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LETTER CCCCVII.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 10. [This was only a note in the cover of a letter to be transmitted to Mr. Morice.]

MR. MORICE has written to me from Lausanne, which he was to leave at the beginning of this month for Naples, desiring to find a letter from me at Florence, with a state of the affairs of Cavalier Mozzi. I fear this will arrive too late. Should he be gone, you will be so good as to convey it to him wherever he is, or keep it for him should he not be arrived.

I do not know a tittle of news, but that the Peace arrived signed last Saturday. I have just seen Sir William Hamilton at General Conway's, and heard with great pleasure a most satisfactory account of you and your good looks and health. It is midnight, and this must go to town early to-morrow morning; and I am tired with writing to Mr. Morice, for I have the rheumatism in my right arm.

LETTER CCCCVIII.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1783. THOUGH I enclosed a letter to you for Mr. Morice about three weeks ago, I cannot pretend to have written to you since the 1st of September. The cause of my silence lasts still,-a total want of matter; and though my punctual conscience enjoins me to begin a letter to you, it will have a hard task to make me finish it. The Peace has closed the chapter of important news, which was all our correspondence lived on. My age makes me almost as ignorant of common occurrences as your endless absence has made you. I cannot concern myself in what people, who might be my grandchildren, do. The fatal American war has so lowered my country, that I wish to think of it as little as I do of the youth of the times. My common-sense tells me that I cannot belong to a new age; and my memory, that I did belong to a better than the present. Thus I interest myself in nothing; and whoever is indifferent, is ill qualified for a correspondent. You must make allowance for my present insipidity, in consideration of my past service. I have been your faithful intelligencer for two and forty years. I do not take my leave; but, in a dearth of events such as you would wish to know, do not wonder if my letters are less frequent. It would be tiresome to both to repeat that I have nothing to say. Would you give a straw to have me copy the Gazette, which you see as well as I, only to tell you there are nine new Irish lords and ladies, of whom I never saw the persons of three?

I have complained to Mr. Duane of the indecent inaction of Sharpe

and Lucas he thinks it as extraordinary as I do, and has promised to reprove them.

Not being worth another paragraph in the world, I shall postpone my letter till next week, and carry it with me to town on Monday. Not that I expect to learn any thing there or then. London is a desert the moment the shooting season begins, and continues so to the middle of November at least. In my younger days I have been very barren in autumn in time of peace.

Monday, 30th.

I have lately been putting together into a large volume a collection of portrait-prints of all the persons mentioned in the letters of Ma dame de Sévigné; of whom for many years I have been amassing engravings, and of whom I have got a great number. I wish, therefore, you would send me a single print, if you can procure a separate one, of the Great-Duchess, wife of Cosmo the Third, and daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, that absurd woman, of whom so much is said in the new History of the Medici. I have her amongst the other heads of the Medici, but do not care to mangle the set. You probably can obtain one from the engraver; but do not give yourself any trou ble, nor pay a straw more than it is worth. If you obtain one, send it by any traveller coming to England. I trust you will have no occasion to send a courier. Let us rejoice, my dear sir, that you have no such occasion, and that I have so little to say. I hope we shall neither blunder into new matter, nor that our foregoing errors may be attended by new events? Never was my father's Quieta non movere esta. blished into a maxim that ought to be a lesson to politicians, so much as by the American war. It has already cost us our colonies and doubled our debt.

Learning nothing in town, I send this away to prove to you that I have no disposition to relax our correspondence; but, as it is foolish to give only negative proofs, be assured, if my intervals are longer, that like a good husband long married, my constancy is not impaired, though I may not be so regular in my demonstrations as formerly.

P.S. I have heard nothing of the Fatti Farnesiani.

LETTER CCCCIX.

Berkeley Square, Nov. 12, 1783.

I HAVE been longer than usual without writing to you, my dear sir but so I told you in my last it was possible I should be. Had I written sooner, I could only have made excuses for having nothing to say. I have now the satisfaction of telling you that the political horizon is much cleared, and discovers a more serene prospect.

The

Parliament met yesterday, and the address to the King was voted without a negative. The threatened Opposition is disjointed, and half of its expected leaders did not appear. The late ridiculous Minister, Lord Shelburne, (which is using the most favourable of all the epithets he deserves,) keeps in the country. Lord Temple made a speech in the Lords which nobody minded or answered; and Mr. William Pitt in the commons behaved with candour and great decency. Mr. Fox shone with new superiority; but even masterly eloquence is not his first quality. All his conduct is manly, and marked with strong sense, and first-rate common sense, which is the most useful of all. In short, he has that, and the frankness and firmness, and the utmost good-humour; and, therefore, you will not wonder I am partial to him, and think him the only man I have seen who unites all those qualities like my father. I wish he may be minister as long-which is a very dis interested wish at my age. I don't believe you suspect that it is interested for any part of the term.

The preliminaries with Holland are signed; nay, Ireland seems to be coming to its senses. One thing they have taken from us and improved, which I do not envy,-Parliamentary scurrility. Mr. Grattan, their late idol, and Mr. Flood (who, they say, might be the idol of Indians, who worship the powers that can do most mischief,) have called one another as many foul names as Scaliger and Scioppius used to throw in Latin at the heads of their adversaries. It is pity that one of them at least did not reserve a few for the CountBishop, whom you have seen in Italy, and who seems to have conceived there a passion for a red hat. Is not it odd to see an emperor demolishing convents in the East, and a Protestant Bishop pleading for Popery in the West? His son has been as eccentric in a smaller line here, as you have seen in the papers.

This is a slight sketch of public affairs: private news I have none. I now come to Cavalier Mozzi.

