authority, or authenticity, the Tories are to affirm that the ministers were very negligent; the Whigs, that they were wonderfully informed, discreet, provident, and active; and Mr. Pitt and his friends are to affect great zeal for justice, are to avoid provoking the Duke of Newcastle, and are to endeavour to extract from all the nothings they have not heard, something that is to lay all the guilt at Mr. Fox's door. Now you know very exactly what the Inquiries are-and this wise nation is gaping to see the chick which their old brood-hen the House of Commons will produce from an egg laid in November, neglected till April, and then hatched in a quicksand!

The common council have presented gold boxes with the freedom of their city to Mr. Pitt and Mr. Legge-no gracious compliment to St. James's. It is expected that the example will catch, but as yet, I hear of no imitations. Pamphlets, cards, and prints swarm again: George Townshend has published one of the latter, which is so admirable in its kind, that I cannot help sending it to you. His genius for likenesses in caricatura is astonishing-indeed, Lord Winchelsea's figure is not heightened-your friends Doddington and Lord Sandwich are like; the former made me laugh till I cried. The Hanoverian drummer, Ellis, is the least like, though it has much of his air. I need say nothing of the lump of fat crowned with laurel on the altar. As Townshend's parts lie entirely in his pencil, his pen has no share in them; the labels are very dull, except the inscription on the altar, which I believe is his brother Charles's. This print, which has so diverted the town, has produced to-day a most bitter pamphlet against George Townshend, called The Art of Political Lying. Indeed, it is strong.

The Duke, who has taken no English with him but Lord Albemarle, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Lord George Lennox, Colonel Keppel, Mr. West, and Colonel Carlton, all his own servants, was well persuaded to go by Stade; there were French parties laid to intercept him on the other road. It might have saved him an unpleasant campaign. We have no favourable events, but that Russia, who had neither men, money, nor magazines, is much softened, and halts her troops.

grace

The Duke of Grafton" still languishes: the Duke of Newcastle has so pestered him with political visits, that the physicians ordered him to be excluded: yet he forced himself into the house. The Duke's gentlemen would not admit him into the bedchamber, saying his was asleep. Newcastle protested he would go in on tiptoe and only look at him-he rushed in, clattered his heels to waken him, and then fell upon the bed, kissing and hugging him. Grafton waked; "God! what's here?" "Only I, my dear lord." Buss, buss, buss, buss! "God! how can you be such a beast, to kiss such a creature as I am,

a The Duke of Cumberland.

b Third son of William third Duke of Devonshire. He was made a field-marshal in 1796, and died in 1803.-D.

• Second son of Charles second Duke of Richmond. He died in March, 1805.-D.

d Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of Grafton, lord chamberlain.

all over plaisters! get along, get along!" and turned about and went to sleep. Newcastle hurries home, tells the mad Duchess that the Duke of Grafton was certainly light-headed, for he had not known him, frightened her into fits, and then was forced to send for Dr. Shaw-for this Lepidus are struggling Octavius and Anthony!

I have received three letters from you, one of March 25th, one of the second of this month, inclosing that which had journeyed back to you unopened. I wish it lay in my way to send you early news of the destination of fleets, but I rather avoid secrets than hunt them. I must give you much the same answer with regard to Mr. Dick, whom I should be most glad to serve; but when I tell you that in the various revolutions of ministries I have seen, I have never asked a single favour for myself or any friend I have; that whatever friendships I have with the man, I avoid all connexions with the minister; that I abhor courts and levee-rooms and flattery; that I have done with all parties and only sit by and smile-(you would weep)-when I tell you all this, think what my interest must be! I can better answer your desiring me to countenance your brother James, and telling me it will cost me nothing. My God! if you don't believe my affection for you, at least believe in the adoration I have for dear Gal.'s memory-that, alas! cannot now be counterfeited! If ever I had a friend, if ever there was a friend, he was one to me; if ever there were love and gratitude, I have both for him-before I received your letter, James was convinced for all this-but my dear child, you let slip an expression which sure I never deserved-but I will say no more of it. Thank you for the verses on Buondelmonti"—I did not know he was dead-for the prayer for Richcourt, for the Pope's letter, and for the bills of lading for the liqueurs.

You will have heard all the torments exercised on that poor wretch Damien, for attempting the least bad of all murders, that of a King. They copied with a scrupulous exactness horrid precedents, and the dastardly monarch permitted them! I don't tell you any particulars, for in time of war, and at this distance, how to depend on the truth of them?

This is a very long letter, but I will not make excuses for long ones and short ones too-I fear you forgive the long ones most easily!

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, May 5, 1757.

You may expect what you please of new ministries, and revolutions, and establishments; we are a grave people, and don't go so rashly to work-at least when we have demolished any thing rashly,

a

Lepidus, Duke of Newcastle; Octavius and Anthony, Pitt and Fox.-D.

b A Florentine abbé and wit; author of several poetical pieces.-E.

