I have been making up some pills of patience, to be taken occasionally, when you have begun your journey, and I do not receive your letters regularly; which may happen when you are .on the road. I recommend you to St. James of Compost-antimony, to whom St. Luke was an ignorant quack. Adieu!

(817) "The Marquis de Bouill`e, in order to draw upon himself the indignation of the Assembly, addressed to it a letter, which might be called mad, but for the generous motive which dictated it. He avowed himself the sole author of the King's journey, though, on the contrary, he had opposed it. He declared, in the name of the Sovereign, that Paris should be responsible for the safety of the Royal Family, and that the slightest injury offered to them should be signally avenged. The Assembly winked at this generous bravado, and threw the whole blame on Bouill`e; who had nothing to fear, for he was already abroad." Thiers, vol. i. p. 197.-E.

(818) "In his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity." Byron.-E.

(819) "Go see
Laocoon's torture dignifying pain—
A father's love and mortal's agony
With an immortal's patience blending:—Vain
The struggle: vain against the coiling strain
And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp,
The old man's clench, the long envenom'd chain
Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp." Ibid.-E.

Letter 388 To The Miss Berrys.
Berkeley Square, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1791. (page 516)

I am come to town to meet Mr. Conway and Lady Ailesbury; and, as I have no letter from you yet to answer, I will tell you how agreeably I have passed the last three days; though they might have been improved had you shared them, as I wished, and as I sometimes do wish. On Saturday evening I was at the Duke of Queensberry's (at Richmond, s'entend) with a small company: and there were Sir William Hamilton and Mrs. Harte; who, on the 3d of next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame l'Envoy`ee `a Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs. Hastings—who could go with a husband in each hand—are admitted. Why the Margravine of Anspach, with the same pretensions, was not, I do not understand; perhaps she did not attempt it. But I forgot to retract, and make amende honourable to Mrs. Harte. I had only heard of her attitudes; and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh! but she sings admirably; has a very fine, strong voice: is an excellent buffa, and an astonishing tragedian. She sung Nina in the highest perfection; and there her attitudes were a whole theatre of grace and various expressions.

The next evening I was again at Queensberry-house, where the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of hers, and of which I knew so much by my intimacy with the Duchesse de Choiseul.

On Monday was the boat-race. I was in the great room at the Castle, with the Duke of Clarence, Lady Di., Lord Robert Spencer,(820) and the House of Bouverie(821) to see the boats start from the bridge to Thistleworth, and back to a tent erected on Lord Dysart's meadow, just before Lady Di.'s windows; whither we went to see them arrive, and where we had breakfast. For the second heat, I sat in my coach on the bridge; and did not stay for the third. The day had been coined on purpose, with my favourite southeast wind. The scene, both up the river and down, was what only Richmond upon earth can exhibit. The crowds on those green velvet meadows and on the shores, the yachts, barges, pleasure and small boats, and the windows and gardens lined with spectators, were so delightful, that when I came home from that vivid show, I thought Strawberry looked as dull and solitary as a hermitage. At night there was a ball at the Castle, and illuminations, with the Duke's cipher, etc. in coloured lamps, as were the houses of his Royal Highness's tradesmen. I went again in the evening to the French ladies on the Green, where there was a bonfire; but, you may believe, not to the ball.

Well! but you, who have had a fever with f`etes, had rather hear the history of the new soi-disante Margravine. She has been in England with her foolish Prince, and not only notified their marriage to the Earl,(822) her brother, who did not receive it propitiously, but his Highness informed his lordship by a letter, that they have an usage , in his country of taking a wife with the left hand; that he had' espoused his lordship's sister in that manner; and intends, as soon as she shall be a widow,(823) to marry her with his right hand also. The Earl replied, that he knew she was married to an English peer, a most respectable man, and can know nothing of her marrying any other man; and so they are gone to Lisbon. Adieu!

(820) Brother to Lady Diana Beauclerc.

(821) The family of the Hon. Edward Bouverie, brother to the Earl of Radnor.

(822) Of Berkeley.

(823) Lady Craven became a widow in the following month, and was married to the Margrave of Anspach in October. See ante, p. 387, letter 305.

Letter 389 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 11, 1791. (page 517)

Though I am delighted to know, that of thirteen doleful months but two remain, yet how full of anxiety will they be! You set out in still hot weather, and will taste very cold before you arrive! Accidents, inns, roads, mountains, and the sea, are all in my map!- but I hope no slopes to be run down, no f`etes for a new Grand Duke. I should dread your meeting armies, if I had much faith in the counter-revolution said to be on the anvil. The French ladies in my vicinage (a, word of the late Lord Chatham's coin) are all hen-a-hoop on the expectation of a grand alliance formed for that purpose, and I believe think they shall be at Paris before you are in England; but I trust one is more certain than the other. That folly and confusion increase in France every hour, I have no doubt, and absurdity and contradictions as rapidly. Their constitution, which they had voted should be immortal and unchangeable,-though they deny that any thing antecedent to themselves ought to have been so,-they are now of opinion must be revised at the commencement of next century; and they are agitating a third constitution, before they have thought of a second, or finished the first! Bravo! In short, Louis Onze could not have laid deeper foundations for despotism than these levellers, who have rendered the name of liberty odious—the surest way of destroying the dear essence!

