the cessions made to him by the Queen, who, you see, is to be made observe the treaty of Worms, though we do not. Parma and Placentia are to be given to Don Philip; Dunkirk to remain as it is, on the land-side; but to be Utrecht'd1 again to the sea. The Pretender to be renounced with all his descendants, male and female, even in stronger terms than by the quadruple alliance; and the cessation of arms to take place in all other parts of the world, as in the year 1712. The contracting powers agree to think of means of making, the other powers come into this treaty, in case they refuse.

This is the substance; and wonderful it is what can make the French give us such terms, or why they have lost so much blood and treasure to so little purpose! for they have destroyed very little of the fortifications in Flanders. Monsieur de St. Severin told Lord Sandwich, that he had full powers to sign now, but that the same courier that should carry our refusal, was to call at Namur and Bergen-op-zoom, where are mines under all the works, which were immediately to be blown up. There is no accounting for this, but from the King's aversion to go to the army, and to Marshal Saxe's fear of losing his power with the loss of a battle. He told Count Flemming, the Saxon minister, who asked him if the French were in earnest in their offer of peace, "Il est vrai, nous demandons la paix comme des lâches, et ne pouvons pas l'obtenir."

Stocks rise; the ministry are in high spirits, and peu s'en faut but we shall admire this peace as our own doing! I believe two reasons that greatly advanced it are, the King's wanting to go to Hanover, and the Duke's wanting to go into a salivation.

We had last night the most magnificent masquerade that ever was seen: it was by subscription at the Haymarket: every body who subscribed five guineas had four tickets. There were about seven hundred people, all in chosen and very fine dresses. The supper was in two rooms, besides those for the King and Prince, who, with the foreign ministers, had tickets given them.

That is, the works destroyed, as they were after the treaty of Utrecht.-D.

You don't tell me whether the seal of which you sent me the impression, is to be sold: I think it fine, but not equal to the price which you say was paid for it. What is it? Homer or Pindar?

I am very miserable at the little prospect you have of success in your own affair: I think the person1 you employed has used you scandalously. I would have you write to my uncle; but my applying to him would be very far from doing you service. Poor Mr. Chute has got so bad a cold that he could not go last night to the masquerade. Adieu! my dear child! there is nothing well that I don't wish you, but my wishes are very ineffectual!

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

May 18, 1748.

HERE I am with the poor Chutehed, who has put on a shoe but to-day for the first time. He sits at the receipt of custom, and one passes most part of the day here; the other part I have the misfortune to pass en Pigwiggin. The cere mony of dining is not over yet: I cannot say that either the Prince or the Princess look the comelier for what has happened. The town says, my Lady Anson has no chance for looking different from what she did before she was married: and they have a story of a gentleman going to the Chancellor to assure him, that if he gave his daughter to the Admiral, he would be obliged hereafter to pronounce a sentence of dissolution of the marriage. The Chancellor replied, that his daughter had been taught to think of the union of the soul, not of the body: the gentleman then made the same confidence to the Chancelloress, and received much such an answer: that her daughter had been bred to submit herself to the will of God. I don't at all give you all this for true; but there is an ugly

Mr. Stone, the Duke of Newcastle's private secretary.-E.

2 John Chute, Esq. of the Vine in Hampshire.

3 Lord Anson had married, on the 25th of April, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's eldest daughter, an ingenious woman and a poetess. She died without issue in 1760.-E.

circumstance in his voyages of his not having the curiosity to see a beautiful captive, that he took on board a Spanish ship. There is no record of Scipio's having been in Doctors' Commons. I have been reading these voyages, and find them very silly and contradictory. He sets out with telling you, that he had no soldiers sent with him but old invalids without legs or arms; and then in the middle of the book there is a whole chapter to tell you what they would have done if they had set out two months sooner, and that was no less than conquering Peru and Mexico with this disabled army. At the end there is an account of the neglect he received from the Viceroy of Canton, till he and forty of his sailors put out a great fire in that city, which the Chinese and five hundred firemen could not do, which he says proceeded from their awkwardness; a new character of the Chinese! He was then admitted to an audience, and found two hundred men at the gate of the city, and ten thousand in the square before the palace, all new dressed for the purpose. This is about as true as his predecessor Gulliver * * * out the fire at Lilliput. The King is still wind-bound; the fashionable bon mot is, that the Duke of Newcastle has tied a stone about his neck and sent him to sea. The city grows furious about the peace; there is one or two very uncouth Hanover articles, besides a persuasion of a pension to the Pretender, which is so very ignominious, that I don't know how to persuade myself it is true. The Duke of Argyle has made them give him three places for life of a thousand and twelve hundred a-year for three of his court, to compensate for their making a man president of the session against his inclination. The Princess of Wales has got a confirmed jaundice, but they reckon her much better. Sir Harry Calthrop is gone mad: he walked down Pall Mall t'other day with his red riband tied about his hair; said he was going to the King, and would not submit to be blooded till they told him the King commanded it.

