Yet the novelty of the case, it not having been very customary to solicit such a trifling honour, and the antiquated forms of proceeding retained in colleges, leave the matter wide open for further contention, an advantage Lord Sandwich cherishes as much as success. The grave are highly scandalized :-popularity was still warmer. The under-graduates, who, having no votes, had consequently been left to their real opinions, were very near expressing their opinions against Lord Sandwich's friends in the most outrageous manner: hissed they were; and after the election, the juniors burst into the Senate-house, elected a fictitious Lord Hardwicke, and chaired him. The indecent arts and applications which had been used by the Twitcherites (as they are called, from Lord Sandwich's nick-name, Jemmy Twitcher,) had provoked this rage. I will give you but one instance: - A voter, who was blooded on purpose that morning, was brought out of a madhouse with his keeper. This is the great and wise nation, which the philosopher Helvetius is come to study! When he says of us, C'est un furieux pais! he does not know that the literal translation is the true description of us.

I don't know whether I did not tell you some lies in my last; very likely: I tell you what I hear, and do not answer for truth but when I tell you what I know. How should I know anything? I am in no confidence; I think of both sides alike; I care for neither; I ask few questions. The King's journey to Hanover is contradicted. The return of Lord Bute is still a mystery. The zealous say, he declares for the administration; but some of the latter do not trust too much to that security; and, perhaps, they are in the right: I know what I think and why I think it; yet some, who do not go on ill grounds, have a middle opinion, that is not very reconcileable to mine. You will not wonder that there is a mystery, doubt, or irresolution. The scene will be opened further before I get to Paris.

Lord Lyttelton and Lord Temple have dined with each other, and the reconciliation of the former with Mr. Pitt is concluded. It is well that enmities are as frail as friendships.

The Archbishop and Bishops, who are so eager against

Dr. Pearse's divorce from his see, not as illegal, but improper, and of bad example, have determined the King, who left it to them, not to consent to it, though the Bishop himself still insists on it. As this decision disappoints Bishop Newton, Lord Bath has obtained a consolatory promise for him of the mitre of London, to the great discomfort of Terrick and Warburton. You see Lord Bath' does not hobble up the back-stairs for nothing. Oh, he is an excellent courtier ! The Prince of Wales shoots him with play-thing arrows; he falls down dead; and the child kisses him to life again. Melancholy ambition! I heard him, t'other night, propose himself to Lady Townshend as a rich widow. Such spirits at fourscore are pleasing; but when one has lost all one's children, to be flattering those of Kings!

The Bishop of Carlisle told me, that t'other day in the House of Lords, Warburton said to another of the bench, "I was invited by my Lord Mansfield to dine with that Helvetius, but he is a professed patron of atheism, a rascal, and a scoundrel, and I would not countenance him; besides, I should have worked him, and that Lord Mansfield would not have liked." No, in good truth: who can like such vulgarism! His French, too, I suppose, is equal to his wit and his piety.

I dined, on Tuesday, with the imperial minister; we were two-and-twenty, collected from the four corners of the earth. Since it is become the fashion to banquet whole kingdoms by turns, I should pray, if I was minister, to be sent to Lucca. Have you received D'Eon's very curious book, which I sent by Colonel Keith? I do not find that the administration can discover any method of attacking him. Monsieur de Guerchy very properly determines to take no notice of it. In the mean time, the wit of it gains ground, and palliates the abomination, though it ought not.

Princess Amelia asked me again about her trees. I gave her your message. She does not blame you, but Madame de Boufflers, for sending them so large. Mr. Legge is in a very

The once idolized patriot, William Pulteney. It must be borne in mind, that Mr. Walpole cherished a filial aversion to his father's great antagonist.-C.

bad way; but not without hopes: his last night was better. Adieu ! my dear lords and ladies!

TO THE EARL OF HERTFORD.

Arlington Street, April 12, 1764.

MAKE yourself perfectly easy, my dear lord, about newspapers and their tattle; they are not worth a moment's regard. In times of party it is impossible to avoid abuse. If attached to one side, one is pelted by the other; if to neither, by both. One can place oneself above deserving invectives; and then it signifies little, whether they are escaped or not. But when one is conscious that they are unmerited, it is noblest to scorn them- perhaps, I even think, that such a situation is not ineligible. Character is the most precious of all blessings; but, pray allow that it is too sacred to be hurt by anything but itself: does it depend on others, or on its own existence? That character must be fictitious, and formed for man, which man can take away. Your reputation does not depend on Mr. Wilkes,1 like his own. It is delightful to deserve popularity, and to despise it.