I have no news for you, but a sudden match patched up for Lord Blandford, with a little more art than was employed by the fair Gunnilda. It is with Lady Susan Stewart, Lord Galloway's daughter, contrived by and at the house of her relation and Lord Blandford's friend, Sir Henry Dashwood ; and it is to be so instantly, that her grace, his mother, will scarce have time to forbid the bans.(824)

We have got a codicil to summer, that is as delightful as, I believe, the seasons in the Fortunate Islands. It is pity it lasts but till seven in the evening, and then one remains with a black chimney for five hours. I wish the sun was not so fashionable as never to come into the country till autumn and the shooting season; as if Niobe's children were not hatched and fledged before the first of September. Apropos, Sir William Hamilton has actually married his Gallery of Statues, and they are set out on their return to Naples. I am sorry I did not see her attitudes, which Lady Di. (a tolerable judge!) prefers to any thing she ever saw: still I do not much care. I have at this moment a commercial treaty with Italy, and hope in two months to be a greater gainer by the exchange; and I shall not be SO generous as Sir William, and exhibit my wives in pantomime to the public. 'Tis well I am to have the originals again; for that wicked swindler, Miss Foldson, has not yet given up their portraits.

The newspapers are obliged to live Upon the diary of the King's motions at Weymouth. Oh! I had forgot. Lord Cornwallis has taken Bangalore by storm, promises Seringapatam, and Tippoo Saib has sued for peace. Diamonds will be as plenty as potatoes, and gold is as common as copper-money in Sweden. I was told last night, that a director of the Bank affirms, that two millions five hundred thousand pounds, in specie, have already been remitted or brought over hither from France since their revolution.

(824) The marriage took place four days after the date of this letter.-E.

Letter 390 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Friday night late, Sept. 16, 1791. (page 519)

As I am constantly thinking of you two, I am as constantly writing to you, when I have a vacant quarter of an hour. Yesterday was red-lettered in the almanacks of Strawberry and Cliveden, Supposing you to set out towards them, as you intended; the sun shone all day, and the moon at night, and all nature, for three miles round, looked gay. Indeed, we have had nine or ten days of such warmth and serenity, (here called heat,) as I scarce remember when the year begins to have gray, or rather yellow hairs. All windows have been flung up again and fans ventilated; and it is true that hay-carts have been transporting haycocks, from a second crop, all the morning from Sir Francis Basset's island opposite to my windows. The setting sun and the long autumnal shades enriched the landscape to a Claude Lorrain. Guess whether I hoped to see such a scene next year: if I do not, may you! at least, it will make you talk of me! The gorgeous season' and poor partridges. I hear, have emptied London entirely, and yet Drury-lane is removed to the Opera-house. Do you know that Mrs. Jordan is acknowledged to be Mrs. Ford, and Miss Brunton(825) Mrs. Merry, but neither quits the stage? The latter's captain, I think, might quit his poetic profession, without any loss to the public. My gazettes will have kept you so much au courant, that you will be as ready for any conversation at your return, as if you had only been at a watering-place. In short, -a votre intention, and to make my letters as welcome as I can, I listen to and bring home a thousand things, which otherwise I should not know I heard.

Lord Buchan is screwing out a little ephemeral fame from instituting a jubilee for Thomson.(826) I fear I shall not make my court to Mr. Berry, by owning I would not give this last week's fine weather for all the four Seasons in blank verse. There is more nature in L'Allegro and Penseroso, than in all the laboured imitations Of Milton. What is there in Thomson of original?

Berkeley Square, Monday night, 19th.

You have alarmed me exceedingly, by talking of returning through France, against which I thought myself quite secure, or I should not have pressed you to stir, yet. I have been making all the inquiries I could amongst the foreign ministers at Richmond, and I cannot find any belief of' the march of armies towards France. Nay, the Comte d'Artois is said to be gone to PetersbUrgh; and he must bring back forces in a balloon, if he can be time enough to interrupt your passage through Flanders. One thing I must premise, if, which I deprecate, You should set foot in France; I beg you to burn, and not to bring a scrap of paper with you. Mere travelling ladies as young as you, I know have been stopped and rifled, and detained in France to have their papers examined; and one was rudely treated, because the name of a French lady of her acquaintance was mentioned in a private letter to her, though in no political light. Calais is one of the worst places you can pass; for, as they suspect money being remitted through that town to England, the search and delays there are extremely strict and rigorous. The pleasure of seeing you would be bought infinitely too dear by your meeting with any disturbance; as my impatience for your setting out is already severely punished by the fright you have given me. One charge I can wipe off; but it were the least of my faults. I never thought of your settling at Cliveden in November, if your house in town is free. All my wish was, that you would come for a night to Strawberry, and that the next day I might put you in possession of Cliveden. I did not think of engrossing you from all your friends, who must wish to embrace you at your return.

