nephew will feel the loss of so amiable a woman; and yet it is better for him that it is over; as he was only witness to her decay, and perpetually tortured with fears and doubts. His behaviour his exceedingly honourable to him, and discovers a true Mann's heart,unluckily, to make that expressfon just, it is necessary to double the 7. I have talked to you philosophically on the vanity of being attached to the continuation of families; yet it is so natural, and I am so susceptible of that vanity, that I look forward to your nephew's marrying again, and having an heir to Linton. You will have been impatient for the consequences of Lord North's Conciliatory Plan. The substantial consequences cannot, you are sensible, be known till the Commissioners arrive in America,* and return the answer of the Congress; unless their departure is anticipated by some strong declaration of France in their favour, and which would render a treaty hopeless: many expect such a notification immediately. I am grown such a skeptic, that I believe nothing *The three Commissioners appointed to treat of the means of quieting the disorders in America, were the Earl of Carlisle, Mr. Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, and Governor George Johnstone. They left England in April, in the ship Trident. In a letter written from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," to his friend George Selwyn, Lord Carlisle gives the following graphic description of the situation of the Commissioners: "This is the first of May; but alas! we have no chimneysweepers and garlands; no milk-maids dancing before us! We have no music but the winds, and nothing seems inclined to dance but our vessel. Sea-sickness is, I flatter myself, got the better of. Conceive our dinner, and judge of our comforts. To keep ourselves close to the table, it is necessary to hold by the legs, and by so doing you must abandon your plate, which perhaps is flung, by the violence of the ship's motion, either into your own or your neighbour's lap. The conveyance of a glass to your mouth is no easy matter; but it requires infinite dexterity in the servant, and some good fortune, to bring it to you. Notwithstanding all this, I was able to attend dinner the second day, though it blew hard; and am now so little affected by the rolling of the ship, that I hardly know when I am reading, whether there is any motion or not. Such a child of habit is man! Close confinement must have its moments of melancholy. A walk after supper upon deck, the dashing of the sea, the noise of the winds, send me sometimes to bed, with thoughts which would not be productive of rest, unless they were got the better of by a little resolution. You will allow the contrast is strong between my present situation and that I was in some days ago. You know the wife and children that I have torn myself from, and I need say no more upon this subject."-See Selwyn Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 279. Frederick Howard, fifth Earl of Carlisle, the writer of the characteristic letter above quoted, was the only son of Henry, fifth Earl, by Isabella, daughter of William, fifth Lord Byron. In 1770, he had married Lady Carolina, daughter of Granville Leveson Gower, first Marquis of Stafford. In 1798, on the death of the fifth Lord Byron, he was appointed guardian of the great Poet; who, under the impression that his relation had intentionally slighted him, published some sarcasms upon him in his juvenile poems, which he afterwards regretted, and thus alludes to in the third canto of Childe Harold, in adverting to the melancholy fate of the Hon. Frederick Howard, the Earl's youngest son, one of those who fell gloriously at Waterloo : "Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine; Partly because they blend me with his line, And partly that I did his Sire some wrong."-ED. but facts past. The Bills met no obstruction in the House of Commons. They are to-day before the Lords; where I suppose they will experience comments rather than impediments. The intended pacification is not very popular, yet at most produces low murmurs. The nation has leaped from outrageous war to a most humiliating supplication for peace, with as little emotion as one passes in an ague from a shivering fit to a burning one; though I think in the inverted order, for I never had an ague. Methinks the patient's being so little affected by the sudden transition looks as if its constitution had contracted the insensibility of dotage. Every week may produce an era; yet I think nothing very important will happen yet. France has patience in one sense of the word, and we in another; and therefore we shall bear as long as they forbear. They best know what term they have set to their inactivity; my whole wisdom consists in abstaining from conjectures. Penetration is a fine thing; a genius now and then looks into futurity; but all I know is, that I have no such talent, nor believe much in those who pretend to it. My old face, like the one of Janus, only looks back the young one may look forward to what