planatory, you will perceive that all is confusion: all parties broken to pieces, and the whole Opposition by tens and by twenties selling themselves for profit-power they get none! It is not easy to say where power resides at present: it is plain that it resides not in the King; and yet he has enough to hinder any body else from having it. His new governors have no interest with him. scarce any converse with him.

The Pretender's son is owned in France as Prince of Wales; the princes of the blood have been to visit him in form. The Duchess of Chateauroux is poisoned there; so their monarch is as ill-used as our most gracious King! How go your Tuscan affairs? I am always trembling for you, though I am laughing at every thing else. My father is pretty well: he is taking a preparation of Mrs. Stephens's medicine; but I think all his physicians begin to agree that he has no large

stone.

Adieu! my dear child: I think the present comedy cannot be of long duration. The Parliament is adjourned for the holidays: I am impatient to see the first division.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Jan. 4, 1745.

WHEN I receive your long letters, I am ashamed: mine are notes in comparison. How do you contrive to roll out your patience into two sheets? You certainly don't love me better than I do you; and yet if our loves were to be sold by the quire, you would have by far the more magnificent stock to dispose of. I can only say, that age has already an effect on the vigour of my pen; none on yours: it is not, I assure you, for you alone, but alone, but my ink is at low water-mark for all my acquaintance. My present shame arises from a letter of eight sides, of December 8th, which I received from you last post; but before I say a word to that, I must tell you that I have at

The Duchess died on the 8th of December. The Biog. Univ. says, that the rumour of her having been poisoned was altogether without foundation.-E. 2 It was Dr. Jurin's preparation.

Look

last received the cases; three with gesse figures, and one with Lord Conway's gun-barrels: I thought there were to be four, besides the guns; but I quite forget, and did not even remember what they were to contain. Am not I in your debt again? Tell me, for you know how careless I am. over your list, and see whether I have received all. There were four barrels, the Ganymede, the Sleeping Cupid, the model of my statue, the Museum Florentinum, and some seeds for your brother. But alas! though I received them in gross, I did not at all in detail; the model was broken into ten thousand bits, and the Ganymede short in two; besides some of the fingers quite reduced to powder. Rysbrach has undertaken to mend him. The little Morpheus arrived quite whole, and is charmingly pretty; I like it better in plaster than in the original black marble.

It is not being an upright senator to promise one's vote beforehand, especially in a money-matter; but I believe so many excellent patriots have just done the same thing, that I shall venture readily to engage my promise to you, to get you any sum for the defence of Tuscany-why, it is to defend you and my own country! my own palace in via di santo spirito,1 my own Princess épuisée, and all my family! I shall quite make interest for you: nay, I would speak to our new ally, and your old acquaintance, Lord Sandwich, to assist in it; but I could have no hope of getting at his ear, for he has put on such a first-rate tie-wig, on his admission to the admiraltyboard, that nothing without the lungs of a boatswain can ever think to penetrate the thickness of the curls. I think, however, it does honour to the dignity of ministers: when he was but a patriot, his wig was not of half its present gravity. There are no more changes made: all is quiet yet; but next Thursday the Parliament meets to decide the complexion of the session. My Lord Chesterfield goes next week to Holland, and then returns for Ireland.

The great present disturbance in politics is my Lady Granville's assembly; which I do assure you distresses the Pelhams infinitely more than a mysterious meeting of the States would,

1 The street in Florence where Mr. Mann lived.

and far more than the abrupt breaking up of the Diet at Grodno. She had begun to keep Tuesdays before her lord resigned, which now she continues with greater zeal. Her house is very fine, she very handsome, her lord very agreeable and extraordinary; and yet the Duke of Newcastle wonders that people will go thither. He mentioned to my father my going there, who laughed at him; Cato's a proper person to trust with such a childish jealousy! Harry Fox says, "Let the Duke of Newcastle open his own house, and see if all that come thither are his friends." The fashion now is to send cards to the women, and to declare that all men are welcome without being asked. This is a piece of ease that shocks the prudes of the last age. You can't imagine how my Lady Granville shines in doing honours; you know she is made for it. My lord has new furnished his mother's apartment for her, and has given her a magnificent set of dressingplate: he is very fond of her, and she as fond of his being so.