we take due time before we repair it. At a distance you may be impatient. We, the most concerned, wait very tranquilly to see the event of chaos. It was given out that nothing would be settled till the Inquiries were at an end. The world very obediently stayed for the time appointed. The Inquiries are at an end, yet nothing is in more forwardness. Foreign nations may imagine (but they must be at a great distance!) that we are so wise and upright a people, that every man performs his part, and thence every thing goes on in its proper order without any government-but I fear, our case is like what astronomers tell us, that if a star was to be annihilated, it would still shine for two months. The Inquiries have been a most important and dull farce, and very fatiguing; we sat six days till past midnight. If you have received my last letter, you have already had a description of what passed just as I foresaw. Mr. Pitt broke out a little the second day, and threatened to secede, and tell the world the iniquity of the majority; but recollecting that the majority might be as useful as the world, he recomposed himself, professed meaning no personalities, swallowed all candour as fast as it was proposed to him, swallowed camels and haggled about gnats, and in a manner let the friends of the old ministry state and vote what resolutions they pleased. They were not modest, but stated away; yet on the last day of the committee, on their moving that no greater force could have been sent to the Mediterranean than was under Byng, the triumphant majority shrank to one of seventy-eight, many absenting themselves, and many of the independent sort voting with the minority. This alarmed so much, that the predetermined vote of acquittal or approbation was forced to be dropped, and to their great astonishment the late cabinet is not thanked parliamentarily for having lost Minorca. You may judge what Mr. Pitt might have done, if he had pleased; when, though he starved his own cause, so slender an advantage was obtained against him. I retired before the vote I have mentioned; as Mr. Fox was complicated in it, I would not appear against him, and I could not range myself with a squadron who I think must be the jest of Europe and posterity.

It now remains to settle some ministry: Mr. Pitt's friends are earnest, and some of them trafficking for an union with Newcastle. He himself, I believe, maintains his dignity, and will be sued to, not

The Duke of Newcastle, who cannot bear to resign the last twilight of the old sun, would join with Fox; but the Chancellor, who hates him, and is alarmed at his unpopularity, and at the power of Pitt with the people, holds back, Bath, Exeter, Yarmouth, and Worcester, have followed the example of London, and sent their freedoms to Pitt and Legge: I suppose Edinburgh will, but instead of giving, will ask for a gold box in return. Here are some new epigrams on the present politics:

ANOTHER.

The two great rivals London might content,
If what he values most to each she sent;
Ill was the franchise coupled with the box:
Give Pitt the freedom, and the gold to Fox.

ON DR. SHEBBEAR ABUSING HUME CAMPBELL FOR BEING A PROSTITUTE ADVOCATE.

"Tis below you, dear Doctor, to worry an elf,

Who you know will defend any thing but himself.

The two first are but middling, and I am bound to think the last so, as it is my own. Shebbear is a broken Jacobite physician, who has threatened to write himself into a place or the pillory: he has just published a bitter letter to the Duke of Newcastle, which occasioned the above two lines.

The French have seized in their own name the country of Bentheim, a purchase of the King's, after having offered him the most insulting neutrality for Hanover, in the world; they proposed putting a garrison into the strongest post he has, with twenty other concessions. We have rumours of the Prince of Bevern having beaten the Austrians considerably.

I believe, upon review, that this is a mighty indefinite letter; I would have waited for certainties, but not knowing how long that might be, I thought you would prefer this parenthesis of politics.

Lord Northumberland's great gallery is finished and opened; it is a sumptuous chamber, but might have been in a better taste. He is wonderfully content with his pictures, and gave me leave to repeat it to you. I rejoiced, as you had been the negotiator-as you was not the painter, you will allow me not to be so profuse of my applause. Indeed I have yet only seen them by candle-light. Mengs's School of Athens pleased me: Pompeio's two are black and hard; Mazucci's Apollo, fade and without beauty; Costanza's piece is abominable. Adieu! till a ministry.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, May 19, 1757. We are not yet arrived at having a ministry, but we have had two or three alarms at one. On Monday, the Duke of Devonshire, impatient for a plaything, took the chamberlain's staff and key-these were reckoned certain prognostics; but they were only symptoms of his childishness. Yesterday it was published that Mr. Pitt's terms were so extravagant, that the Duke of Newcastle could not comply with them-and would take the whole himself-perhaps leave some little trifle for Mr. Fox-to day all is afloat again, and all negotiations to recommence. Pitt's demands were, that his grace should

■ Hamelen.

not meddle in the House of Commons, nor in the province of Secretary of State, but stick to the Treasury, and even there to be controlled by a majority of Mr. Pitt's friends-they were certainly great terms, but he has been taught not to trust less. But it is tautology to dwell on these variations; the inclosed is an exact picture of our situation and is perhaps the only political paper ever written, in which no man of any party can dislike or deny a single fact. I wrote it in an hour and a half, and you will perceive that it must be the effect of a single thought.

We had big letters yesterday of a total victory of the King of Prussia over the Austrians, with their army dispersed and their general wounded and prisoner-I don't know how, but it is not confirmed yet. You must excuse the brevity of my English letter, in consideration of my Chinese one. Adieu!

Xo Ho.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

May 27, 1757.

I HAVE ticketed you with numbers 5832, 58322, 58323, 58324, 58325, 58326; I think you bespoke six. I do not send them by post, unless you order it: but I have writ your name on each, lest in case of accident my executors should put them into my auction, for which you are so impatient, and then you would have to buy them over again.

I am glad you like Xo Ho: I think every body does, which is strange, considering it has no merit but truth. Mrs. Clive cried out like you, "Lord! you will be sent to the Tower!" "Well," said I coolly, "my father was there before me."

Lord Abercorn's picture is extremely like; he seems by the Vandyke habit to be got back into his own times; but nothing is finished yet, except the head.

You will be diverted with a health which my Lady Townshend gave at supper with the Prince t'other night: ""Tis a health you will all like," she said. "Well! what is it?" "The three P's." The boy coloured up to the eyes. After keeping them in suspense some time, she named, Pitt, Peace, and Plenty. The Princess has given Home, the author of Douglas, a hundred a year. Prince and Princess Edward continue to entertain themselves and Ranelagh every night.

I wish your brother and all heirs to estates joy, for old Shutz is dead, and cannot wriggle himself into any more wills. The ministry

a Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi at Pekin. b This was the battle of Prague, gained by the King of Prussia on the 6th of May, 1757, over the forces of the Empress.Queen, commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine.-D.