will belong to it, and youth is apt to think it sees far: but age is as often mistaken, when it takes its experience for spectacles; they magnify the dim eye that looks through them, more than the objects they look to. I will certainly mention you at our little Court, when they return to town. At present they are gone to the Duke's lodge in the New Forest for change of air. Indeed, it seems very difficult for his Royal Highness to find a situation that suits him. Heats destroy him, and damps are as bad. He caught cold above a month ago, had a violent cough, and the asthma frightfully since. It is a terrifying disorder to see; yet I am much easier when he suffers under it, than when the humour falls on his bowels. If he does not mend in the Forest, they will make a voyage to Bordeaux for some weeks for the benefit of the sea-air, and return when the great heats reign. Mrs. Haywood has been dying of a fever-so have many persons. Sir Thomas Hesketh died at once the night before last-but has long been dying.* The principality of Auverquerquet is a sort of Iricism. King William would not allow the Lords Rochford and Grantham, as they were illegitimate branches from Prince Maurice and Prince Henry Frederic, to take the name of Nassau, but obliged them to bear those of Zulestein and Auverquerque; after his death they assumed that of Nassau. The Duke of Marlborough never preferred the principality of Mindleheim to his duchy : surely an English peerage with substantial privilege in one's own country is more dignified than a nominal principality in another; when it is transferred to a third country, it *This is one of Walpole's smartisms, and means, that though Sir Thomas had long been dying, his death was sudden and unexpected.-B. + Lord Cowper, being made a prince of the Empire, had a mind to have that title; his mother being one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Lord Grantham. is still more ridiculous. I wonder Mademoiselle Pitt does not beg the Pope to create her Princess Fossani. I knew a foreigner at Paris who had a madness of wearing the orders of different countries. He was forbidden to assume the Saint Esprit, but indulged in every other knighthood. I have seen him at the theatres by turns Knight of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, Elephant, &c. &c. We had once a mad Queen Elizabeth here, who on the first day of the session, as my father was coming down from St. James's, gave him her speech and ordered him to read it to her Parliament;-it was not Mrs. Pitt, I assure you, nor Lady Mary Coke. Strawberry Hill, 10th. It looks very much now as if the war would very soon make itself. A French squadron is sailed westward, and Captain Digby has been despatched with another in pursuit of it.* Seamen are not apt to be so formal and dilatory as plenipotentiaries. The passions too begin to awaken. The City grows moody again; the Stocks fall; the Ministers are warmly pressed in both Houses. The new loan of six millions does not take kindly. The bended knee to America does not please. Dr. Franklin boasts that Philadelphia will be starved into a Burgoynism. Lord Temple seems to snuff confusion and is come forth again, and spoke against the conciliatory bills. Last year he entrapped John the Painter; I suppose he solves these inconsistencies by constancy to self. In that light, how uniform has his whole life been; though every brother and every friend has been sacrificed to his passions! I, who sit aloof from the conflict, see these things as they are; and should behold them with indifference, if the general want of principle were not a worse indication of approaching ruin than the concomitant circumstances. All men see a prospect of rising on confusion: no man reflects that want of virtue cannot correct what the want of it has occasioned. Adieu! LETTER CCLXXXI. March 17, 1778. I HAVE scarce a moment's time to write, and it is only-what an only! -to tell you that the French Ambassador notified to Lord Weymouth on Friday, that his Court had concluded a treaty of commerce and amity with the independent States of America; but had had the at It appears, by a letter from Dr. Franklin, dated Passy, February 21, that several American ships, loaded with stores for the Congress, were about to sail under the convoy of a French squadron.-ED. Lord Temple is stated, in a letter from Mr. Vaughan to Dr. Franklin, to have "reprobated the concessions, and equally the mad, foolish ministers, who could neither keep peace, make war, nor negotiate peace again: he wanted a treaty without Parliament, and preliminaries settled before concession."-ED. VOL. II.-6 tention not to make it an exclusive treaty: so, we may trade with America, if America will condescend to trade with us. I doubt there were some words of France not being disposed to be molested in their commerce with their new friends. In consequence of that de. claration, Lord Stormont's recall was sent off that night. To-day the Ministers are to acquaint both Houses with the insult; and, I suppose, intend to be addressed with vows of support.