passionate desire and expectation of conquering America. We bullied, and threatened, and begged, and nothing would do. Yet independence was still the word. Now we rail at the two monarchs -and when they have banged us, we shall sue to them as humbly as we did to the Congress. All this my senses, such as they are, tell me has been and will be the case. What is worse, all Europe is of the same opinion; and though forty thousand baronesses may be ever so angry, I venture to prophesy that we shall make but a very foolish figure whenever we are so lucky as to obtain a peace; and posterity, that may have prejudices of its own, will still take the liberty to pronounce, that its ancestors were a woful set of politicians from the year 1774 to - I wish I knew when.

If I might advise, I would recommend Mr. Burrell to command the fleet in the room of Sir Charles Hardy. The fortune of the Burrells is powerful enough to baffle calculation. Good night, Madam!

P.S. I have not written to Mr. Conway since this day sevennight, not having a teaspoonful of news to send him. I will beg your Ladyship to tell him so.

1828. TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE.

Strawberry Hill, July 12, 1779.

I AM concerned, dear Sir, that you gave yourself the trouble of transcribing the catalogue and prices, which I received last night, and for which I am exceedingly obliged to you. Partial as I am to the pictures at Houghton, I confess I think them much overvalued. My father's whole collection, of which alone he had preserved the prices, cost but 40,0007.; and after his death there were three sales of pictures, among which were all the whole-lengths of Vandyke but three, which had been sent to Houghton, but not fitting any of the spaces left, came back to town. Few of the rest sold were very fine, but no doubt Sir Robert had paid as dear for many of them; as purchasers are not perfect connoisseurs at first.'

1 Compare p. 175 of this volume. The Houghton Collection was sold to the Empress of Russia in the year 1779 for the sum of 40,555l. The pictures were valued separately by Messrs. West and Cipriani. Most of the family portraits were reserved. Horace Walpole told Mr. Bull that the whole cost his father something short of 40,000l. including the pictures at the Treasury; it should be recollected, however, that several were presented to him.-CUNNINGHAM.

The

Many of the valuations are not only exorbitant, but injudicious. They who made the estimate seem to have considered the rarity of the hands more than the excellence. Three-The 'Magi's Offering,' by Carlo Maratti, as it is called, and two, supposed Paul Veronese, -are very indifferent copies, and yet all are roundly valued, and the first ridiculously. I do not doubt of another picture in the collection but the 'Last Supper,' by Raphael, and yet this is set down at 5007. I miss three pictures (at least they are not set down), the Sir Thomas Wharton, and Laud and Gibbons. The first is most capital; yes, I recollect I have had some doubts on the Laud, though the University of Oxford once offered 4007. for it-and if Queen Henrietta is by Vandyke, it is a very indifferent one. affixing a higher value to the Pietro Cortona than to the octagon Guido is most absurd-I have often gazed on the latter, and preferred it even to The Doctors.' In short, the appraisers were determined to see what the Czarina could give, rather than what the pictures were really worth-I am glad she seems to think so, for I hear no more of the sale-it is not very wise in me still to concern myself, at my age, about what I have so little interest init is still less wise to be anxious on trifles, when one's country is sinking. I do not know which is most mad, my nephew or our Ministers; both the one and the other increase my veneration for the founder of Houghton!

I will not rob you of the prints you mention, dear Sir; one of them at least I know Mr. Pennant gave me. I do not admire him for his punctiliousness with you. Pray tell me the name of your glass-painter; I do not think I shall want him, but it is not impossible. Mr. Essex agreed with me, that Jarvis's windows for Oxford, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, will not succeed. Most of his colours are opaque, and their great beauty depending on a spot of light for sun or moon, is an imposition. When his paintings are exhibited at Charing-cross, all the rest of the room is darkened to relieve them. That cannot be done at New College; or if done, the chapel would be too dark. If there are other lights, the effect will be lost.

This sultry weather will, I hope, quite restore you; people need not go to Lisbon and Naples, if we continue to have such summers.

1829. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Arlington Street, July 14, 1779.

To show your Ladyship that I do not always wait for provocatives, I begin a letter to-night, without well knowing what it is to contain. I came to town this morning about my house in Berkeley Square, of which at last I begin to have hopes, though I am in Chancery for it; but it is by a mode of my own. I have persisted in complimenting and flattering my parties, till by dint of complaisance and respect I have brought them to pique themselves on equal attentions; so that instead of a law-suit it has more the air of a treaty between two little German princes who are mimicking their betters only to display their titular dignities. His Serene Highness, Colonel Bisshopp, is the most obsequious and devoted servant of my serenity the Landgrave of Strawberry.

His Royal Highness of Sion, who is Lord Paramount of Strawberry, has acquainted the College of Electors of Westminster that they are to be invaded by the French forthwith, and has subscribed 20007. for the defence of his Palatinate. Governor Johnstone is said to be gone to destroy the embarkation: I hope he will do it as completely as he has demolished his own character. The town does not seem to be much alarmed, and the courageous Stocks don't value it a fraction; so it does not become us poor little princes to be more frightened than our superiors.

