pertness, and come hither to the College of Arms for a certificate. There was a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept mistress. As I conclude he will suffer, and wish him no ill, I don't care to have his idea, and am almost single in not having been to see him. Lord Mountford, at the head of half White's, went the first day: his aunt was crying over him: as soon as they were withdrawn, she said to him, knowing they were of White's, "My dear, what did the lords say to you? have you ever been concerned with any of them?"-Was not it admirable? what a favourable idea people must have of White's !-and what if White's should not deserve a much better! But the chief personages who have been to comfort and weep over this fallen hero are Lady Caroline Petersham and Miss Ashe: I call them Polly and Lucy, and asked them if he did not sing

"Thus I stand like the Turk with his doxies around."

Another celebrated Polly has been arrested for thirty pounds, even the old Cuzzoni. The Prince of Wales bailed herwho will do as much for him?

I am much obliged to you for your intended civilities to my liking Madame Capello; but as I never liked any thing of her, but her prettiness, for she is an idiot, I beg you will dispense with them on my account: I should even be against your renewing your garden assemblies: you would be too good to pardon the impertinence of the Florentines, and would very likely expose yourself to more: besides, the absurdities which English travelling boys are capable of, and likely to act or conceive, always gave me apprehensions of your meeting with disagreeable scenes-and then there is another animal still more absurd than Florentine men or English boys, and that is, travelling governors, who are mischievous into the bargain, and whose pride is always hurt because they are sure of its never being indulged. They will not learn the world, because they are sent to teach it, and as

The last song in the Beggar's Opera. 2 A celebrated Italian singer.-D.

they come forth more ignorant of it than their pupils, take care to return with more prejudices, and as much care to instill all theirs into their pupils. Don't assemble them!

Since I began my letter, the King of Portugal's death is contradicted for the future, I will be as circumspect as one of your Tuscan residents was, who being here in Oliver's time, wrote to his court, "Some say the Protector is dead; others that he is not: for my part, I believe neither one nor t'other."

Will you send me some excellent melon seeds? I have a neighbour who shines in fruit, and have promised to get him some: Zatteè, I think he says, is a particular sort. I don't know the best season for sending them, but you do, and will oblige me by some of the best sorts.

I suppose you know all that execrable history that occasioned an insurrection lately at Paris, where they were taking up young children to try to people one of their colonies, in which grown persons could never live. You have seen too, to be sure, in the papers the bustle that has been all this winter about purloining some of our manufacturers to Spain. I was told to-day that the informations, if they had had rope given them, would have reached to General Wall.1 Can you wonder? Why should Spain prefer a native of England to her own subjects, but because he could and would do us more hurt than a Spaniard could? a grandee is a more harmless animal by far than an Irish Papist. We stifled this evidence: we are in their power; we forgot at the last peace to renew the most material treaty! Adieu! You would not forget a material treaty.

The Spanish ambassador to the court of London.-E.

2 General Richard Wall was of Irish parents, but I believe not born in these dominions. [He came to England in 1747, on a secret mission from Ferdinand, and continued as ambassador at the British court till 1754, when he was recalled, to fill the high office of minister for foreign affairs.]

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1750.

HERE, my dear child, I have two letters of yours to answer. I will go answer them; and then, if I have anything to tell you, I will. I accept very thankfully all the civilities you showed to Madame Capello on my account, but don't accept her on my account: I don't know who has told you that I liked her, but you may believe me, I never did. For the Damers,' they have lived much in the same world that I do. He is moderately sensible, immoderately proud, self-sufficient, and whimsical. She is very sensible, has even humour, if the excessive reserve and silence that she draws from both father and mother would let her, I may almost say, ever show it. You say, "What people do we send you!" I reply, "What people we do not send you!" Those that travel are reasonable, compared with those who can never prevail on themselves to stir beyond the atmosphere of their own whims. I am convinced that the opinions I give you about several people must appear very misanthropic; but yet, you see, you are generally forced to own at last that I did not speak from prejudice: but I won't triumph, since you own that I was in the right about the Barrets. I was a little peevish with you in your last, when I came to the paragraph where you begin to say "I have made use of all the interest I have with Mr. Pelham." I concluded you was proceeding to say, "to procure your arrears;" instead of that, it was, to make him serve Mr. Milbank — will you never have done obliging people? do begin to think of being obliged. I dare say Mr. Milbank is a very pretty sort of man, very sensible of your attentions, and who will never forget them till he is past the Giogo.3 You recommend him to me: to show you that I have not naturally an inclination

1 Joseph Damer, afterwards created Baron Milton in Ireland, married Lady Caroline Sackville, daughter of Lionel, Duke of Dorset.