You will have heard of the sad misfortune that has happened to Lord Ilchester by his daughter's marriage with O'Brien the actor. But, perhaps, you do not know the circumstances, and how much his grief must be aggravated by reflection on his own credulity and negligence. The affair has been in train for eighteen months. The swain had learned to counterfeit Lady Sarah Bunbury's3 hand so well, that in the country Lord Ilchester has himself delivered several of O'Brien's letters to Lady Susan; but it was not till about a week before the catastrophe that the family was apprised of the intrigue. Lord Cathcart went to Miss Reade's, the paintress: she said softly to him, "My lord, there is a

1 See antè, p. 391.-E.

2 Lady Susan Fox, born in 1743, eldest daughter of the first Lord Ilchester.-E.

3 Daughter of the Duke of Richmond, wife of Sir T. C. Bunbury, and afterwards of Colonel Napier.-C.

couple in next room that I am sure ought not to be together, I wish your lordship would look in." He did, shut the door again, and went directly and informed Lord Ilchester. Lady Susan was examined, flung herself at her father's feet, confessed all, vowed to break off - but - what a but!— desired to see the loved object, and take a last leave. You will be amazed-even this was granted. The parting scene happened the beginning of the week. On Friday she came of age, and on Saturday morning-instead of being under lock and key in the country-walked down stairs, took her footman, said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah, but would call at Miss Reade's; in the street, pretended to recollect a particular cap in which she was to be drawn, sent the footman back for it, whipped into a hackney chair, was married at Covent-garden church, and set out for Mr. O'Brien's villa at Dunstable. My Lady - my Lady Hertford! what say you to permitting young ladies to act plays, and go to painters by themselves?

"nos

Poor Lord Ilchester is almost distracted; indeed, it is the completion of disgrace1-even a footman were preferable; the publicity of the hero's profession perpetuates the mortification. Il ne sera pas milord, tout comme un autre. I could not have believed that Lady Susan would have stooped so low. She may, however, still keep good company, and say, numeri sumus”—Lady Mary Duncan, Lady Caroline Adair,3 Lady Betty Gallini *—the shopkeepers of next age will be mighty well born. If our genealogies had been so confused four hundred years ago, Norborne Berkeley would have had still more difficulty with his obsolete Barony of Bottetourt, which the House of Lords at last has granted him. I have never attended the hearings, though it has been much the

4

It must be observed how little consistent this aristocratical indignation is with the Roman sentiments expressed in page 335, and signed so emphatically Horatius.-C.

2 Daughter of the seventh Earl of Thanet, married, in September 1763, to Doctor Duncan, M.D. soon after created a baronet.-E.

3 Daughter of the second Earl of Albemarle, married, in 1759, to Mr. Adair, a surgeon.-C.

Daughter of the third Earl of Abingdon, married, to Sir John Gallini. She died in 1804, at the age of eighty.-E.

fashion, but nobody cares less than I about what they don't care for. I have been as indifferent about other points, of which all the world is talking, as the restriction of franking, and the great cause of Hamilton and Douglas. I am almost as tired of what is still more in vogue, our East India affairs. Mir Jaffeir1 and Cossim Aly Cawn, and their deputies Clive and Sullivan, or rather their principals, employ the public attention, instead of Mogul Pitt and Nabob Bute; the former of whom remains shut up in Asiatic dignity at Hayes, while the other is again mounting his elephant and levying troops. What Lord Tavistock meaned of his invisible Haughtiness's2 invective on Mr. Neville, I do not know. He has not been

in the House of Commons since the war of privilege. It must have been something he dropped in private.

I was diverted just now with some old rhymes that Mr. Wilkes would have been glad to have North-Britonised for our little Bishop of Osnaburgh.3

Eligimus puerum, puerorum festa colentes,

Non nostrum morem, sed Regis jussa sequentes.

They were literally composed on the election of a juvenile bishop.

Young Dundas marries Lady Charlotte Fitzwilliam. Sir Lawrence settles four thousand per annum in present, and six more in future compare these riches got in two years and a half, with D'Eon's account of French economy! Lord Garlies remarries himself with the Duchess of Manchester's 6 next sister, Miss Dashwood. The youngest is to have Mr. Knightley-à-propos to D'Eon, the foreign ministers had a meeting yesterday morning at the imperial minister's, and Monsieur de Guerchy went from thence to the King, but on

1 See antè, p. 363.

2 Mr. Pitt.

3 Frederick Duke of York, born in August 1763, elected Bishop of Osnaburgh, 27th of February 1764.-E.

Second daughter of the third Earl Fitzwilliam, born in 1746.-E.

5 Sir Lawrence Dundas, father of the first Lord Dundas, is said to have made his fortune in the commissariat, during the Scotch rebellion of 1745.-C.

Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Dashwood, Bart. and wife of the fourth Duke of Manchester.-E.