event has happened, nor an account arrived of any, since I wrote last week. Tuesday the Parliamentary campaign will open again. I know full as little of what are to be its objects. Sir Joseph Yorke not being returned, makes the conjecturers imagine the reconciliation with Holland is not desperate. They say, too, that the Dutch have not yet issued letters of marque; but on those matters I talk quite in the dark, and with the vulgar. I hold to the world but by few threads; and, when an old man takes no pains to keep up the connexion, the world is not at all solicitous to preserve it. Your nephew, I conclude, will soon be in town, and will be more copious than I am. It is not that I have less inclination than ever to be your journalist, but I now live in so confined a circle, that common occurrences rarely arrive to me till they have been in all the newspapers -and, to give those historians their due, nothing comes amiss to them; and, lest they should defraud their customers, they keep open shop for every thing, true or false, or scandalous, or ever so private, or ever so little relative to the public. Ancient annalists thought nobody game below a monarch, or a general, or a high-priest. Modern intelligencers have no mercy on posterity; and, not considering how enormous the lack of events is grown, contribute all in their power to store the world with the history of every body in it. In truth, this duty has become so extensive, that it has totally given exclusion here to all the rest of the earth where we are not concerned. We know no more of what passes in Europe than in Africa. To make amends, America and Asia are fully discussed. At this moment, I might, if I pleased, be perfectly acquainted with the king of Tanjore and all his affairs; not quite upon his own account, but because there is a contest at the India House about one Mr. Benfield; who, by the way, is believed to be agent for the nabob of Arcot, and to have retained nine members of Parliament in the interest of that petty sovereign*-scandal, to be sure! And perhaps you think I am talking to you out of the Mogul Tales; but I have long told you that you have-can have-no idea of your own country. Well: look into the Roman History just before the fall of the Republic;

* Paul Benfield, the agent of the Nabob of Arcot, had made a claim of 250,000l. on the East India Company, being the alleged proceeds of a crop on the lands of Tanjore, sown by the Nabob and mortgaged to Benfield. The claim was considered to be fraudulent, from the improbability that a private person of little or no property, should have been able to advance so large a sum. Mr. Burke, in his celebrated speech on the Nabob's debts, in 1785, describes Benfield as "the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge of India-the grand parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow; and who, amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten constitution of his native country: for he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House, to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, and may reproach, some other houses, but with real, solid, living patterns of true, modern virtue." "Paul," he adds, “made (reckoning himself) no fewer than eight members in the last Parliament: what copious streams of pure blood must he not have transfused into the veins of the present!"-ED.

you will find orations for King Deiotarus, and of proconsuls pensioned by tributary sovereigns. In short, you will see how splendid and vile the ruins were of a great empire!

Feb. 2nd,

It is said that more than one surly rescript has been received from Russia, with whom we look to have war. The Parliament is most courtly yesterday, indeed, there were a hundred and forty-nine for a censure on the preferment of Sir Hugh Palliser to Greenwich Hospital, but above two hundred admired the choice.*

On Monday is to begin the trial of Lord George Gordon, which will at least occupy every body for some days. I should be inclined to leave that subject to your nephew, but I do not know whether he is in town: at least I have not seen him, nor heard his name this winter. The East Indian fleet, of vast value, is safe arrived in Ireland. Sir Thomas Rumbold is on board it, and his value is estimated at a million. I do not wonder that a nabob can afford to buy a gang of members of Parliament.

LETTER CCCXLV.

Berkeley Square, Feb. 6, 1781. LAST night when I came home, I found your two letters of January 13th and 16th; the one to prepare me for, and the second to announce, Lady Orford's death. It has been reported here for a fortnight that she was dead: so, perhaps, some body sent a courier to her son, or to Sharpe her lawyer; or, more probably, her heir might send one to Hoare. I have nothing to do with all that; but I have this minute written to her son, and sent him the individual copy of her will that I have received from you, and the few particulars you have told me.t

My first reflection naturally is, that, had my lord had patience but for a year, he would have had no occasion to sell his pictures; supposing which, I do not think that, without his mother's death, he would have had that occasion. My own opinion is, that the wretches

* The motion, which was made by Mr. Fox, was for a censure on the appointment of Sir Hugh Palliser to the government of Greenwich Hospital. Sir Hugh, who had just taken his seat for Huntingdon, through the interest of the Earl of Sandwich, defended himself at considerable length. The numbers on the division were 149 for, and 214 against the motion.-ED.