Tuesday.

I am told that on the King's acceptance of the constitution, there is a general amnesty published, and passports taken off. If this is true, the passage through France, for mere foreigners and strangers, may be easier and safer; but be assured, of all, I would not embarrass your journey unnecessarily; but, for Heaven's sake! be well informed. I advise nothing: I dread every thing where your safeties are in question, and I hope Mr. Berry is as timorous as I am. My very contradictions prove the anxiety of my mind, or I should not torment those I love so much; but how not love those who sacrifice so much for me, and who, I hope, forgive all my unreasonable inconsistencies. Adieu! adieu!

(825) An actress of considerable talent and personal attractions. Her sister, also a popular actress, was married, in 1807, to the Earl of Craven.-E.

(826) The jubilee took place on the 22d of September, at Ednam-hill. On crowning the first edition of "The Seasons" with a wreath of bays, Lord Buchan delivered an eulogy on the poet, containing the following singular passage:—"I think myself happy to have this day the honour of endeavouring to do honour to the memory of Thomson, which has been profanely touched by the rude hand of Samuel Johnson: whose fame and reputation indicate the decline of taste in a country that, after having produced an Alfred, a Wallace, a Bacon, a Napier, a Newton, a Buchanan, a Milton, a Hampden, a Fletcher, and a Thomson, can submit to be bullied by an overbearing pedant."-E.

Letter 391 To The Miss Berrys.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 25, 1791. (page 520)

How I love to see My numeros increase.(827) I trust they will not reach sixty! in short, I try every nostrum to make absence seem shorter; and yet, with all my conjuration, I doubt the next five or six weeks will, like the harvest-moon, appear of a greater magnitude than all the moons of the year, its predecessors. I wish its successor, the hunter's moon, could seem less in proportion; but, on the contrary! I hate travelling, and roads. and inns myself: while you are on your way, I shall fancy, like Don Quixote, that every inn is the castle of some necromancer, and every windmill a giant; and these will be my smallest terrors.

Whether this will meet or follow you, I know not. Yours of the 5th of this month arrived yesterday, but could not direct me beyond Basle. I must, then, remain still 11 in ignorance whether you will take the German or French route. It is now, I think, certain that there will no attempt against France be made this year. Still I trust that you will not decide till you are assured that you may come through France without trouble or molestation; and I still prefer Germany, though it will protract your absence.

I am sorry you were disappointed of going to Valombroso. Milton has made every body wish to have seen it; which is my wish, for though I was thirteen months at Florence (at twice ), I never did see it. In fact, I was so tired of seeing when I was abroad, that I have several of these pieces of repentance on my conscience, when they come into my head; and yet I saw too much for the quantity left such a confusion in my head, that I do not remember a quarter clearly. Pictures, statues, and buildings were always so much my passion, that, for the time, I surfeited myself; especially as one is carried to see a vast deal that is not worth seeing. They who are industrious and correct, and wish to forget nothing, should go to Greece, where there is nothing left to be seen, but that ugly pigeon-house, the Temple of the Winds, that fly-cage, Demosthenes's lanthorn, and one or two fragments of a portico, or a piece of a column crushed into a mud wall; and with such a morsel, and many quotations, a true classic antiquary can compose a whole folio, and call it Ionian Antiquities!(828) Such gentry do better still when they journey to Egypt to visit the pyramids, which are of a form which one think nobody could conceive without seeing, though their form is all that is to be seen; for it seems that even prints and measures do not help one to an idea of magnitude: indeed, the measures do not; for no two travellers have agreed on the measures. In that scientific country, too, you may guess that such or such a vanished city stood within five or ten miles of such a parcel of land; and when you have conjectured in vain, at what some rude birds, or rounds or squares, on a piece of an old stone may have signified, you may amuse your readers with an account of the rise of the Nile, some feats of the-Mamelukes, and finish your work with doleful tales of the robberies of the wild Arabs. One benefit does arise from travelling: it cures one of liking what is worth seeing especially if what you have seen is bigger than what you do see. Thus, Mr. Gilpin, having visited all the lakes, could find no beauty in Richmond-hill. If he would look through Mr. Herschell's telescope at the profusion of worlds, perhaps he would find out that Mount Atlas is an ant-hill; and that the sublime and beautiful may exist separately.

(827) Mr. Walpole numbered all the letters written by him to the Miss Berrys during their residence abroad.-E.

(828) The first volume of "Ionian Antiquities," in imperial folio edited by R. Chandler, N. Revett, and W. Pais, was published in 1769; a second, edited by the Society of Dilettanti, appeared in 1797.-E.

