they might, but he had no orders about it." However, we proceeded, and hitherto are bit.

Adieu! by the first opportunity I shall send you the two books of Houghton, for yourself and Dr. Cocchi. My Lord Orford is much mended: my uncle has no prospect of ever removing from his couch.

1 Dr. Edmund Gibson had been very intimate with Sir Robert Walpole, and was designed by him for archbishop after the death of Wake; but setting himself at the head of the clergy against the Quaker bill, he broke with Sir Robert and lost the archbishoprick, which was given to Potter; but on his death, the succeeding ministry offered it to Dr. Gibson. [The Doctor declined it, on account of his advanced age and increasing infirmities. He died on the 6th of February 1748.]

2 This means a meeting of the persons composing the Regency during the King's absence in Hanover.-D.

3 General Wall, the Spanish ambassador.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1748.

I SHALL write you a very short letter, for I don't know what business we have to be corresponding when we might be together. I really wish to see you, for you know I am convinced of what you say to me. It is few people I ask to come hither, and if possible, still fewer that I wish to see here. The disinterestedness of your friendship for me has always appeared, and is the only sort that for the future I will ever accept, and consequently I never expect any more friends. As to trying to make any by obligations, I have had such woful success, that, for fear of thinking still worse than I do of the world, I will never try more. But you are abominable to reproach me with not letting you go to Houghton : have not I offered a thousand times to carry you there? I mean, since it was my brother's: I did not expect to prevail with you before; for you are so unaccountable, that you not only will never do a dirty thing, but you won't even venture the appearance of it. I have often applied to you in my own mind a very pretty passage that I remember in a letter of Chillingworth; "you would not do that for preferment that you would not do but for preferment." You oblige me much in what you say about my nephews, and make me happy in the character you have heard of Lord Malpas;1 I am extremely inclined to believe he deserves it. I am as sorry to hear what a companion Lord Walpole has got: there has been a good deal of noise about him, but I had laughed at it, having traced the worst reports to his gracious mother, who is now sacrificing the character of her son to her aversion for her husband. If we lived under the Jewish dispensation, how I should tremble at my brother's leaving no children by her, and its coming to my turn to raise him up issue!

Since I gave you the account of the Duchess of Ireland's piked horns among the tombs of the Veres, I have found a

Eldest son of George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, and grandson of Sir Robert Walpole.

long account in Bayle of the friar, who, as I remember to have read somewhere, preached so vehemently against that fashion it was called Hennin, and the monk's name was Thomas Conecte. He was afterwards burnt at Rome for censuring the lives of the clergy. As our histories say that Anne of Bohemia introduced the fashion here, it is probable that the French learnt it from us, and were either long before they caught it, or long in retaining the mode; for the Duke of Ireland died in 1389, and Conecte was burnt at Rome in 1434. There were, indeed, several years between his preaching down Hennins and his death, but probably not near fiveand-forty years, and half that term was a long duration for so outrageous a fashion. But I have found a still more entertaining fashion in another place in Bayle, which was, the women wearing looking-glasses upon their bellies: I don't conceive for what use. Adieu! don't write any more, but come.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 6, 1748.

DEAR HARRY,

I AM sorry our wishes clash so much. Besides that I have no natural inclination for the Parliament, it will particularly disturb me now in the middle of all my planting; for which reason I have never inquired when it will meet, and cannot help you to guess—but I should think not hastilyfor I believe the peace, at least the evacuations, are not in so prosperous a way as to be ready to make any figure in the King's speech. But I speak from a distance; it may all be very toward: our ministers enjoy the consciousness of their wisdom, as the good do of their virtue, and take no pains to make it shine before men. In the mean time, we have several collateral emoluments from the pacification: all our milliners, tailors, tavern-keepers, and young gentlemen are tiding to France for our improvement in luxury; and as I foresee we shall be told on their return that we have lived in a total state of blindness for these six years, and gone

absolutely retrograde to all true taste in every particular, I have already begun to practise walking on my head, and doing every thing the wrong way. Then Charles Frederick has turned all his virtù into fireworks, and, by his influence at the ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over the Roman naumachia.

I am going to dinner with Lady Sophia Thomas' at Hampton Court, where I was to meet the Cardigans; but I this minute receive a message that the Duchess of Montagu2 is extremely ill, which I am much concerned for on Lady Cardigan's account, whom I grow every day more in love with; you may imagine, not her person, which is far from improved lately; but, since I have been here, I have lived much with them, and, as George Montagu says, in all my practice I never met a better understanding, nor more really estimable qualities: such a dignity in her way of thinking; so little idea of anything mean or ridiculous, and such proper contempt for both! Adieu! I must go dress for dinner, and you perceive that I wish I had, but have nothing to tell you.

' Daughter of the first Earl of Albemarle, and wife of General Thomas.-E.

2 She was mother to Lady Cardigan, and daughter to the great Duke of Marlborough.

3 Lady Mary Montagu, third daughter of John, Duke of Montagu, and wife of George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards created Duke of Montagu.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 20, 1748.

You are very formal to send me a ceremonious letter of thanks; you see I am less punctilious, for having nothing to tell you, I did not answer your letter. I have been in the empty town for a day: Mrs. Muscovy and I cannot devise where you have planted jasmine; I am all plantation, and sprout away like any chaste nymph in the Metamorphosis.

They say the old Monarch at Hanover has got a new mistress; I fear he ought to have got

Now I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten thousand pound prize; and the Violette, as it is said, Coventry for a husband. It is certain that at the fine masquerade he was following her, as she was under the Countess's arm, who, pulling off her glove, moved her wedding-ring up and down her finger, which it seems was to signify that no other terms would be accepted. It is the year for contraband marriages, though I do not find Fanny Murray's is certain. I liked her spirit in an instance I heard t'other night: she was complaining of want of money; Sir Robert Atkins immediately gave her a twenty pound note; she said, "D-n your twenty pound! what does it signify?" clapped it between two pieces of bread and butter, and ate it. Adieu! nothing should make me leave off so shortly but that my gardener waits for me, and you must allow that he is to be preferred to all the world.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 24, 1748.

I HAVE laughed heartily at your adventure of Milord Richard Onslow; it is an admirable adventure! I am not

'One Daniel Bets, a Dutchman or Fleming, who called himself my Lord Richard Onslow, and pretended to be the Speaker's son, having forged letters of credit and drawn money from several bankers, came to Florence, and was received as an Englishman of quality by Marquis Ric