fleets were at the entrance of the Channel, where they certainly will not venture to stay long: the wind blows very hard to-day, and may do them great mischief. They have no transports; and, if they mean any attempt on land, it will be on Ireland: but it will be no surprise, and it is generally thought they only wait to intercept our Jamaica fleet. Minorca I conclude will be taken. I am happy to hear you are so well, as I am.

LETTER CCCLIX.

Sept. 19, 1781.

I HAVE received your letter of the 4th to-day, in which you send me your late dates. I have no doubt of having received them all, but cannot verify it, as they are at Strawberry and I am in town. That of mine which you received so long after the term, I conclude, was neglected at the office; for why should they detain it? My letters certainly contain nothing of consequence. I am in no secrets of any party, and certainly should not trust them to the post if I knew any, still less to all posts, English, Austrian, Dutch, and Italian. I have lived too long, besides being a Prime Minister's son, not to know that letters are opened; and, consequently, what I write anybody is welcome to see, if they have such curiosity. You, I believe, find that I seldom tell you anything but what you have seen before in some public newspaper. The almost sole merit of my letters is that I mean to

ascertain your belief, that, when I repeat what you have read in the papers, you may be sure that it is true, or that I at least believe it. My sentiments are pretty well known, and, were they of any importance, it is not now that they are to be learnt.

I can tell you little of the combined fleets but contradictions. Our papers say, they are returned to Brest. Others say, they are still cruizing to the west, in expectation of our mercantile fleets. As variously I hear of Darby: the printed authorities make him returned to Torbay; the verbal, at sea. All I prove is, that I don't know which accounts are true. Minorca I have given up; though we read daily of a Russian fleet in the Mediterranean, to whom we are supposed to have ceded it, a little late to be sure: I question whether the Czarina would accept a present encumbered with a law-suit.

One good event I do know: Lord George Gordon has given up his pretensions of being member for London. It is still better, that he dropped his pursuit on finding that the City did not chuse to be burnt once a-year for his amusement.

Though I knew your nephew talked of making you a visit this autumn, you surprise me by thinking him set out nay, I do not affirm that he is not, yet I should think he would have let me know. Moreover, Mrs. Noel, a near relation of Lady Lucy, and in constant correspondence with Lord Gainsborough's family, and whom I see three or four times a-week at the Duchess of Montrose's at Twickenham Park, knows not

a word of his being gone: we talk of him frequently. Yet my equal ignorance of Galluzzi's History staggers me. I can only suppose that it lies at your nephew's house in town, and that he has not been in London for some time. I am impatient, yet I shall not lay violent hands on it without his knowledge. I do wish you to have the comfort of seeing him; it will make me amends for waiting for the House of Medici. You will have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Damer, whom I announced in my last.

There is a perfect dearth of all private news, as usual at this season, when the campaign is opened against poor partridges and pheasants, and which is as hot as if we had no other occasion for gunpowder ! It is well, however, to have all England good marksmen.

I forgot to say that there is talk of an armistice with Holland. May it be true! though I fear peace is not so catching as war: yet, as the demon of blood has breakfasted, dined, and supped so plentifully, I should hope he had gotten a surfeit; nay, he must let the calves grow up and be fat, when he has devoured hecatombs of oxen, if he means to gormandize on. Adieu!

LETTER CCCLX.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 3, 1781.

THERE may be wars over half the globe, and yet they may not furnish a paragraph to the newspapers every day, nor matter for a letter once a fortnight.

VOL. III.-NEW SERIES.

Y

Besides, polished nations act more out of spite than anger, and had rather civilly murder one another by a consumption, than by knocking out each other's brains. You and I remember, a few years ago, that a King of Prussia could gallop from Bohemia to Dantzick, whisk back to Silesia, bounce like an apparition into Saxony, pick up a victory here and a defeat there, and put news-writers out of breath with following or hunting him. France and Spain are other-guess enemies. They undermine our funds, inveigle us into taxes, and never offer us a battle, but with such superiority that we dare not accept it. I own we are so simple as to humour them in this unfair warfare! It costs us millions to play a losing game, without a soul betting on our side. We verily believe the combined fleets are gone to their several homes; in the interim we are viceroys of the Channel again during their pleasure ; thanks to our only ally the Equinox! The fleet from the Leeward Islands is arrived safely. You must send us news of Minorca. Our Mediterranean post-office is a little out of repair.

Thus, having no immediate object of your curiosity to satisfy, I shall not hurry my gazettes. I am tired of writing to say I have nothing to write.

Lord Rochford* is dead. The other Nassau, your Prince Cowper, the papers say, is arrived in England;

* William-Henry Zulenstein de Nassau, fourth Earl of Rochford. In 1763, his Lordship was appointed Ambassador to the court of Spain; and from 1768 to 1775, filled the office of one of the principal Secretaries of State, and in 1778 was elected a Knight of the Garter.-ED.

as great a stranger as any outlandish Prince, as the vulgar call it, could be.

Wednesday night.

Well; I find Lord Cowper is not come; which is not extraordinary, as his arrival would be after twenty years of absence. Mr. Beauclerk,* whom you have seen of late, I conclude, with Lady Catharine, is now a peer his father, Lord Vere, is just dead, at eighty

one.

LETTER CCCLXI.

Berkeley Square, Oct. 18, 1781.

HAPPENING to come to town to-day, I found the two sets of the History of the Medici. I hasten to tell you so, that your nephew may not be unquiet about their remaining chez lui. I do not thank you but for your trouble; for I insist on your telling your nephew the price, that I may pay him at his return. You know I have made a law against presents, and it would be curious if I broke my own ordinance in a still more flagrant instance of asking for them. This was a commission, and do not imagine that I would not only beg a present, but a double one.

Though I came to town on business, my impatience was so great that I could not help dipping; and, as

* Aubrey Beauclerk, second Lord Vere, married, in 1763, Lady Catharine Ponsonby, eldest daughter of the Earl of Besborough. The first Lord Vere was a younger son of the first Duke of St. Alban's. In 1787, by the death of his cousin George, grandson of Lord William Beauclerk, he became fifth Duke of St. Alban's.