Letter 392 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1791. (page 522)

Your letter was most welcome, as yours always are; and I answer it immediately, though our post comes in so late that this will not go away till to-morrow. Nay, I write, though I shall see you on Sunday, and have not a tittle to tell you. I lead so insipid a life, that, though I am content with it, it can furnish me with nothing but repetitions. I scarce ever stir from home in a morning; and most evenings go and play at loto with the French at Richmond, where I am heartily tired of hearing of nothing but their absurd countrymen, -absurd, both democrates and aristocrates. Calonne sends them gross lies, that raise their hopes to the skies - and in two days they hear of nothing but horrors and disappointments; and the poor souls! they are in despair. I can say nothing to comfort them, but what I firmly believe, which is, total anarchy must come on rapidly. Nobody pays the taxes that are laid; and which, intended to produce eighty millions a month, do not bring in six. The new Assembly will fall on the old,(829) probably plunder the richest, and certainly disapprove of much they have done; for can eight hundred new ignorants approve of what has been done by twelve hundred almost as Ignorant, and who were far from half agreeing? And then their immortal constitution (which, besides, is to be mightily mended nine years hence) will die before it has cut any of its teeth but its grinders. The exiles are enraged at their poor King for saving his own life by a forced acceptance:(830) and yet I know no obligation he has to his noblesse, who all ran away to save their own lives; not a gentleman, but the two poor gendarmes at Versailles, having lost their lives in his defence. I suppose La Fayette, Barnave,(831) the Lameths, etc. will run away too,(832) when the new tinkers and cobblers, of whom the present elect are and will be composed, proceed on the levelling system taught them by their predecessors, who., like other levellers, have taken good care of themselves, Good Dr. Priestley's friend, good Monsieur Condorcet, has got a place in the treasury of one thousand pounds a year:-ex uno disce omnes! And thus a set of rascals, who might, with temper and discretion, have obtained a very wholesome Constitution, Witness Poland! have committed infinite mischief, infinite cruelty, infinite injustice, and left a shocking precedent against liberty, unless the Poles are as much admired and imitated as the French ought to be detested. I do not believe the Emperor will stir yet; he, or his ministers, must see that it is the interest of Germany to let France destroy itself. His interference yet might unite and consolidate, at least check further confusion and though I rather think that twenty thousand men might march from one end of France to the other, as, though the officers often rallied, French soldiers never were stout; yet, having no officers, no discipline, no subordination, little resistance might be expected. Yet the enthusiasm that has been spread might turn into courage. Still it were better for Caesar to wait. Quarrels amongst themselves will dissipate enthusiasm; and, if they have no foreign enemy, they will soon have spirit enough to turn their swords against one another, and what enthusiasm remains will soon be converted into the inveteracy of faction. This is speculation, not prophecy; I do not pretend to guess what will happen: I do think I know what will not; I mean, the system of experiments that they call a constitution cannot last. Marvellous indeed would it be, if a set of military noble lads, pedantic academicians, curates of villages, and country advocates, could in two years, amidst the utmost confusion and altercation amongst themselves, dictated to or thwarted by obstinate clubs of various factions, have achieved what the wisdom of all ages and all nations has never been able to compose—a system of government that would set four-and-twenty millions of people free, and contain them within any bounds! This, too, without one great man amongst them. If they had had, as Mirabeau seemed to promise to be, but as we know that he was, too, a consummate villain, there would soon have been an end of their vision of liberty. And so there will be still, unless, after a civil war, they split into small kingdoms or commonwealths. A little nation may be free; for it can be upon its guard. Millions cannot be so; because, the greater number of men that are one people, the more vices, the more abuses there are, that will either require or furnish pretexts for restraints; and if vices are the mother of laws, the execution of laws is the father of power:-and of such parents one knows the progeny.

(829) The Constitutional Assembly closed its sittings on the 30th of September; having, during the three years of its existence, enacted thirteen hundred laws and decrees, relative to legislation, or to the general administration of the state. The first sitting of the, Legislative Assembly took place on the following day.-E.

(830) The King, on the 14th Of September, had accepted the new constitution, and sworn to maintain it.-E.

(831) For expressing his opinion, that the new constitution inclined too much to a democracy, Barnave, after fifteen months, imprisonment at Grenoble was tried before the revolutionary tribunal, condemned to death, and guillotined on the 29th of November 1793.-E.

(832) The two Lameths, Charles and Alexander, fled the country, The latter, having fallen into the hands of the Austrians with La Fayette, shared his captivity, till December 1795.-E.

Letter 393 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Sept, 29, 1791. (page 523)

My dear madam, I have been very sorry, but not at all angry, at not hearing from you so long. With all your friendly and benevolent heart, I know by experience how little you love writing to your friends; and I know why: you think you lose moments which you could employ in doing more substantial good; and that your letters only pamper our minds, but do not feed or clothe our bodies; if they did, you would coin as much paper as the French do in assignats. Do not imagine now that you have committed a wicked thing by writing to me at last: comfort yourself, that your conscience, not temptation, forced you to write; and be assured, I am as grateful as if you had written from choice, not from duty, as your constant spiritual director.