I met Miss Wrottesley this evening at my niece Cholmondeley's, and she told me Mr. Dunning has found a flaw in the settlements, and that they must be drawn again.

Are not you sorry, Madam, for the poor Duke of Ancaster, especially since he made so noble and sensible a Will? I think his attention to his mother must half kill her. I hear he has left a legacy to a very small man that was always his companion, and whom, when he was drunk, he used to fling at the heads of the company, as others fling a bottle. Lord Bolingbroke, I suppose, you know, is not dead.

Lady Jane Scott, to whom I made your Ladyship's compliments, has found in a cabinet at Ham a most enchanting picture in enamel by Zincke, of the Duchess of Queensberry, which the Duke always carried in his pocket. It is as simple as my Cowley, in white with

the hair all flowing, and beautiful as the Hours in Guido's 'Aurora,' and very like her to the last moment.

I dined on Saturday with my cousin, T. Walpole, at Carshalton, where, though so near London, I never was in my life. It is as rural a village as if in Northumberland, much watered with the clearest streams and buried in ancient trees of Scawen's Park,' and the neighbouring Beddington.

2

I had long wished to see the latter, the seat of one of my ancestors, Sir Nicholas Carew, whose head, as he was Master of the Horse and Knight of the Garter, flew off [1539] in one of the moods of Henry VIII. Madam Bess, I think, often visited his son there. It is an ugly place, with no prospect, a large very bad house, but it was burnt, rebuilt wretchedly after the Restoration, and never finished. Nothing remains of the ancient fabric, but a brave old hall, with a pendent roof, copied by Wolsey at Hampton Court, a vast shield of arms and quarterings over the chimney, and two clumsy brazen andirons, which they told us had served Queen Elizabeth in the Tower, but look more as if they had served her for cannon to defend it. There is an almost effaced picture of Sir Nicholas, that seems to have been painted by Holbein, and for which, perished as it is, I longed.'

I shall terminate this letter of scraps and nothings with a good epigram, which Mr. Jerningham gave me t'other day :—

Ce Marmontel si lent, si long, si lourd,

Qui ne parle pas, mais qui beugle,

Juge la peinture en aveugle,

Et la musique comme un sourd.

Ce pedant a si sotte mine,

Et de ridicules bardé,

Dit qu'il a le secret des beaux vers de Racine

Jamais secret ne fut si bien gardé.

The first line put me in mind of an excellent satiric epitaph on the General Lord Cadogan, of which I have forgotten all but the last couplet,―

Ungrateful to th' ungrateful man he grew by,

A bad, bold, blustering, bloody, blundering booby.

1 So called after Sir William Scawen (d. 1722), three times M.P. for Surrey. There is a monument to his memory in Carshalton Church by Rysbrach.-CUNNINGHAM. 2 After 1709.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 He afterwards obtained a copy of it, from which, in 1792, Lysons had the engraving made for his account of Beddington in the Environs of London.'-CUNNINGHAM.

They were Bishop Atterbury's, who was glad to kill the Duke of Marlborough with the same stone.

1830. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Strawberry Hill, July 20, 1779.

It would have been impossible for me, Madam, to have met your Ladyship in town yesterday, had it been proper; but when you were there but for one day, and that a nuptial one, I should have been unreasonable to expect you to bestow a twinkling on me. fact, I was detained here; poor Lady Aylesbury was come to me all terror and distress.

In

Her daughter was really taken prisoner, and she had been told her husband and his island were captive too. The Duchess of Leinster, Lady William Campbell, and Mrs. Damer were actually taken by a privateer, the captain of which was no doubt a Paladin in disguise; he not only treated them with the continence of Scipio, but with disinterest, a virtue still more rare in a freebooter. He would not touch a pin; and they were told they were mistresses to go whither they pleased. Mr. Conway has been as little molested. Acharnement is left only to us. A courtier said yesterday, "We must act offensively;" I replied, "I thought we had done that sufficiently already, for we had offended all the world." There were letters in the City on Saturday that say Gibraltar is besieged. I have heard no more of it since; but it is very probable.

It is true that my niece Horatia has put on mourning for the Duke of Ancaster: it is on precedents, and with the approbation of the Duchess Dowager, who has written to her in the kindest manner, acknowledging the intended marriage; lamenting not having her for a daughter, and offering to come to her as soon as she is able. Lady E. Burrell has written in the same style; and the new Duke and Duchess have sent compliments of condolence. Lady Horatia has behaved in the most reasonable manner, shown very proper concern, but nothing romantic or extravagant.

Your Ladyship exacts a petit mot on Canopus, but I have not a word to say. I have lived till all the maxims and axioms that I learnt in my youth are grown as superannuated as I am. The sages I was taught to worship have been exploded, and the experience of past ages contradicted. Ministers become more popular in propor tion to their miscarriages; debts, taxes, losses, strengthen Govern