Most things are excusable in youth, and almost all things become them. Few become the old but propriety, and that kind of quiet common-sense that avoids particularities, and dreads to make itself talked of. Thus it would be affectation in you, who wear a public character, not to conform to its duties. But when I see men late in life thrust themselves into the world's face without a call, I feel a contemptuous pity for them-but they are always punished: they find themselves misplaced; and, the more they try to adapt themselves to the tone of an age to which they belong not, the more awkwardly they succeed. Not only the fashions in dress and manners change, but the ways of thinking, nay, of speaking and pronouncing. Even the taste in beauty and wit alters. A Helen, or a Lord Ro chester, perhaps, would not be approved but in one specific half-cen tury. Sir William Temple says, that the Earl of Norwich, who had been the wit of the Court of Charles the First, was laughed at in that of Charles the Second. I myself remember that Lord Leicester,t who had rather a jargon than wit, which was much admired in his day, having retired for a few years, and returning to town after a new generation had come about, recommenced his old routine, but was taken for a driveller by the new people in fashion, who neither understood his phrases nor allusions. At least, neither man nor woman that has been in vogue must hazard an interregnum, and hope to resume the sceptre. An actor or actress that is a favourite may continue on the stage a long time; their decays are not described, at least not allowed by those who grow old along with them; and the young, who come into the world one by one, hearing such performers applauded, believe them perfect, instead of criticizing: but if they quit the stage for a few years, and return to it, a large crop of new auditors has taken possession, are struck with the increased defects, and do not submit, when in a body, to be told by the aged that such a performer is charming, when they hear and see to the contrary.

I wrote this two days ago, but have heard nothing to add. The war seems to partake of old age, and to be grown inactive-I wish it may be grown so old as to die soon. Sir William Draper, some weeks ago, preferred a complaint in form against General Murray; but the Judge Advocate said it was not sufficiently specific. I believe

* George Goring, in 1632, created Lord Goring, and in 1644, for the great ser vices he had rendered to Charles I., advanced to the dignity of Earl of Norwich. In the preceding year he was sent Ambassador Extraordinary to Paris. "I went to meet him," says Evelyn, "in a coach and six horses, at the palace of M. de Bassompiere, where I saw that gallant person, his gardens, terraces, and rare prospects. My Lord was waited upon by the Master of the Ceremonies, and a very great cavalcade of men of quality, to the Palace Cardinal, where he had audience of the French King, and the Queen-Regent his mother, in the Golden Chamber of Presence."-ED.

†Thomas Coke, created, in 1725, Lord Lovel of Minster-Lovel, in Oxfordshire, and, in 1744, Viscount Coke of Holkham, and Earl of Leicester; which titles became extinct at his death in 1759.-ED.

he has given one now less general; but the cause cannot be tried yet for want of Colonel Pringle, who was hostage for the transport vessels. The King's youngest son, Prince Alfred, was at the point of death this morning. He is not two years old.* Adieu!

LETTER CCCXXXLII.

Strawberry Hill, Friday evening, Aug. 30, 1782. I HAVE this moment received from London your letter which Cardini brought, and shall send one of my servants to town to-morrow morning with this answer, and conclude he will not be set out on his return. As it will not go unless by him, I can have no difficulty of writing freely to you; and yet you will be surprised at the very little information I can give you. In short, I have totally done with politics-even with thinking on them, when I can help it. This country is absolutely lost. I mean past recovery. The phrensy of the American war was pushed so far and so long, that, besides flinging away all we had acquired in near two centuries, doors have been thrown open to a thousand collateral misfortunes. Our credit has been screwed to a pitch that imminently endangers it all. There is an enormous debt yet unprovided for; nevertheless, the vast current expense continues. Ireland has shaken us off-not unfortunately, if it goes no farther; for it will flourish, which our jealousy hindered. Scotland, after doing us every mischief to the end of the last reign, and after engrossing every thing in the present, seems to be at the eve of setting up for itself too. When it was little to be expected, at least not five months before, a change happened in the spring, which delivered us at last from so criminal an Administration. The new one, it is true, was but ill-cemented, and was dissolved by Lord Rockingham's death in three months; and in three days the remainder split to pieces.†

* Prince Alfred, the King's ninth son, was born on the 22nd of September, 1780, and died on the 20th of August, 1782.—Ed.