You will have heard of Marshal Belleisle's being made a prisoner at Hanover: the world will believe it was not by accident. He is sent for over hither: the first thought was to confine him to the Tower, but that is contrary to the politesse of modern war: they talk of sending him to Nottingham, where Tallard was. I am sure, if he is prisoner at large any where, we could not have a worse inmate! so ambitious and intriguing a man, who was author of this whole war, will be no bad general to be ready to head the Jacobites on any insurrection.1

I can say nothing more about young Gardiner, but that I don't think my father at all inclined now to have any letter written for him. Adieu!

'Belleisle and his brother, who had been sent by the King of France on a mission to the King of Prussia, were detained, while changing horses, at Elbengerode, and from thence conveyed to England; where, refusing to give their parole in the mode it was required, they were confined in Windsor Castle.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Jan. 14, 1745.

I HAVE given my uncle the letter from M. de Magnan; he had just received another from him at Venice, to desire his recommendation to you. His history is, first,-the Regent picked him up, (I don't know from whence, but he is of the Greek church,) to teach the present Duke of Orleans the Russ tongue, when they had a scheme for marrying him into Muscovy. At Paris Lord Waldegrave1 met with him, and sent him over hither, where they pensioned him, and he was to be a spy, but made nothing out; till the King was weary of giving him money, and then they dispatched him to Vienna, with a recommendation to Count d'Uhlefeldt, who, I suppose, has tacked him upon the Great Duke. My uncle says, he knows no ill of him; that you may be civil to him, but not enter into correspondence with him: you need not; he is of no use. Apropos to you; I have been in a fright about you; we were told that Prince Lobkowitz was landed at Harwich; I did not like the name; and as he has been troublesome to you, I did not know but he might fancy he had some complaints against you. I wondered you had never mentioned his being set out; but it is his son, a travelling boy of twenty; he is sent under the care of an apothecary and surgeon.

The Parliament is met: one hears of the Tory Opposition continuing, but nothing has appeared yet; all is quiet. Lord Chesterfield is set out for the Hague: I don't know what ear the States will lend to his embassy, when they hear with what difficulty the King was brought to give him a parting audience; and which, by a watch, did not last five-and-forty seconds. The Granville faction are still the constant and only countenanced people at court. Lord Winchilsea, one of the disgraced, played at court on Twelfth-night, and won: the King asked him next morning, how much he had for his

'James, first Earl of Waldegrave, ambassador at Paris, K. G. He died in 1741.-D.

own share?1 He replied, "Sir, about a quarter's salary." I liked the spirit, and was talking to him of it the next night at Lord Granville's: "Why, yes," said he, "I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your father; I don't think he will dislike it." My Lady Granville gives a ball this week, but in a manner a private one, to the two families of Carteret and Fermor and their intimacies: there is a fourth sister, Lady Juliana, who is very handsome, but I think not so well as Sophia: the latter thinks herself breeding.

I will tell you a very good thing: Lord Baltimore will not come into the admiralty, because in the new commission they give Lord Vere Beauclerc the precedence to him, and he has dispersed printed papers with precedents in his favour. A gentleman, I don't know who, the other night at Tom's coffeehouse, said, "It put him in mind of Penkethman's petition in the Spectator, where he complains, that formerly he used to act second chair in Dioclesian, but now was reduced to dance fifth flower-pot."

The Duke of Montagu has found out an old pennyhistory-book, called the Old Woman's Will of RatcliffeHighway, which he has bound up with his mother-in-law's, Old Marlborough,3 only tearing away the title-page of the latter.

My father has been extremely ill this week with his disorder: I think the physicians are more and more persuaded that it is the stone in his bladder. He is taking a preparation of Mrs. Stevens's medicine, a receipt of one Dr. Jurin, which we began to fear was too violent for him: I made his doctor angry with me, by arguing on this medicine, which I never could comprehend. It is of so great violence, that it is to split a stone when it arrives at it, and yet it is to do no damage to all the tender intestines through which it must

Those who play at court on Twelfth-night, make a bank with several people.

2 Lady Juliana Fermor, married in 1751 to Thomas Penn, Esq. (son of William Penn, the great legislator of the Quakers) one of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. He died in 1775, and Lady Juliana in 1781. -E.

? The Duchess of Marlborough's will was published in a thin octavo volume.-D.