* The Stocks, not being members of Parliament, do not vote for war, nor behave like heroes.-Alas! I am ashamed of irony. Neither do I love to send my auguries through every post-house. However, every one must know that a French war is not exactly a compensation for the loss of America. We, the herd, the Achivi, must take the beverage our rulers brew for us; and we that can, must console ourselves with not having contributed to the potion. I believe it will be a bitter one; but I should be still less tranquil, if I had furnished a drop. I have received your melancholy letter on poor Lady Lucy's death, and had written to you on it before, nor will open the wound again. Our situation will remove that cloud and fill your mind with others. Europe is going again to be a theatre of blood, as America has been. The Emperor and Prussia are going, I think have begun war! 'Tis endless to moralize; human life is forced to do so, but en pure perte. The system changes, not the consequences. Force was the first great arbitress of human affairs. The shrewd observed, that Art could counteract and control Strength-and for a long time Policy ruled. But, Policy having exhausted all its resources, and having been detected in them all, Impudence restored Force, which is now sole governess. She seized and shared Poland, and now sets up the same right to Bavaria. We tried the plan in America, but forgot we had not that essential to the new jus gentium, a hundred thousand men, and that our Bavariat was on t'other side of the Atlantic. I hope the ocean, that was against us there, will be our friend at home! Adieu! This is a new chapter in our correspondence. I will write as events rise; you must excuse me if I have not always time, as I have not at present, to make my letters long in proportion to the matter. LETTER CCLXXXII. March 27, 1778. THE war is not yet arrived, though it is certainly at next door, for France laid an embargo on all our vessels in their ports; one may * A message from the King, together with a copy of the Declaration delivered by the French Ambassador to Lord Weymouth, had this day been presented to both Houses, and an Address of Thanks agreed to. Orders were also sent to our Ambassador, Lord Stormont, to withdraw from the Court of France.-ED. The Emperor and the King of Prussia were at war; the Emperor claiming part the domains of the late Elector of Bavaria. call it, seized them. Lord Stormont himself, though got to Boulogne, is forced to stay there for want of conveyance, or must come round by Holland. This made us stare a little two days ago; but last night I heard that this hostility is conditional, and only a boisterous way of wrenching out of our hands the Kouli Khan, a French ship that we had taken, and that Monsieur de Noailles had reclaimed without sucI doubt we shall take and give so many of these slaps, that the declaration of war may, to save trouble, be reserved to the peace; and then, as Hamlet says, the funeral baked meats Will coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. There was a report, too, that Spain would send us a notification of having made a treaty with the Americans also; but this is contradicted, and their new Ambassador, Almadovar, is said to have received orders to come to us forthwith. In short, rumours of wars beget a thousand other reports. The town has expected a restoration of Lord Chatham; but that notion has subsided too. The best thing I do know is, that we are very seriously occupied in defending ourselves. No more troops are to go to America; we are collecting our whole force; the new-raised regiments will have been an advantageous addition, as they were not embarked; and the militia, which is complete in every county but two, is to take the field. As to America, it will certainly retain its seat among the sovereignties of this world; so, Columbus's invasion begins to be set aside; and one quarter of the globe will not be held in commendam by another! Imagination could expatiate widely on that chapter-but what have I to do with a new era in the annals of mankind! Our own old continent, that has so long been ravaged by ambition, is not yet abandoned to the comfort of decay. Yet one now hears that hostilities between the Emperor and Prussia have not commenced, as was said. I doubt that imperial philosopher, who scattered so many humane apophthegms last year at Paris, is a little too impatient to employ his Austrian talons. What a farce to visit hospitals, when one thinks of nothing but stocking them with maimed carcases! What buckets of blood it costs, before a Prince takes his place at the table of Fame, that might be earned so much better by benevolence! The enemies of mankind arrogate what is due only to the friends. I was going on perhaps in a string of moralities, but was interrupted by Dr. Monro; who came to tell me that Lord Orford is come to himself. This is such a deliverance to me, that I cannot think of any consequences: indeed, I do not care about them. Pray notify this lucid interval to the excellent Signora Madre. Adieu! |