On the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, all the members of the Adminis tration resigned, with the exception of the Duke of Richmond and Lord Keppel. The following strictures on the Admiral's retention of office after the retirement of his friends, are from Horace Walpole's Unpublished Memoirs of the Reign of George the Third :

66

The point that stuck most with the Duke of Richmond was his cousin and friend, Admiral Keppel, whom the zeal of Lord Rockingham and the Cavendishes on his trial, called on to fulfil his debt of gratitude. To Lord Shelburne he had no obligations; to the Duke of Richmond the same as to the Cavendishes. The Duke did prevent the Admiral's immediate resignation; but he declared he meditated it, and did intend it so much, that he satisfied the Cavendishes; and they, in their turn, chose to seem satisfied, that, by maintaining friendship with him, they might preserve opportunities of urging him to resign. This dubious conduct of Keppel led the Duke to profess the same kind of neutral ambiguity. Keppel professed to

I confess I had neither youth nor perseverance enough to form any new plan of hopes for my country. I took the resolution of abandoning even speculation and observation; and now, literally, never so much as ask a political question. I have no quarrels, no enemies. I wish most heartily well to Mr. Conway and the Duke of Richmond; I have always been civilly and obligingly treated by Lord Shelburne, therefore there is no disgust in my conduct: but I am so mortified at the fall of England, I see so little or no prospect of its ever being a great nation again, that I have not courage to hope about it. I have outlived the glory of my family and of my country. Houghton and England are alike stripped of all their honours.-But, instead of declamation, I will answer your letter.

Gibraltar, I am persuaded will follow Minorca, if not already gone. So far from the fleet being sailed to its relief, part is gone in pursuit of the Dutch to the Baltic, though the Dutch are really in the Texel. I truly do not know what has occasioned this strange management. The papers ring with dissensions in the Fleet; but the particulars I have not heard, for I have not been in London this month. Rodney, too, let the French fleet, that he had beaten and cooped up, slip out; which will probably occasion the loss of New York. The East Indies are not secure either. Mr. Fitzherbert* is gone to Paris to treat. When they have quite ruined us, perhaps they may grant us a peace.

retain the Admiralty but till the peace; the Duke the Ordnance, till he should complete his reforms. It would have been improper in Keppel to resign at that moment he had sent Admiral Pigot to supersede Lord Rodney, who had just obtained a great victory. News had come of the Quebec fleet being taken: had Keppel retired then, he would have opened new ways to his enemies of loading him with obloquy, and given them power to oppress him."

In furnishing the Hon. and Rev. Thomas Keppel with the above extract, the late lamented Lord Holland accompanied it with the following note: "Walpole calls Keppel's conduct dubious;' but his motives were avowed and correct, and he acted up to them. He gave his reasons for not resigning; and his friends who did resign never complained of them; and, when those reasons ceased, he followed their example, fulfilled his intentions, and resigned before the termination of Lord Shelburne's Ministry."

The reasons for Lord Keppel's continuing in office after the resignation of his friends are stated by his able biographer to have been these: "Two Admirals at that time employed-Barrington was one (the writer is not quite certain of the name of the other)-entertained so low an opinion of the honesty of a Tory go. vernment, that they signified to Lord Keppel their determination to keep their flags flying no longer than he retained office; Barrington (who was second in command at Gibraltar) saying, with professional bluntness, in reference to the party likely to succeed Keppel, 'I should not consider my life safe in the hands of such scoun drels! To avoid the confusion that would arise from the sudden retirement of these officers, Keppel consented to remain until the peace (the preliminaries of which were in the course of signature) was finally arranged." Life, vol. ii. p. 400.-ED.

Alleyne Fitzherbert, Esq., afterwards created Lord St. Helen's. In March 1777, he had been appointed British Minister at Brussels, and resided at that Court till August 1782, when he was sent to Paris by the new administration with the commission of sole plenipotentiary for negotiating a peace with the Crowns of France and Spain, and the States-General of the United Provinces. To a letter writen by

This is a summary of our situation, and of that of my mind; the latter certainly is not important enough to be blended with the former, but was absolutely necessary to explain why I can tell you so little, and to prevent your concluding that there is some mystery or reserve in my behaviour: but as no changes make any either in my principles or fortune, you may be very sure that I am sincere, and that my politics have never had any object but first, the liberty, and then, the honour of my country. My friends have more than once succeeded; yet I have never accepted or asked the smallest emolument for myself. I may then, at sixty-five, say that I have never varied; but one may be tired out—I am, I own; and though I never meant to profit by the splendour of my country, I cannot be so fond of it in its depression and rags.