* Thomas Pelham, of Stanmer; a young gentleman who travelled with Mr. Milbank.

The highest part of the Apennine between Florence and Bologna.

to hate people, I am determined not to be acquainted with him, that I may not hate him for forgetting you. Mr. Pelham will be a little surprised at not finding his sister1 at Hanover. That was all a pretence of his wise relations here, who grew uneasy that he was happy in a way that they had not laid out for him: Mrs. Temple is in Sussex. They looked upon the pleasure of an amour of choice as a transient affair; so, to make his satisfaction permanent, they propose to marry him, and to a girl he scarce ever saw!

I suppose you have heard all the exorbitant demands of the heralds for your pedigree! I have seen one this morning, infinitely richer and better done, which will not cost more: it is for my Lady Pomfret. You would be entertained with all her imagination in it. She and my lord both descend from Edward the First, by his two Queens. The pedigree is painted in a book: instead of a vulgar genealogical tree, she has devised a pine-apple plant, sprouting out of a basket, on which is King Edward's head; on the leaves are all the intermediate arms: the fruit is sliced open, and discovers the busts of the Earl and Countess, from whence issue their issue! I have had the old Vere pedigree lately in my hands, which derives that house from Lucius Verus; but I am now grown to bear no descent but my Lord Chesterfield's, who has placed among the portraits of his ancestors two old heads, inscribed Adam de Stanhope and Eve de Stanhope; the ridicule is admirable. Old Peter Leneve, the herald, who thought ridicule consisted in not being of an old family, made this epitaph, and it was a good one, for young Craggs, whose father had been a footman, "Here lies the last who died before the first of his family!" Pray mind, how I string old stories to-day! This old Craggs,3 who was

1 Mrs. Temple, widow of Lord Palmerston's son: she was afterwards married to Lord Abergavenny.

Frances, second daughter of Henry Pelham, chancellor of the exchequer. Mr. Thomas Pelham married Miss Frankland.

3 The two Craggs, father and son, were successively members of the administration during the reign of George the First, in the post of secretary of state. The father died in 1718, and the son in 1720; and Pope consecrated a beautiful epitaph to the memory of the latter.

They are

angry with Arthur More, who had worn a livery too, and who was getting into a coach with him, turned about and said, "Why, Arthur, I am always going to get up behind; are not you ?" I told this story the other day to George Selwyn, whose passion is to see coffins and corpses, and executions: he replied, "that Arthur More had had his coffin chained to that of his mistress."-" Lord!" said I, "how do you know?" "Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's." He was walking this week in Westminster Abbey with Lord Abergavenny, and met the man who shows the tombs, "Oh! your servant, Mr. Selwyn; I expected to have seen you here the other day, when the old Duke of Richmond's body was taken up." Shall I tell you another story of George Selwyn before I tap the chapter of Richmond, which you see opens here very apropos? With this strange and dismal turn, he has infinite fun and humour in him. went lately on a party of pleasure to see places with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs. Frere, who love one another a little. At Cornbury there are portraits of all the royalists and regicides, and illustrious headless.1 Mrs. Frere ran about, looked at nothing, let him look at nothing, screamed about Indian paper, and hurried over all the rest. George grew peevish, called her back, told her it was monstrous,

He

both supposed to have been deeply implicated in the iniquities of the South Sea bubble.-D.

This was the celebrated collection of portraits, principally by Vandyck, which Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Burnet, distinctly accuses the Lord Chancellor Clarendon of having obtained by rapacious and corrupt means; that is, as bribes from the "old rebels," who had plundered them from the houses of the royalists, and who, at the restoration, found it necessary to make fair weather with the ruling powers. The extensive and miscellaneous nature of the collection (now divided between Bothwell Castle, in Scotland, and The Grove, in Hertfordshire) very strongly confirms this accusation. An additional confirmation is to be found in a letter of Walpole, addressed to Richard Bentley, Esq. and dated Sept. 1753, in which he says, "At Burford I saw the house of Mr. Lenthal, the descendant of the Speaker. The front is good; and a chapel, connected by two or three arches, which let the garden appear through, has a pretty effect; but the inside of the mansion is bad, and ill-furnished. Except a famous picture of Sir Thomas More's family, the portraits are rubbish, though celebrated. I am told that the Speaker, who really had a fine collection, made his peace by presenting them to Cornbury, where they were well known, till the Duke of Marlborough bought that seat."-D.