In 1779, Sir Thomas Rumbold had been appointed Covernor of Madras, and created a baronet.-ED.

Walpole, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Cole, of the 7th, says, "She has left every thing in her power to her friend Cavalier Mozzi, at Florence, but her son comes into her large estate, besides her great jointure." See Collective Edition, vol. i. p. 170, and vol. vi. p. 110.—Ed.

round him precipitated the sale, as money is more purloinable than a palace of pictures.

By the will it seems her ladyship claims no power over her landed estates in England, though I have heard that she pretended to have a right to dispose of part: but all that is nothing to me.

I have no public news to add but what I scarce know yet, the trial of Lord George Gordon. It was yesterday, and they say he was acquitted at five this morning; but this I have learnt only from my servants, for I have been writing to notify my Lady Orford's death to my relations that they may mourn, and bespeaking mourning, and doing such necessary things; and have seen no body yet, and, in fact, did not care a straw about my Lord George any more than, when any living creature is trying for his life, I feel at the moment, and wish him to escape.

LETTER CCCXLVI.

Strawberry Hill, Sunday night, Feb. 11, 1781. Ox Friday evening I received the probate of Lady O.'s will, and your two letters, in one which you mention the doubts of the Florentine lawyers on the validity of the disposition. I was very sorry to hear of these doubts, and shall consider well-nay, consult the most conscientious persons I can,-before I acquaint my lord with them. I do not like questioning of wills where the intention of the testator is evident; nor are there many cases in which I should approve of it, except on strong suspicions of foul practices, or notorious incapacity of the deceased. Though I could have no esteem for Lady Orford, I shall be extremely averse from being even an indirect instrument of disputing her will; and, should I be advised in duty to inform my lord of the cavil, I shall, I think, desire you to convey the notice to him through some other channel. Nothing but my becoming persuaded that I ought to acquaint him with the doubts on the validity, shall make me contribute to his knowing them. I shall consult General Conway, who is conscience itself; and Lord Camden, who, though a lawyer, has left off business, and who, I trust, is too old to think merely as a lawyer, unless as one who has presided in a court of equity. Lord Orford may act by me as he pleases, or, poor man! as his creatures please. I will neither pay court to him, for he has used me with extravagant ingratitude; nor ever do but what is strictly right about him, as I have always done, with a degree of delicacy that worldly prudence would condemn,

* Lord George Gordon was tried at the bar of the Court of King's Bench before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, and Justices Waller, Ashurst, and Buller. His counsel were Mr. Kenyon and Mr. Erskine. At a quarter after five in the morning the jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty. Hannah More says, in a letter to her sister, "Public thanksgivings were returned last Sunday in several churches for his acquittal. I know some who actually heard it in Audley Chapel."-ED.

and which certainly has been very prejudicial to my family. But I cannot lament what I did from principle and tenderness; nor can I vindicate myself to the world so fully as I might, while he has such a measure of sense as would be wounded if I talked too openly of his madness. It is plain that he, who, with no semblance of a quarrel to me, can treat me in so injurious a manner, after such tried services and repeated obligations, must have had the most abominable lies told him of me. I will indubitably take the first occasion that shall present itself of making my whole conduct towards him known, and that of his creatures. I care not a rush about his fortune, but I will not part with my character, which I prefer to all he has; and had much rather lose the former, were it likely to come to me, than the latter.

I know no news-in fact I have been entirely taken up with this affair. The accession of fortune to my lord makes not the slightest change in my resolutions, it rather strengthens them; for I should despise myself if his additional wealth could make me stoop to flatter a madman..

