sands of tongues to work, the owners of every one of which will expect to pass for a prophet, if Cæsar within these two years takes one step which is at all like twenty, any one of which it is probable he may take. I was with you just forty years ago, when the departed Empress came to the crown.* What a tide of events that era occasioned! You and I shall not see much of what this may produce! and therefore I will not guess at a history that is in its cradle for me, ' and that I shall not be acquainted with when it is come to years of discretion. I wish our own wars were come to that pass!

The new Parliament, which is now gone to keep its Christmas, has been but little ruffled; nay, as if there were no new matter, they are to tap again, after the holidays, the whole story of Keppel and Palliser. Indeed, at this instant, the town expect news of an engagement between Darby and D'Estaing; though I think there are more reasons for not thinking it probable: however, I have still less skill in naval `matters than even in others.

Our old acquaintance, Lord Pomfret, has taken his chastisement very patiently, which looks less mad than he was thought.t

This is the sum of my present knowledge: and thus a most turbulent year has the appearance of concluding drowsily enough; and, for fleets and armies, their exploits on both sides, would lie in a nutshell. An historian may be sorry, but a man of feeling must rejoice that such scourges as armaments may do such little mischief to the human race. Fame cannot be acquired but by the groans of hospitals full of sufferers! The last act of the Empress-Queen, the stemming the torrent of blood between her son and the King of Prussia, is in my eyes the brightest in her annals.

LETTER CCCXLI.

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 Mani

* In a letter dated Florence, July 9, 1740, Walpole thus wrote to his friend Conway: "I am happy here to a degree. I'll tell you my situation; I am lodged with Mr. Mann, the best of creatures. I have a terreno all to myself, with an open gallery, on the Arno, where I am now writing to you. Over against me is the famous Gallery and on either hand two fair bridges. Is not this charming and cool? The air is so serene, and so secure, that one sleeps with all the windows and doors thrown open to the river, and only covered with a light gause to keep away the knats. The people are good humoured here, and easy; and, what makes me pleased with them, they are pleased with me. One loves to find people care for one, when they can have no view in it."-Collective Edition, vol. i. p. 50.-Ed.

Lord Pomfret was reprimanded at the bar of the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. On being taken from it and admitted to his seat, he engaged upon his honour not to pursue further any measure of violence against the person of the Duke of Grafton.-ED.

festo of our Court appeared in the Gazette Extraordinary this morning. I am no prophecying 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 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 any thing I am sorry for.

me.

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 any body has cause to exult in it. Adieu!

During this dreadful hurricane, the squadron under the command of Admiral Rowley returned to Jamaica, mostly dismasted, and all disabled. The Sterling Castle was lost on the coast of Hispaniola, and only fifty of the crew saved; and the Thunderer, under the conduct of Commodore the Honourable Boyle Walsingham, son of the Earl of Shannon, was so completely swallowed up by this conflict of the elements, that no memorial or particulars of her catastrophe ever came to light.-ED.

15*

LETTER CCCXLII.

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 Countesst 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.

All chance of accommodation with Holland is vanished. Count 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, I have mighty small satisfaction in the company of posterity; for so the present generation seem to me. I would contribute any thing to their pleasure, but what cannot contribute to it-my own presence. Alas! how many of this age are swept away before me; six thousand have been mowed down at once by the late hurricane at Barbadoes alone! How Europe is paying the debts it owes to America! Were I a poet, I would paint hosts of Mexicans and Peruvians crowding the shores

*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, and her husband's brother. [After the death of the Pretender in 1788, the Countess of Albany tavelled in Italy and France, and lived with the celebrated Alfieri, to whom she was said to have been privately married. On the breaking out of the French Revolu tion, she took refuge in England. For Walpole's account of his interview with, and description of, her in 1791, see Collective Edition, vol. vi. p. 436.—ED.]

