lights it looks like plan and deep premeditation. Whether it will ever be unravelled, I know not; or whether, like the history of darker ages, falsehood will become history, and then distant periods conjecture that we have transmitted very blundered relations: but, when I know so little of what has passed before my own eyes, I shall not guess how posterity will form their opinions. Adieu! I have not time to say more.

LETTER CCCXXXII.

Berkeley Square, July 6, 1780.

IF I did not think that you have a satisfaction in hearing from me, and were not unwilling to grow remiss after a perseverance of forty years, I should be disposed to devolve on your nephew the function of sending you intelligence. In good truth, I am ashamed of the office. We make a ridiculous figure in every light: there is no dignity or consistence anywhere. The Government, the Parliament, the parties, or rather the factions, or rather their fractions, do and undo, cross over and figure in, and seem to have neither plan nor object. The incoherencies of the last six months could only be described by a person accustomed to draw out dances for the stage. In December the tide ran into petitions and associations: the House of Commons voted the danger of prerogative, unvoted it again, were for satisfying the petitioners, and then did not give them a crumb of bread: then we were alarmed with Popery,

and the town was set on fire: next, we were to revise toleration, that was changed for new precautions against increase of Papists: then our Lords the Bishops were for tolerating Popery, because it was decreasing : then the Chancellor declared he had always disliked the indulgence; but, in contradiction to the favourers of it, would himself favour their educating their children: and then-ay, then, the new bill of regulations was thrown out, nobody knows why or wherefore.* If you can make head or tail of all this, you are wiser than I!

The next chapter is that of the rioters, whose trials are begun. A score have been tried, and most of them condemned. They are apprentices, women, a black girl, and two or three escaped convicts. And these Catilines, without plan, plot, connection, or object, threw a million of inhabitants into consternation, burnt their houses about their ears, besieged the Parliament, drove it to adjourn for ten days, and have saddled the capital with ten thousand men ; and still terrify us so dreadfully, that we dare not dismiss two camps at our gates, lest a Negro miss, and her regiment of streetwalkers, should overturn the State. Not a Frenchman,

* When Sir George Savile's bill for securing the Protestant religion from any encroachments of Popery, by restraining Papists from teaching the children of Protestants, was brought up from the Commons, the Lords in general, including the right reverend bench, appeared much on the side of toleration; but several of the peers considering it as a great indignity to Parliament to pass a bill which carried all the appearance of being forced upon them by outrage and threat, upon its being brought up to be reported, it was contrived to set it aside, without giving it a direct negative, by moving that it should be read a third time on that day week: which, being carried, had the effect of a previous question, as it was known that a prorogation would take place in the interim.-ED.

not an American, appears to have had a finger in a single outrage. Oh! we are a magnanimous people! and Europe must wait with awe for the result of this campaign of bonfires! I am so ashamed of this dénouement of a tragedy that was horrible to behold from the number of conflagrations, and which becomes ridiculous when one perceives how easily it might have been prevented or suppressed,* that I shall beg to be excused from saying any more upon it, and shall change it for a private subject, that is very agreeable to me; and, when the public stands in a contemptible light, domestic events rise in importance.

Lord Egremont,+ who has for some time been in love with my niece Lady Maria Waldegrave, the Duchess's second daughter, has at last had an audience, and demanded her. He is eight-and-twenty, is handsome, and has between twenty and thirty thousand a-year. You may imagine he was not rejected by either mother or daughter. The daughter, with a charming person, is less beautiful than either of her sisters, though more liked by most men. She has spirit, a great deal of wit, and the sagacity and good-sense of her father, with con

* In his account of the riots to Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson says, "I walked with Dr. Scot to look at Newgate, and found it in ruins. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the Sessions-house at the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without trepidation, as men lawfully employed in full day. Such is the cowardice of a commercial place! The King said in council,' that the magistrates had not done their duty, but that he would do his own;' and a proclamation was published. There has, indeed, been an universal panic; from which the King was the first that recovered."-ED.

+ George Windham, second Earl of Egremont.

*

stant good-humour and cheerfulness. We are all happy with this alliance, and Lord Egremont's family shows general satisfaction. I, who live to see so many strange events, did not expect formerly that Sir William Windham's grandson would marry Sir Robert Walpole's great-grand-daughter, to the equal content of both houses. The Duke and Duchess, with the little Prince and Princess, the bride, her sisters, Lady Egremont,† and her son the bridegroom, were all at Ranelagh together last night. I satisfied myself with seeing them at Gloucester-house before they went. The company, I hear, were pleased with this exhibition; and, in truth, it was worth seeing. The Duchess's beauty still marks her as the principal object. But is not my letter like one of Shakespeare's historic plays-insurrections, a marriage, trials, a Court-pageant ?—It is amusement to one who looks on all, as I do, with tranquil eyes, and whose plan it certainly never was to be included in any royal drama. It was one of Fortune's caprices, who loves to throw her vanities into the lap of one who never stirred an inch to seek or meet them. To-morrow I shall return alone to my little hill; pleased that my family are happy, but mourning for the disgraces of England. A little while, and England and my family will be no more my care!

* Sir William Windham, Chancellor of the Exchequer at the end of the reign of Queen Anne, was a principal leader of the Opposition to Sir Robert Walpole.

Alicia, daughter of Lord Carpenter, Countess-Dowager of Egremont. She married secondly Count Bruhl, Minister from Saxony, and was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte.

LETTER CCCXXXIII.

Berkeley Square, July 24, 1780.

I RECEIVED yours of June 30th, and have this moment got that of the 8th of this month, which tells me how opportunely mine appeared to disperse M. de Barbantan's fictitious visions. It will be fortunate if I am able hereafter to contradict the superstructure he shall raise on the junction of the fleets of Bourbon, to the amount of thirty-six sail, in the West Indies; where, I doubt, Sir George Rodney is far from superior. We entertain some visions too; and, since the reduction of Charlestown, look on America as at our feet.* We reckon, too, on Spain's desertion of the family compact; -but the junction of their fleets is no capital confirmation. I do know that we have fallen away extremely by living on such airy sustenance. For these

* Dr. Franklin, writing on the 26th from Paris to a friend in America, says, "You seem to be too much affected with the loss of Charlestown. The enemy's affairs will not be much advanced by it. They have successively been in possession of the capitals of five provinces, but were not therefore in possession of the provinces themselves. The cannon will be recovered with the place; if not, our furnaces are constantly at work in making more. The destroying of our ships by the English is only like shaving our beards, which will grow again: their loss of provinces is like the loss of a limb, which can never again be united to their body." -ED.

+ It appears by a letter written by Sir George Rodney to the Admiralty, from St. Christopher's, that violent disagreements existed between the Spanish and French admirals; that the Spaniards absolutely refused to co-operate with them in any enterprise whatever; and that the sickness and mortality in both fleets had reduced them very much. See Mundy's Life of Rodney, vol. ii. p. 364.-ED.