P.S. Poor Lady Dick* is dead, and Mrs. Pitt; the latter in a madhouse.

LETTER CCCXLVII.

Strawberry Hill, Feb. 26, 1781.

I SHALL not weary you again with saying any more about my nephew. I have done with him! An affair is going to take place that is not unconnected with him, and that gives me some satisfaction. Lord Walpole's eldest son, who at present stands in the light of heirapparent to both branches of the family, and whom Lord O. is at least bound to my late uncle to make his heir in succession, is going to marry one of my numerous nieces, Lady Mary Churchill's younger daughter.† It is a match of love; she is a very fine girl, but without a shilling. Lord Walpole dislikes the match much, entirely on that last defect: but the son is a most honourable young man; and the father, who is good-natured, has at last given his consent. Thus, if Lord O.'s madness and the villany of his counsellors (and, I must add, his own want of principle) does not reverse what he promised, all the descendants of my father, the author of the greatness of the whole family, will not be deprived of his fortune. My sister Malpas's posterity, to whom it ought first to descend after my brother and me, will be defrauded; but, plundered as Houghton is, the possessors will still look up to the memory of its illustrious founder. But how weak are these visions about ancestors and descendants! and how extraordinarily weak am I to harbour them, when I see that a madman, a housemaid, and an at

*Wife of Sir John Dick, formerly consul at Leghorn.

The marriage of the Honourable Horatio Walpole with Sophia, the daughter of Lady Mary Churchill, took place in July.-ED.

torney can baffle all the views Sir Robert himself had entertained! Could he foresee that his grandson would sell his collection of pictures; or that his grand-daughter would marry the King's brother?-Yet, if one excluded visions and attended only to the philosophy of reflection, -if one always recollected how transitory are all the glories in the imagination,-how insipid, how listless would life be! Are fame or science more real? Would we know what is passed, on the truth of what history can we depend? Would we step without the palpable world, what do we learn but by guess, or by that most barren of all responses, calculation? Is any thing more lean than the knowledge we attain by computing the distance or magnitude of a planet! If we could know more of a world than its size, would not its size be the least part of our contemplation? All I mean is, that it matters not with what visions, provided they are harmless, we amuse ourselves; and that, so far from combating, I often love to entertain them. When one has outlived one's passions and pursuits, one should become inactive or morose if one's second childhood had not its rattles and fables like the first.

I am the more willing to play with local and domestic baby-houses, as the greater scene is still more comfortless; though what is one's country but one's family on a larger scale? What was the glory of immortal Rome, but the family pride of some thousand families? All sublunary objects are but great and little by comparison. You and I have lived long enough to see Houghton and England emerge, the one from a country gentleman's house to a palace, the other from an island to an empire; and to behold both stripped of their acquisitions, and lamentable in their ruins. I will push the comparison between large and petty objects no farther, though both have compounded the present colour of my mind. I came hither yesterday, but left nothing new in town. The follies of a great capital are only new in the persons of their favourites. The fanatic Lord George Gordon was the reigning hero a fortnight ago: the French dancers, Vestris and his son, have dethroned him, and are the reigning bubbles in the air at this moment. On Thursday was sevennight there was an opera for the sufferers by the late dreadful calamities at Barbadoes and Jamaica; the theatre was not half full. Last Thursday was the benefit of Vestris and son; the house could not receive or contain the multitudes that presented themselves. Their oblations amounted to fourteen hundred pounds.

You talk of Dutch prizes: a late storm has paid them in a moment, and thrown into their arms, at least driven and wrecked on their coast, one of our newly arrived Indiamen, worth two hundred thousand pounds. We consoled ourselves with the revolt of a large body of Washington's troops; but, when Sir Henry Clinton invited. them to his standard, they impolitely bound his messengers hand and foot, and sent them to the Congress.* We are apt to sing Io Paan

In the January of this year, on the occasion above referred to, though smarting under their supposed wrongs, and surrounded by the dangers to which they had VOL. II.-16