I went yesterday to see Marshal Wade's house, which is selling by auction: it is worse contrived on the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty of the front. My Lord

Chesterfield said, that to be sure he could not live in it, but intended to take the house over against it to look at it. It is literally true, that all the direction he gave my Lord Burlington was to have a place for a large cartoon of Rubens that he had bought in Flanders; but my lord found it necessary to have so many correspondent doors, that there was no room at last for the picture; and the Marshal was forced to sell the picture to my father: it is now at Houghton. 1

As Windsor is so charming, and particularly as you have got so agreeable a new neighbour at Frogmore, to be sure you cannot wish to have the prohibition taken off of your coming to Strawberry Hill. However, as I am an admirable Christian, and as I think you seem to repent of your errors, I will give you leave to be so happy as to come to me when you like, though I would advise it to be after you have been at Roel, which you would not be able to bear after my paradise. I have told you a vast deal of something or other, which you will scarce be able to read; for now Mr. Chute has the gout, he keeps himself very low and lives upon very thin ink. My compliments to all your people. Yours ever.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, May 26, 1748.

GOOD b'ye to you! I am going to my Roel too. I was there yesterday to dine, and it looked so delightful, think what you will, that I shall go there to-morrow to settle, and shall leave this odious town to the ***, to the regency, and the dowagers; to my Lady Townshend, who is not going to Windsor, to old Cobham, who is not going out of the world yet, and to the Duchess of Richmond, who does not go out with

Walpole gives the following account of this picture, in his description of Houghton:-" Meleager and Atalanta, a cartoon, by Rubens, larger than life; brought out of Flanders by General Wade: it being designed for tapestry, all the weapons are in the left hand of the figure. For the story, see Ovid's Metamorphoses, lib. 3. When General Wade built his house in Burlington Garden, Lord Burlington gave the design for it."-E.

2 A house of Mr. Montagu's in Gloucestershire.

her twenty-fifth pregnancy: I shall leave too more disagreeable Ranelagh, which is so crowded, that going there t'other night in a string of coaches we had a stop of six-and-thirty minutes. Princess Emily, finding no marriage articles for her settled at the congress, has at last determined to be old and out of danger; and has accordingly ventured to Ranelagh, to the great improvement of the pleasures of the place. The Prince has given a silver cup to be rowed for, which carried every body upon the Thames; and afterwards there was a great ball at Carlton House. There have two good events happened at that court: the town was alarmed t'other morning by the firing of guns, which proved to be only from a large merchantman come into the river. The city construed it into the King's return, and the peace broke; but Chancellor Bootle and the Bishop of Oxford, who loves a labour next to promoting the cause of it, concluded the Princess was brought to bed, and went to court upon it. Bootle, finding the Princess dressed, said, "I have always heard, Madam, that women in your country have very easy labours; but I could not have believed it was so well as I see." The other story is of Prince Edward. The King, before he went away, sent Stainberg to examine the Prince's children in their learning. The Baron told Prince Edward, that he should tell the King what great proficiency his Highness had made in his Latin, but that he wished he would be a little more perfect in his German grammar, and that would be of signal use to him. The child squinted at him, and said, "German grammar! why any dull child can learn that." There, I have told you royalties enough!

My Pigwiggin dinners are all over, for which I truly say grace. I have had difficulties to keep my countenance at the wonderful clumsiness and uncouth nicknames that the Duke has for all his offspring: Mrs. Hopefull, Mrs. Tiddle, Puss, Cat, and Toe, sound so strange in the middle of a most formal banquet! The day the peace was signed, his grace could find nobody to communicate joy with him: he drove home, and bawled out of the chariot to Lady Rachael, "Cat! Cat!" She ran down, staring over the balustrade; he cried, "Cat!