I have been out of order the whole summer, but not very ill for above a fortnight. I caught a painful rheumatism by, going into a very crowded church on a rainy day, where all the windows were open, to hear our friend the Bishop of London preach a charity sermon here at Twickenham. My gout would not resign to a new incumbent, but came too; and both together have so lamed my right arm, though I am now using it, that I cannot yet extend it entirely, nor lift it to the top of my head. However, I am free from pain; and as Providence, though it supplied us originally with so many bounties, took care we might shift with succedaneums on the loss of several of them, I am content with what remains of my stock; and since all my fingers are not useless, and that I have not six hairs left, I am not much grieved at not being able to comb my head. Nay, should not such a shadow as I have ever been, be thankful, that at the eve of seventy-five I am not yet passed away?

I am so little out of charity with the Bishop for having been the innocent cause of the death of my shoulder, that I am heartily concerned for him and her on Mrs. Porteus's accident.(833) It may have marbled her complexion, but I am persuaded has not altered her lively, amiable, good-humoured countenance. As I know not where to direct to them, and as you cannot suppose it a sin for a sheep to write to its pastor on a week-day, I wish you would mark the interest I take in their accident and escape from worse mischief.

I thank you most cordially for your inquiry after my wives. I am in the utmost perplexity Of mind about them; torn between hopes and fears. I believe them set out from Florence on their return since yesterday se'nnight, and consequently feel all the joy and impatience of expecting them in five or six weeks: but then, besides fears of roads, bad inns, accidents, heats and colds, and the sea to cross in November at last, all my satisfaction is dashed by the uncertainty whether they Come through Germany or France. I have advised, begged, implored, that it may not be through those Iroquois, Lestryons, Anthropophagi, the Franks; and then, hearing passports were abolished, and the roads more secure, I half Consented, as they wished it, and the road is much shorter; and then I repented, and have contradicted myself again. And now I know not which route they wilt take: nor shall enjoy any comfort from the thoughts of their return, till they are returned safe.

'Tis well I am doubly guaranteed, or who knows, as I am as old almost as both her husbands together, but Mrs. B— might have cast a longing eye towards me? How I laughed at hearing of her throwing a second muckender to a Methusalem! a red-faced veteran, with a portly hillock of flesh. I conclude all her grandfathers are dead; or, as there is no prohibition in the table of consanguinity against male ancestors, she would certainly have stepped back towards the Deluge, and ransacked her pedigrees on both sides for some kinsman of the patriarchs. I could titter a plusieurs reprises; but I am too old to be improper, and you are too modest to be impropered to: and so I will drop the subject at the herald's office.

I am happy at and honour Miss Burney's resolution in casting away golden, or rather gilt chains: others, out of vanity, would have worn them till they had eaten into the bone. On that charming young woman's chapter I agree with you perfectly; not a jot on Deborah * * * * whom you admire: i have neither read her verses, nor will. As I have not your aspen conscience, I cannot forgive the heart of a woman that is party per pale blood and tenderness, that curses our clergy and feels for negroes. Can I forget the 14th of July, when they all contributed their fagot to the fires that her presbytyrants (as Lord Melcombe called them) tried to light in every Smithfield in the island; and which, as Price and Priestley applauded in France, it would be folly to suppose they did not only wish, but meant to kindle here ? Were they ignorant of the atrocious barbarities, injustice, and violation of oaths committed in France? Did Priestley not know that the clergy there had no option but between starving and perjury? And what does he think of the poor man executed at Birmingham, who declared at his death, he had been provoked by the infamous handbill? I know not who wrote it. No, my good friend: Deborah may cant rhymes of compassion, but she is a hypocrite; and you shall not make me read her, nor, with all your sympathy and candour, can you esteem her. Your compassion for the poor blacks is genuine, sincere from your soul, most amiable; hers, a measure of faction. Her party supported the abolition, and regretted the disappointment as a blow to the good cause. I know this. Do not let your piety lead you into the weakness of respecting the bad, only because they hoist the flag of religion, while they carry a stiletto in the flagstaff. Did not they, previous to the 14th of July, endeavour to corrupt the guards? What would have ensued, had they succeeded, you must tremble to think!

You tell me nothing of your own health. May I flatter myself it is good? I wish 1 knew so authentically! and I wish I could guess when I should see you, without your being staked to the fogs of the Thames at Christmas; I cannot desire that. Adieu, my very valuable friend! I am, though unworthy, yours most cordially.

(833) An overturn in a carriage.

Letter 394 To Miss Berry.
Strawberry Hill, Oct. 9, 1791. (page 526)

It will be a year to-morrow since you set out: next morning came the storm that gave me such a panic for you! In March happened your fall, and the wound on your nose; and in July your fever. For sweet Agnes I have happily had no separate alarm: yet I have still a month of apprehension to come for both! All this mass of vexation and fears is to be compensated by the transport at your return, and by the complete satisfaction on your installation at Cliveden. But could I believe, that when my clock had struck seventy-four, I could pass a year in such agitation! It may he taken for dotage; and I have for some time expected to be superannuated: but, though I task myself severely, I do not find my intellects impaired; though I may be a bad judge myself, You may, perhaps, perceive it by my letters; and don't imagine I am laying a snare for flattery. No! I am only jealous about myself, that you two may have created such an attachment, without owing it to my weakness. Nay, I have some colt's limbs left, which I as little suspected as my anxieties.

