Just as I had finished my letter, I learnt the dreadful calamity that happened at the Opera-house last night. Don't be alarmed, Madam; not a life is lost-yet. There was a fire, and it is not yet extinguished. The theatre was brimful in expectation of Vestris. At the end of the second act he appeared; but with so much grace, agility, and strength, that the whole audience fell into convulsions of applause the men thundered; the ladies, forgetting their delicacy and weakness, clapped with such vehemence, that seventeen broke their arms, sixty-nine sprained their wrists, and three cried Bravo! bravissimo! so rashly, that they have not been able to utter so much as no since, any more than both Houses of Parliament. I do not love to exaggerate, but the shouts were so loud that they reached Great Russell-street and terrified Lord Mansfield, who thought the mob was coming again, and fled to Caen Wood; but, though the true cause was soon discovered, there is to be a camp in the Mews every Opera night, and nobody suffered to appear there, but gagged and handcuffed, for really if people are at liberty to applaud what they approve, there is an end of all government!

As folks in the country love to hear of London fashions, know, Madam, that the reigning one amongst the quality is to go after the opera to the lottery offices, where their Ladyships bet with the keepers. You choose any number you please; if it does not come up next day, you pay five guineas; if it does, receive forty, or in proportion to the age of the tirage. The Duchess of Devonshire in one day won nine hundred pounds. General Smith, as the luckiest of all mites, is of the most select parties, and chooses the numeros,

1985. TO THE REV. WILLIAM COLE.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 19, 1780.

I CANNOT leave you for a moment in error, my good Sir, when you transfer a compliment to me, to which I have not the most slender claim, and defraud another of it to whom it is due.

I

The friend of Mr. Gray, in whom authorship caused no jealousy or variance, as Mr. Mainwaring says truly, is Mr. Mason. certainly never excelled in poetry, and never attempted the species of poetry alluded to-Odes. Dr. Lort, I suppose, is removing to a living or a prebend, at least; I hope so. He may run a risk if he carries his book to Lambeth. "Sono sonate venti tre ore e mezza,"

as Alexander VIII. said to his nephew, when he was chosen Pope in extreme old age. My Lord of Canterbury's is not extreme, but very tottering. I found in Mr. Gough's new edition, that in the Pepysian library is a view of the theatre in Dorset Gardens, and views of four or five other ancient great mansions. Do the folk of Magdalen ever suffer copies of such things to be taken? If they would, is there anybody at Cambridge that could execute them, and reasonably? Answer me quite at your leisure; and, also, what and by whom the altar-piece is, that Lord Carlisle has given to King's. I did not know he had been of our college. I have two or three plates of Strawberry more than those you mention; but my collections are so numerous, and from various causes my prints have been in such confusion, that at present I neither know where the plates or proofs are.

I intend next summer to set about completing my plan of the Catalogue and its prints; and, when I have found any of the plates or proofs, you shall certainly have those you want. There are the two large views of the house, one of the cottage, one of the library, one of the front to the road, and the chimneypiece in the Holbein room. I think these are all that are finished -oh! yes, I believe the Prior's garden; but I have not seen them these two years. I was so ill the summer before last, that I attended to nothing; the little I thought of in that way last summer, was to get out my last volume of the 'Anecdotes;' now I have nothing to trouble myself about as an editor, and that not publicly, but to finish my Catalogue-and that will be awkwardly enough; for so many articles have been added to my collection since the description was made, that I must add them in the Appendix, or reprint it; and what is more inconvenient, the positions of many of the pictures have been changed; and so it will be a lame piece of work. Adieu, my dear Sir! Yours most cordially.

1986. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 21, 1780.

I AM sorry that my letters of late years contain so many eras; this dates a new one, of an additional war with Holland. The Manifesto of our Court appeared in the Gazette Extraordinary this morning. I am no prophesying politician, you know; and if I

were, as I am too old to be a sanguine one, I should not disperse my Sibylline leaves about Europe.

Another fact, that must speak for itself, is, that Admiral Darby has brought his fleet home, as D'Estaing has led the French and Spanish squadrons and the trade to Brest. Pray desire the Emperor to leave Ostend open, or I shall not be able to write to you at all. It is not very pleasant at present; for, with so many intervening enemies and interlopers, one can converse with no more frankness than in a congress of Ambassadors. I write as much as I can for your satisfaction, but no Continental post-office will ever learn from me a tittle they did not know before. You may suffer by it, but I am sure approve me. Do not imagine there is either tædium or air in this. I do know nothing before it has happened: it is merely my own comment that I suppress, as I love my country too well to treat foreigners with anything I am sorry for.

Having thus said my say, I have nothing of the least consequence to add. The town is, and will be, empty till the Parliament meets; and then people will return, because it is the fashion to go to Newmarket: for, in countries that are or have been great, the chief philosophers are such as have no philosophy, and who consign over to the inferior classes the sense of public calamities. In fact, the world is grown more intrepid than in ancient days. Our progenitors braved enemies; we moderns defy elements, and do not, like the effeminate Greeks and Romans, go into winter-quarters at the back of the almanack; and thence winds, waves, and climates gain the most considerable victories.