I shall continue to send you any striking novelties; though, by the account I have given you of myself, I must become a less valuable correspondent. Indifference is not a good ingredient in letters-I think, in nothing; no, not where it is demanded, and commonly pretended, in history. But, if the writer does not keep his word, neither is the reader displeased; nay, if he is, it is only because the historian is not partial on the same side as his reader.

We have had the most deplorably wet summer that ever I remember, after three hotter than any in my memory. But I may as well finish when I have nothing better to talk of than the weather; it shows what a retired and insipid mortal I am.

I frequently ask Mrs. Noel, whom I see often at Twickenham Park, about your nephew; but she has only heard of him once at a cricketmatch, a proof of his being well. Cardini assured me, by a line, that he left you so, which he knew would be the most welcome news he could give me and, if he saw me, he would carry you as favourable an account of me; for, though I think myself older than any body of my age, my health in general is very good, and I am content with it; and, though my spirits are less nimble than they were, they are never low. Adieu! my dear sir. Shall not we be very venerable in the annals of friendship? What Orestes and Pylades ever wrote to each other for four and forty years without once meeting? Adieu !

Lord Grantham, the new Secretary of State, to Dr. Franklin, of which Mr. Fitzherbert was the bearer, the Doctor, on the 11th of September, replied: "You do me justice in believing that I agree with you in earnestly wishing the establishment of an honourable and lasting peace; and I am happy to be assured by your Lordship, that it is the system of the Ministers with whom you are co-operating. I know it to be the sincere desire of the United States; and, with such dispositions on both sides, there is reason to hope, that the good work in its progress will meet with little difficulty."-ED.

22*

LETTER CCCLXXXIII.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 8, 1782. Two days after your letter by Cardini, I received yours of the 17th of last month, which you had written before that by him, but which, as you foresaw, his diligence would precede. I now write merely to answer what you say about Mozzi's business, for I do not know a tittle of news.

As the Cavalier is coming himself, I saw no cause of delivering his letter to Mr. Duane: however, as he had mentioned it to Sharpe, I did deliver it; and the next day received another from Sharpe, of Mozzi to him, with his own opinion, that I should either take the whole on myself, or accept of Mr. Duane. I confess, this shuffling did provoke me, and I have given it to Sharpe pretty roundly. I told him, that when I proposed Mr. Duane, he (Sharpe) would not consent, though Lucas had approved of him. I was glad thus to sow division between these two. From my Lord I expect no justice; but I will let him and them hear the truth whenever I have occasion. I never trouble myself about him or them but when they come across me, though the usage I have received from all would exasperate a cooler temper than mine.

To this moment my Lord has not paid my brother or me on shilling of our fortunes, though bound by bond to pay us on his mother's death; nor sixpence of the interest, though due from the date of the bonds. When he sold the collection of pictures at Houghton, he declared at St. James's that he was forced to it, to pay the fortunes of his uncles-which amounted but to ten thousand pounds; and he sold the pictures for forty, grievously to our discontent, and without any application from us for our money, which he now retains, trusting that we will not press him, lest he should disinherit us, were we to outlive him. But we are not so silly as to have any such expectations at our ages; nor, as he has sold the pictures, which we wished to have preserved in the family, do we care what he does with the estate. Would you believe-yes, for he is a madman,-that he is refurnishing Houghton; ay, and with pictures too-and by Cipriani. That flimsy scene-painter is to replace Guido, Claude Lorraine, Rubens, Vandyke, Carlo Maratti, Albano, Le Suceur, &c.; and with subjects out of Homer and Dryden's Fables, selected and directed by his Lordship himself. But enough!-it is madness to dwell on Bedlam actuated by attorneys!

I am perfectly ignorant of the state of the war abroad; they say we are in no pain for Gibraltar: but I know that we are in a state of war at home that is shocking. I mean, from the enormous profusion of house-breakers, highwaymen, and foot-pads; and, what is worse, from the savage barbarities of the two latter, who commit the most wanton cruelties. This evil is another fruit of the American war. Having no vent for the convicts that used to be transported to our