Ten days ago Mr. Duane told me that Sharpe and Lucus would be ready in a few days to lay the result of their most tedious consultation before us; and that he believed the upshot would be, that they would think we ought to allow five thousand pounds to my Lord. I smiled, and said to myself, "They needed not to have taken five or six months to agree on an opinion which they might have delivered in five minutes, for it is precisely what both had settled long ago my Lord should have." Sharpe said at first, that my Lord and Mozzi should divide the money in question, which he called ten thousand; and Lucas above a year ago, I think I told you, told an impatient creditor of my Lord, that his Lordship would get five thousand from Cavalier Mozzi. However, I said nothing then, reserving my reflection for a moment when it may come with more force. Nay, I even commanded myself this morning, when Lucas was with me, and produced their liquidated states, by which these honest men allot 5,457%. to my Lord. But my indignation took its revenge; for, on Lucas telling me that there was still one point on which Sharpe and

he could not agree, which was on interest upon interest for arrears of my Lady's jointure, and which was originally founded on an iniquitous parallel demand which had been allowed by a villany of old Cruwys, Lucas's predecessor, by which my father's creditors were defrauded of 18,000. I broke out, called Cruwys all the rascals he deserved, [not meaning to except his successor,] and told him, that even if Mozzi's claim could not be allowed, the money ought not to go to my Lord, but to the creditors. At last I said plainly, that Mr. Duane and I were not at all bound to submit to his and Sharpe's opinion, but ordered them to deliver their reasons to us in writing; and that for my part, I would lay those reasons before Lord Camden, for, being no lawyer myself, I would be justified by having the opinion of one of the first lawyers in England for the judgment I should pronounce. This I trust will make him less flippant. He had begun by saying. Mr. Duane and I would be able to decide in a few minutes; which was pretty impudent, considering that even he and Sharpe do not agree on one point; but I repeated that we should not have such implicit faith; we had only desired to know on what points they did agree. Upon the whole, I fear this affair will not be so soon concluded. Nay, I perceive so much roguery, that, as I cannot unravel it, I shall be very unwilling to pronounce; being persuaded that Cavalier Mozzi will be cheated. Lucas pretended just now to have found but yester day a scrap of paper without a title, that proved, under the hand of Lady Orford's steward, that she had received more from her jointure than was pretended. I asked him in a very severe tone where he had found that bit of paper. He said, amongst my Lord's writings. I replied, it was very extraordinary that he, who for so many years had been poring over my Lord's writings, should never have taken notice of that paper before;-nor do I conceive how a paper of my Lady's steward came there! in a word, I told Lucus plainly that all he had said to-day had confirmed me much more strongly in what I thought before of Cruwys's villany, and of the justness of the arguments I had used to show that what had been deemed law for my brother ought to be law for Lady Or ford, and that what a jury had given to one ought to be given by a jury to the other. This he owned; but said, the money ought to go to my Lord as executor. "If it does" said I," will my Lord pay to the credi tors?" He replied, "I suppose he will; he has paid much more to them." I could have answered, "Much less than he ought."-Oh! my good sir, do you wonder, after all I have seen, that I have a dismal opinion of the three professions-lawyers, clergy, and physicians? 'Tis well I am come to the bottom of my paper, or I should continue invectiving.

LETTER CCCCX.

Nov. 21, 1783.

I AM exceedingly hurt to be forced to tell you, that I shall not be able to do so much service to Cavalier Mozzi as I hoped; nor should I have it in my power to do any, if I threw up my refereeship, as I have been on the point of doing: but I will tell you methodically, and as shortly as I can, what passed yesterday. The three lawyers came to me. As soon as Lucas had opened the points on which Sharpe and he are agreed, and by which they give a balance to my Lord of 54577., I said with all the sneer I could put into a look, "It was unlucky, gentlemen, that you flung away six months to compute what you guessed so exactly a year and a half ago! You both said, so long ago, that my Lord would or ought to have five thousand pounds." Lucas understood me; but I afterwards made him understand a great deal more, which I will not repeat now. We then came to the point of interest, on which he and Sharpe still disagree, and by which Lucas would extort 19007. for my Lord. Sharpe did behave handsomely, and would have set it all aside. I then spoke, and called on Lucas to acknowledge that I had at first declared in writing to my Lord that I would not undertake the office of umpire, unless I were allowed to act as a gentleman, and not as a lawyer. [This Lucas could not deny.] I then stated all the Cavalier's handsome behaviour. I appealed to Sharpe, who knew all, whether I could be partial to my Lady and her friend. [This Sharpe allowed.] I said, I had accepted the office only to save her honour and my Lord's from being bandied about in a public court of justice; but that since I found that the law was stretched to the utmost against Cavalier Mozzi, and as I was unwilling to pronounce against my Lord, whose side I was to maintain, or to be thought partial for him, I chose to throw up my trust, and leave the whole to be decided at law. I was then silent for some minutes. At last Mr. Duane spoke, and said, that Mr. Sharpe and Mr. Lucas had agreed on the 54577., and that he and I during the former discussions had in general allowed their several demands; and that we had allowed very liberally to my Lord. Lucas interrupted him, and would not acknowledge that we had allowed liberally to his Lordship; but both Duane and Sharpe insisted we had. Mr. Duane then proposed to Lucas to desire my Lord to give up the interest to Cavalier Mozzi, which would be 1900l., and would, by so much, lessen the 54571. Lucas said very awkwardly, he would, and was sure my Lord would agree to any thing; but seemed exceedingly dissatisfied. Sharpe and Lucas then took their leave; and Duane was going, but I kept him, and beseeched him to tell me honestly what I ought to do. I should tell you that Sharpe had proposed to give up the interest on both sides. Mr. Duane said that he advised me by all means not to leave the affair undecided; that it must then go to VOL. II.-27

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