There has been a hurricane at St. Kitt's, that, according to the etiquette of destruction, deserves a triumphal arch,-perhaps opima spolia, for nothing has yet been heard of Admiral Rowley! Oh! but I cannot sport, when humanity aches in every nerve! and when the seals of a new book are opened, like those in the Revelations! I detest war, nor can perceive that anybody has cause to exult in it. Adieu!

1987. TO THE COUNTESS OF OSSORY.

Christmas Day, 1780.

THOUGH you order me to give you an account of myself, Madam, I shall not obey, for I cannot give you a good one; and one is so apt to talk of one's self, and by the courtesy of self-love to think every trifle of importance, that I will boldly be out of order if I

please, without being responsible to any one; no, not even to a friend.

We have so many enemies, and subdue them so rapidly, that I did not think it was worth while to notify to your Ladyship the new war with Holland. Lord Cornwallis, I suppose, will step over and despatch it in a parenthesis of six weeks, and still be as likely as ever to conquer America. Who is to burn Amsterdam I have not yet heard.

Lord Warwick has already sent me John Thorpe's book, Madam, and a most obliging letter. The Ampthill is not Houghton-Ampthill, but the individual palace that stood in your paddock where the Cross is, and in which Queen Catherine lay, as royal folk did then, though now they and everybody else only sleep; and a spacious and goodly mansion it was. There is not the elevation, nor of Kirby Hatton, built by the dancing Chancellor in 1570; but there is the ground-plan. I remember wanting to make the last Chancellor, Bathurst, dance at one of Mons. de Guines' balls. He came thither very drunk, and, as somebody wished to see the Scotch reel, I proposed that my Lord Chancellor should dance it.

Coxe' is destined

I am uncommonly glad, Madam, that Mr. for Mentor to your Telemachus. His 'Travels' are by far the most sensible of all those late publications, and his principles of the old rock.

Your heroine at Bath, Madam, is from the same quarry in another light, and the counterpart to Cato himself, who accommodated a friend with his own wife, for the sake of virtue, and took her again with as much decorum as possible. Pray read the description in Lucan, or, if you affect not understanding Latin, in Rowe; you will see with what staid gravity those matters were transacted, when good patriots desponded about the Commonwealth. I have not a Lucan in town, or would refer you to the spot.

My nieces are indubitably not going abroad, nor do the Duke and Duchess think of it. They will be in town at the end of next month.

Lord Macartney, I hear, is to sail before that time; Lady Macartney does not go with him. I remember what a quarto my last letter was, and restrain this within bounds.

P.S. I shall not attempt to see Vestris till the weather is milder, though it is the universal voice that he is the only perfect being

1 Afterwards Archdeacon Coxe, whose historical labours are of so much importance in illustration of the reigns of George the First and his successor.-CUNNINGHAM.

that has dropped from the clouds within the memory of man or woman; but then, indeed, nobody allows memory much retrospect, lest they should seem old themselves. When the Parliament meets, he is to be thanked by the Speaker.

1988. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Berkeley Square, Dec. 31, 1780.

I HAVE received, and thank you much for the curious history' of the Count and Countess of Albany; what a wretched conclusion of a wretched family! Surely no royal race was ever so drawn to the dregs! The other Countess [Orford] you mention seems to approach still nearer to dissolution. Her death a year or two ago might have prevented the sale of the pictures,-not that I know it would. Who can say what madness in the hands of villany would or would not have done? Now, I think, her dying would only put more into the reach of rascals. But I am indifferent what they do; nor, but thus occasionally, shall I throw away a thought on that chapter.

Count

All chance of accommodation with Holland is vanished. Welderen and his wife departed this morning. All they who are to gain by privateers and captures are delighted with a new field of plunder. Piracy is more practicable than victory. Not being an admirer of wars, I shall reserve my feux de joie for peace.

My letters, I think, are rather eras than journals. Three days ago commenced another date-the establishment of a family for the Prince of Wales. I do not know all the names, and fewer of the faces that compose it; nor intend. I, who kissed the hand of George I., have no colt's tooth for the Court of George IV. Nothing is so ridiculous as an antique face in a juvenile drawing-room. I believe that they who have spirits enough to be absurd in their decrepitude, are happy, for they certainly are not sensible of their folly; but I, who have never forgotten what I thought in my youth of such superannuated idiots, dread nothing more than misplacing myself in my old age. In truth, I feel no such appetite; and, excepting the young of my own family, about whom I am interested,

1 The Pretender's wife complaining to the Great Duke of her husband's beastly behaviour to her, that prince contrived her escape into a convent, and thence sent her to Rome, where she was protected by the Cardinal of York, her husband's brother.-WALPOLE.

VOL. VII.

I I