beauties and heroes, if I could meet with their portraits. I have made out all the people at all remarkable except my Lord Janet, whom I cannot divine unless he be Thanet. Well, but what will entertain you is, that I have discovered the philosophe Whitnell; and what do you think his real name was? Only Whetenhall! Pray do you call cousins ?1 Look in Collins's Baronets, and under the article Bedingfield you will find that he was an ingenious gentleman, and la blanche Whitnell, though one of the greatest beauties of the age, an excellent wife. I am persuaded the Bedingfields crowded in these characters to take off the ridicule in Grammont; they have succeeded to a miracle. Madame de Mirepoix told me t'other day, that she had known a daughter of the Countess de Grammont, an Abbess in Lorrain, who, to the ambassadress's great scandal, was ten times more vain of the blood of Hamilton than of an equal quantity of that of Grammont. She had told her much of her sister my Lady Stafford, whom I remember to have seen when I was a child. She used to live at Twickenham when Lady Mary Wortley3 and the Duke of Wharton lived there; she had more wit than both of them. What would I give to have had Strawberry Hill twenty years ago! I think any thing but twenty years. Lady Stafford used to say to her sister, "Well, child, I have come without my wit to-day;" that is, she had not taken her opium, which she was forced to do if she had any appointment, to be in particular spirits. This rage of Grammont carried me a little while ago to old Marlborough's at Wimbledon, where I had heard there was a picture of Lady Denham; it is a charming one. The house you know stands in a hole, or, as the whimsical old lady

2

A sister of Mr. Montagu's was married to Nathaniel Whetenhall, Esq. 2* Claude Charlotte, Countess of Stafford, wife of Henry, Earl of Stafford, and daughter of Philibert, Count of Grammont, and Elizabeth Hamilton, his wife. 3 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

5 Miss Brooke, one of the beauties of the court of Charles II, second wife of Sir John Denham the poet. This second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as for a time to disorder his understanding, and Butler lampooned him for his lunacy. In Grammont's Memoirs many circumstances are related, both of his marriage and his frenzy, very little favourable to his character.-E.

said, seems to be making a curtsey. She had directed my Lord Pembroke not to make her go up any steps; "I won't go up steps;"-and so he dug a saucer to put it in, and levelled the first floor with the ground. There is a bust of Admiral Vernon, erected I suppose by Jack Spencer, with as many lies upon it as if it was a tombstone; and a very curious old picture up-stairs that I take to be Louis Sforza the Moor, with his nephew Galeazzo. There are other good pictures in the house, but perhaps you have seen them. As I have formerly seen Oxford and Blenheim, I did not stop till I came to Stratford-upon-Avon, the wretchedest old town I ever saw, which I intended for Shakspeare's sake to find snug, and pretty, and antique, not old. His tomb, and his wife's, and John à Combes', are in an agreeable church, with several other monuments; as one of the Earl of Totness,' and another of Sir Edward Walker, the memoirs writer. There are quantities of Cloptons, too; but the bountiful corporation have exceedingly bepainted Shakspeare and the principal personages.

I was much struck with Ragley; the situation is magnificent; the house far beyond any thing I have seen of that bad age for it was begun, as I found by an old letter in the library from Lord Ranelagh to Earl Conway, in the year 1680. By the way, I have had, and am to have, the rummaging of three chests of pedigrees and letters to that secretary Conway, which I have interceded for and saved from the flames. The prospect is as fine as one destitute of a navigated river can be, and hitherto totally unimproved; so is the house, which is but just covered in, after so many years. They have begun to inhabit the naked walls of the attic story; the great one is unfloored and unceiled; the hall is magnificent, sixty by forty, and thirty-eight high. I am going to pump Mr. Bentley for designs. The other apartments are very lofty, and in quantity, though I had suspected that this leviathan hall must have devoured half the other chambers.

George Carew, Earl of Totness, died without heirs male in 1629, leaving an only daughter, married to Sir Allen Apsley.-E.

2

The Hertfords carried me to dine at Lord Archer's, an odious place. On my return, I saw Warwick, a pretty old town, small, and thinly inhabited, in the form of a cross. The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express; the river Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown, who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote. One sees what the prevalence of taste does; little Brooke, who would have chuckled to have been born in an age of clipt hedges and cockle-shell avenues, has submitted to let his garden and park be natural. Where he has attempted gothic in the castle, he has failed; and has indulged himself in a new apartment, that is paltry. The chapel is very pretty, and smugged up with tiny pews, that look like étuis for the Earl and his diminutive Countess. I shall tell you nothing of the glorious chapel of the Beauchamps in St. Mary's church, for you know it is in Dugdale; nor how ill the fierce bears and ragged staves are succeeded by puppets and corals. As I came back another road, I saw Lord Pomfret's,3 by Towcester, where there are a few good pictures, and many masked statues; there is an exceeding fine Cicero, which has no fault, but the head being modern. I saw a pretty lodge, just built by the Duke of Grafton, in Whittleberry-forest; the design is Kent's, but, as was his manner, too heavy. I ran through the gardens at Stowe, which I have seen before, and had only time to be charmed with the variety of scenes. I do like that Albano glut of buildings, let them be ever so much condemned.