I went with General Conway, on Wednesday morning, from Park-place to visit one of my antediluvian passions,—not a Statira or Roxana, but one pre-existent to myself,—one Windsor Castle; and I was so delightful and so juvenile, that, without attending to any thing but my eyes, I stood full two hours and a half, and found that half my lameness consists in my indolence. Two Berrys, a Gothic chapel, and an historic castle, are anodynes to a torpid mind. I now fancy that old age was invented by the lazy. St. George's Chapel, that I always worshipped, though so dark and black that I could see nothing distinctly, is now being cleaned and decorated, a scene of' lightness and graces. Mr. Conway was so struck with its Gothic beauties and taste, that he owned the Grecian style would not admit half the variety of its imagination. There is a new screen prefixed to the choir, so airy and harmonious, that I concluded it Wyat's; but it is by a Windsor architect, whose name I forget. Jarvis's window, over the altar, after West, is rather too sombre for the Resurrection, though it accords with the tone of the choirs; but the Christ is a poor figure, scrambling to heaven in a fright, as if in dread of being again buried alive. and not ascending calmly in secure dignity: and there is a Judass below, T so gigantic, that he seems more likely to burst by his bulk, than through guilt. In the midst of all this solemnity, in a small angle over the lower stalls, is crammed a small bas-relief, in oak, with the story of Margaret Nicholson, the King, and the Coachman, as ridiculously added and as clumsily executed as if it were a monkish miracle. Some loyal zealot has broken away the blade of the knife, as if the sacred wooden personage would have been in danger still. The Castle itself is smugged up, is better glazed, has got some new Stools, clocks, and looking-glasses, much embroidery in silk, and a gaudy, clumsy throne, with a medallion at top of the King's and Queen's heads, over their own—an odd kind of tautology, whenever they sit there! There are several tawdry pictures, by West, of the history of the Garter; but the figures are too small for that majestic place. However, upon the whole, I was glad to see Windsor a little revived.

I had written thus far, waiting for a letter, and happily receive Your two from Bologna together; for which I give you a million of thanks, and for the repairs of your coach, which I trust will contribute to your safety: but I will swallow my apprehensions, for I doubt I have tormented you with them. Yet do not wonder, that after a year's absence, my affection, instead of waning, is increased. Can I help feeling the infinite obligation I have to you both, for quitting Italy that you love, to humour Methusalem?—a Methusalem that is neither king nor priest, to reward and bless you; and whom you condescend to please, because he wishes to see you once more; though he ought to have sacrificed a momentary glimpse to your far more durable satisfaction. Instead of generosity, I have teased, and I fear, wearied you, with lamentations and disquiets; and how can I make you amends? What pleasure, what benefit, can I procure for you in return? The most disinterested generosity, such as yours is, gratifies noble minds; but how paltry am I to hope that the reflections of your own minds will compensate for all the amusements you give up to

"Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death!"

I may boast of having no foolish weakness for your persons, as I certainly have not; but

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd,
Lets in new selfishness through chinks that time has made."

And I have been as avaricious of hoarding a few moments of agreeable society, as if I had coveted a few more trumpery guineas in my strong-box! and then I have the assurance to tell you I am not superannuated! Oh! but I am!

The Bolognese school is my favourite, though I do not like Guercino, whom I call the German Guido, he is so heavy and dark. I do not, like your friend, venerate Constantinopolitan paintings, which are scarce preferable to Indian. The characters of the Italian comedy were certainly adopted even from the persons of its several districts and dialects. Pantaloon is a Venetian, even in his countenance; and I once saw a gentleman of Bergamo, whose face was an exact Harlequin's mask.

I have scarce a penfull of news for you; the world is at Weymouth or Newmarket. En attendent, voici, the Gunnings again! The old gouty General has carried off his tailor's wife; or rather, she him, whither, I know not. Probably, not far; for the next day the General was arrested for three thousand pounds, and carried to a spunginghouse, whence he sent cupid with a link to a friend, to beg help and a crutch. This amazing folly is generally believed; perhaps because the folly of that race is amazing—so is their whole story. The two beautiful sisters Were going on the stage, when they are at once exalted almost as high as they could be, were countessed and double-duchessed; and now the rest of the family have dragged themselves through all the kennels of the newspapers! Adieu! forgive all my pouts. I will be perfectly good-humoured when I have nothing to vex me!