The Countess of Orford. [The Countess died in the following month at Pisa -ED.

of Styx, and insulting the multitudes of the usurpers of their continent that have been sending themselves thither for these five or six years. The poor Africans, too, have no call to be merciful to European ghosts. Those miserable slaves have just now seen whole crews of men-of-war swallowed by the late hurricane. We do not yet know the extent of our loss. You would think it very slight, if you saw how little impression it makes on a luxurious capital. An overgrown metropolis has less sensibility than marble; nor can it be conceived by those not conversant in one. I remember hearing what diverted me then a young gentlewoman, a native of our rock, St. Helena, and who had never stirred beyond it, being struck with the emotion occasioned there by the arrival of one or two of our China ships, said to the captain," There must be a great solitude in London as often as the China ships come away!" Her imagination could not have compassed the idea, if she had been told that six years of war, the absence of an army of fifty or sixty thousand men and of all our squadrons, and a new debt of many, many millions, would not make an alteration in the receipt at the door of a single theatre in London. I do not boast of, or applaud, this profligate apathy. When pleasure is our business, our business is never our pleasure; and, if four wars cannot awaken us, we shall die in a dream!

LETTER CCCXLIII.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 9, 1781.

THIS can be but a short letter, for I have scarcely time to write it; but as to-day's papers would alarm you, and cannot carry the relief which arrived since they were printed, I cannot leave you for a moment under anxiety-I may say, for me, as I am so much concerned. In short, advice came by daybreak yesterday, that two thousand French (magnified to above four thousand) had landed on Saturday last in Jersey, had seized the lieutenant-governor in his bed, and were masters of the island. Orders were sent to Portsmouth to send what force could be had, and an express to General Conway to bid him repair thither. He came to town on wings of winds, and never

* On this second attempt of the French upon the island of Jersey, the Baron de Rullecourt, who had been next in command to Count Nassau in the former attack upon the island, was the undertaker, and supposed to be the framer. He landed his troops in the night at a place called the Violet Bank, about three miles from St. Helier; and so shamefully remiss were the militia in their duty, that they were seized asleep by the enemy, who were thus for several hours upon the island without the smallest alarm being given. The British troops stationed in the island having assembled from all quarters, under the command of Major Pierson, being required by the French commander to submit, an attack was instantly made with such impetuosity, that the enemy were routed on all sides, the Baron mortally wounded, and the next in command obliged to surrender himself and the whole party, amounting to about eight hundred, prisoners of war. To Major Pierson, who

pulled them off, and in two hours was on the road to Portsmouth. I did not see him, for he never wastes an instant on such occasions. Judge of my anxiety! It was for more than his broken arm. Well, at noon to-day we heard that the troops had rallied, attacked the French, gained a complete victory, pushed four hundred into the sea, and taken twelve hundred. These are the troops that Mr. Conway himself formed last year. To me this battle is worth the day at

Blenheim.

LETTER CCCXLIV.

Berkeley Square, Jan. 18, 1781.

I HAVE received your second letter about the Countess of Albany, and her retreat to Rome-or rather her imprisonment there. Are they Jews enough, if the Count should die, to uncanonize the Cardinal and make him raise up issue to his brother, which the brother could not do for himself?

I told you last week of the loss and recovery of Jersey. General Conway, without losing a second, embarked at Portsmouth in the heat of such a storm that a transport with sixty men was lost as he sailed, and the cutter that preceded, to notify his coming, has not been heard of since! He was tempested about for two whole days and nights, in such danger that the captain of the frigate despaired. Though it was a disappointment and vexation, for they knew nothing of the safety of the island, it was fortunate that they could not get out of the channel, or they had probably been lost! With great difficulty they got into Plymouth, where they learnt the good news from the French themselves, who had been made prisoners in Jersey. Mr. Conway arrived at Park-place on Sunday last, but was forced to take to his bed, where he remained till yesterday, when he rose for a few hours. He had caught a cold, rheumatism all over, and a fever: what was worse, and perhaps the cause of his fever, a good-natured sailor, seeing him awkward at getting up the ladder into the frigate, and not knowing, or not considering, that he had a broken arm, gave it such a kind tug that he almost broke it again! In that pain of body and mind he retained all his patience and tranquillity, and astonished even his own nephew Colonel Conway,* who knows him, and who repeated it to me with as much admiration as if he had never seen him before. I flatter myself that he will be able to come to town on Monday.

This is a most interesting chapter to me, and as such I perhaps have dwelt on it too long. But it intercepts nothing else. Not an

was shot through the heart, in the moment of victory, a monument was erected at the public expense.-ED.

*Robert, third son of Francis Earl of Hertford.