1 Umberslade, near Stratford-upon-Avon.

2 Lancelot Brown, generally called "Capability Brown," from his frequent use of that word. He rose by his merit, from a low condition, to be head gardener at Stowe; and was afterwards appointed, by George the Second, to the same situation at Hampton Court. Lord Chatham, who had a great regard for him, thus speaks of him, in a letter to Lady Stanhope "The chapter of my friend's dignity must not be omitted. He writes Lancelot Brown, Esquire, en titre d'office: please to consider, he shares the private hours of Majesty, dines familiarly with his neighbour of Sion, and sits down to the tables of all the House of Lords, &c. To be serious, he is deserving of the regard shown to him; for I know him, upon very long acquaintance, to be an honest man, and of sentiments much above his birth." See Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 430.-E. 3 Easton Neston.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Mistley, Aug. 31, 1751.

I AM going to answer two of your letters, without having the fear of Genoa1 before my eyes. Your brother sent to me about this embassy the night before I came out of town, and I had not time nor opportunity to make any inquiry about it. Indeed, I am persuaded it is all a fable, some political nonsense of Richcourt. How should his brother know anything of it? or, to speak plainly, what can we bring about by a sudden negociation with the Genoese? Do but put these two things together, that we can do nothing, and the Richcourts can know nothing, and you will laugh at this pretended communication of a secret that relates to yourself from one who is ignorant of what relates to you, and who would not tell you if he did know. I have had a note from your brother since I came hither, which confirms my opinion; and I find Mr. Chute is of the same. Be at peace, my dear child: I should not be so if I thought you in the least danger.

I imagined you would have seen Mr. Conway before this time; I have already told you how different you will find him from the raw animals that you generally see. As you talk of our Beauties, I shall tell you a new story of the Gunnings, who make more noise than any of their predecessors since the days of Helen, though neither of them, nor anything about them, have yet been teterrima belli causa. They went the other day to see Hampton Court; as they were going into the Beauty-room, another company arrived; the housekeeper said, "This way, ladies; here are the Beauties." The Gunnings flew into a passion, and asked her what she meant; that they came to see the palace, not to be showed as a sight themselves.

I am charmed with your behaviour to the Count on the

Count Richcourt pretended that he had received intelligence from his brother, then minister in London, that Mr. Mann was to be sent on a secret commission to Genoa.

affair of the Leghorn allegiance; I don't wonder he is willing to transport you to Genoa! Your priest's epigram is strong; I suppose he had a dispensation for making a false quantity in secunda.

Pray tell me if you know anything of Lady Mary Wortley: we have an obscure history here of her being in durance in the Brescian, or the Bergamasco: that a young fellow whom she set out with keeping has taken it into his head to keep her close prisoner, not permitting her to write or receive any letters but what he sees: he seems determined, if her husband should die, not to lose her, as the Count lost my Lady Orford.1

Lord Rockingham told me himself of his Guercino, and seemed obliged for the trouble you had given yourself in executing the commission. I can tell you nothing farther of the pictures at Houghton; Lord Orford has been ill and given over, and is gone to Cheltenham. The affair of Miss Nicholl is blown up by the treachery of my uncle Horace and some lawyers, that I had employed at his recommendation. I have been forced to write a narrative of the whole transaction, and was with difficulty kept from publishing it. You shall see it whenever I have an opportunity. Mr. Chute, who has been still worse used than I have been, is, however, in better spirits than he was, since he got rid of all this embroil. I have brought about a reconciliation with his

'Lord Wharncliffe, in his edition of Lady Mary's Works, vol. iii. p. 435, makes the following observations on this passage:- Among Lady Mary's papers there is a long paper, written in Italian, not by herself, giving an account of her having been detained for some time against her will in a country-house belonging to an Italian Count, and inhabited by him and his mother. This paper seems to have been submitted to a lawyer for his opinion, or to be produced in a court of law. There is nothing else to be found in Lady Mary's papers referring in the least degree to this circumstance. It would appear, however, that some such forcible detention as is alluded to did take place, probably for some pecuniary or interested object; but, like many of Horace Walpole's stories, he took care not to let this lose anything that might give it zest, and he therefore makes the person by whom Lady Mary was detained a young fellow whom she set out with keeping.' Now, at the time of this transaction, Lady Mary was sixty-one years old. The reader, therefore, may judge for himself, how far such an imputation upon her is likely to be founded in truth."-E.

VOL. II.

2 D