Letter 395 To John Pinkerton, Esq.(834)
Berkeley Square, Dec. 26, 1791. (page 528)

As I am sure of the sincerity of your congratulations,(835 I feel much obliged by them, though what has happened destroys my tranquillity; and, if what the world reckons advantages could compensate the loss of peace and ease, would ill indemnify me, even by them. A small estate, loaded with debt, and of which I do not understand the management, and am too old to learn; a source of lawsuits among my near relations, though not affecting me; endless conversations with lawyers, and packets of letters to read every day and answer,—all this weight of new business is too much for the rag of life that yet hangs about me, and was preceded by three weeks of anxiety about my unfortunate nephew, and daily correspondence with physicians and mad-doctors, falling upon me when I had been out of order ever since July. Such a mass of troubles made me very seriously ill for some days, and has left me and still keeps me so weak and dispirited, that, if I shall not soon be able to get some repose, my poor head or body will not be able to resist. For the empty title, I trust you do not suppose it is any thing but an incumbrance, by larding my busy mornings with idle visits of interruption, and which, when I am able to go out, I shall be forced to return. Surely no man of seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name! It will seem personal, and ungrateful too, to have said so much about my own triste situation, and not to have yet thanked you, Sir. for your kind and flattering offer of letting me read what you have finished of your history; but it was necessary to expose my position to you, before I could venture to accept your proposal, when I am so utterly incapable of giving a quarter of an hour at a time to what I know, by my acquaintance with your works, will demand all my attention, if I wish to reap the pleasure they are formed to give me. It is most true that for these seven weeks I have not read seven pages, but letters, states of account, cases to be laid before lawyers, accounts of farms, etc. etc., and those subject to mortgages. Thus are my mornings occupied: in an evening my relations and a very few friends come to me; and, when they are gone, I have about an hour to midnight to write answers to letters for the next day's post, which I had not time to do in the morning. This is actually my case now. I happened to be quitted at ten o'clock, and would not lose the opportunity of thanking you, not knowing when I could command another hour.

I by no means would be understood to decline your obliging offer, Sir: on the contrary, I accept it joyfully, if you can trust me with your manuscript for a little time, should I have leisure to read it but by small snatches, which would be wronging you, and would break all connexion in my head. Criticism you are too great a writer to want; and to read critically is far beyond my present power. Can a scrivener, or a scrivener's hearer, be a judge of composition, style, profound reasoning, and new lights and discoveries, etc.? But my weary hand and breast must finish. May I ask the favour of you calling on me any morning, when you shall happen to come to town? You will find the new-old lord exactly the same admirer of yours.

(834) Now first collected.

(835) Mr. Walpole had succeeded to the title of Earl of Orford on the 5th of December, upon the death of his nephew George, the third Earl.-E.

Letter 396 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Jan. 1, 1792. (PAGE 529)

My much-esteemed friend, I have not so long delayed answering your letter from the pitiful revenge of recollecting how long your pen is fetching breath before it replies to mine. Oh! no; you know I love to heap coals of kindness on your head, and to draw you into little sins, that you may forgive yourself, by knowing your time was employed on big virtues. On the contrary, you would be revenged; for here have you, according to your notions, inveigled me into the fracture of a commandment; for I am writing to you on a Sunday, being the first moment of leisure that I have had since I received your letter. It does not indeed clash with my religious ideas, as I hold paying one's debts as good a deed, as praying and reading sermons for a whole day in every week, when it is impossible to fix the attention to one course of thinking for so many hours for fifty-two days in every year. Thus you see I can preach too. But seriously, and indeed I am little disposed to cheerfulness now, I am overwhelmed with troubles, and with business—and business that I do not understand; law, and the management of a ruined estate, are subjects ill-suited to a head that never studied any thing that in worldly language is called useful. The tranquillity of my remnant of life will be lost, or so perpetually interrupted, that I expect little comfort; not that I am already intending to grow rich, but, the moment one is supposed so, there are so many alert to turn one to their own account, that I have more letters to Write, to satisfy, or rather to dissatisfy them, than about my own affairs, though the latter are all confusion. I have such missives on agriculture, pretensions to livings, offers of taking care of my game as I am incapable of it, self-recommendations of making my robes, and round hints of taking out my writ, that at least I may name a proxy, and give my dormant conscience to somebody or other! I trust you think better of my heart and understanding than to suppose that I have listened to any one of these new friends. Yet, though I have negatived all, I have been forced to answer some of them before you; and that will convince you how cruelly ill I have passed my time lately, besides having been made ill with vexation and fatigue. But I am tolerably well again.

For the other empty metamorphosis that has happened to the outward man, you do me justice in concluding that it can do nothing but tease me; it is being called names in one's old age. I had rather be my lord mayor, for then I should keep the nickname but a year; and mine I may retain a little longer, not that at seventy-five I reckon on becoming my Lord Methusalem. Vainer, however, I believe I am already become; for I have wasted almost two pages about myself, and said not a tittle about your health, which I most cordially rejoice to hear you are recovering, and as fervently hope you will entirely recover. I have the highest opinion of the element of water as a constant beverage; having so deep a conviction of the goodness and wisdom of Providence, that I am persuaded that when it indulged us in such a luxurious variety of eatables, and gave us but one drinkable, it intended that our sole liquid should be both wholesome and corrective. Your system I know is different; you hold that mutton and water were the Only cock and hen that were designed for our nourishment; but I am apt to doubt whether draughts of water for six weeks are capable of restoring health, though some are strongly impregnated with mineral and other particles. Yet you have staggered me: the Bath water by your account is, like electricity, compounded of contradictory qualities; the one attracts and repels; the other turns a shilling yellow, and whitens your jaundice. I shall hope to see you (when is that to be?) without alloy.

I must finish, wishing you three hundred and thirteen days of happiness for the new year that is arrived this morning: the fifty-two that you hold in commendam, I have no doubt will be rewarded as such good intentions deserve. Adieu, my too good friend! My direction shall talk superciliously to the postman;(836) but do let me continue unchangeably your faithful and sincere HORACE WALPOLE.(837)

(836) He means franking his letter by his newly-acquired title of Earl of Orford.

(837) This is the last letter signed Horace Walpole.-E.

Letter 397 To Thomas Barrett, Esq.
Berkeley Square, May 14, 1792. (PAGE 530)

Dear Sir, Though my poor fingers do not yet write easily, I cannot help inquiring if Mabeuse(838) is arrived safely at Lee, and fits his destined stall in the library. My amendment is far slower, comme de raison, than ever; and my weakness much greater. Another fit, I doubt, will confine me to my chair, if it does not do more; it is not worth haggling about that.

Dr. Darwin has appeared, superior in some respects to the former part. The Triumph of Flora, beginning at the fifty-ninth line, is most beautifully and enchantingly imagined; and the twelve verses that by miracle describe and comprehend the creation of the universe out of chaos, are in my opinion the most sublime passage in any author, or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted. There are a thousand other verses most charming, or indeed are all so, crowded with most poetic imagery, gorgeous epithets and style: and yet these four cantos do not please me equally with the Loves of the Plants. This seems to me almost as much a rhapsody of unconnected parts; and is so deep, that I cannot read six lines together, and know what they are about, till I have studied them in the long notes, and then perhaps do not comprehend them; but all this is my fault, not Dr. Darwin's. Is he to blame, that I am no natural philosopher, no chemist, no metaphysician? One misfortune will attend this glorious work; it will be little read but by those who have no taste for poetry and who will be weighing, and criticising his positions, without feeling the imagination, harmony, and expression of the versification. Is not it extraordinary, dear Sir, that two of our very best poets, Garth and Darwin, should have been physicians? I believe they have left all the lawyers wrangling at the turnpike of Parnassus. Adieu, dear Sir! Yours most cordially.

(838) A capital picture by that master, then lately purchased by Mr. Barrett.-E.

Letter 398 To Miss Hannah More.(839)
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 21, 1792. (PAGE 531)

My dear Saint Hannah, I have frequently been going to write to you, but checked myself. You are so good and so bad, that I feared I should interrupt some act of benevolence on one side; and on the other that you would not answer my letter in three months. I am glad to find, as an Irishman would say, that the way to make you answer is not to speak first. But, ah! i am a brute to upbraid any moment of your silence, though I regretted it when I hear that your kind intentions have been prevented by frequent cruel pain! and that even your rigid abstemiousness does not remove your complaints. Your heart is always aching for others, and your head for yourself. Yet the latter never hinders the activity of the former. What must your tenderness not feel now, when a whole nation of monsters is burst forth? The second massacre of Paris has exhibited horrors that even surpass the former.(840) Even the Queen's women were butchered in the Thuilleries, and the tigers chopped of the heads from the dead bodies, and tossed them into the flames of the palace. The tortures of the poor King and Queen, from the length of"their duration, surpass all example; and the brutal insolence with which they were treated on the 10th, all invention. They were dragged through the Place Vendome to see the statue of Louis the Fourteenth in fragments, and told it was to be the King's fate; and he, the most harmless of men, was told he is a monster; and this, after three years of sufferings. King and Queen, and children were shut up in a room, without nourishment, for twelve hours. One who was a witness has come over, and says he found the Queen sitting on the floor, trembling like an aspen in every limb, and her sweet boy the Dauphin asleep against her knee! She has not one woman to attend her that ever she saw, but a companion of her misery, the King's sister, an heroic virgin saint, who, on the former irruption into the palace, flew to and clung to her brother, and being mistaken for the Queen, and the hellish fiends wishing to murder her, and somebody aiming to undeceive them, she said, "Ah! ne les d`etrompez pas!"(841) Was not that sentence the sublime of innocence? But why do I wound your thrilling nerves with the relation of such horrible scenes? Your blackmanity(842) must allow some of its tears to these poor victims. For my part, I have an abhorrence of politics, if one can so term these tragedies, which make one harbour sentiments one naturally abhors; but can one refrain without difficulty from exclaiming such wretches should be exterminated? They have butchered hecatombs of Swiss, even to porters in private houses, because they often are, and always are called, Le Suisse. Think on fifteen hundred persons, probably more, butchered on the 10th,(843) in the space of eight hours. Think on premiums voted for the assassination of several princes, and do not think that such execrable proceedings have been confined to Paris; no, Avignon, Marseilles, etc. are still smoking with blood! Scarce the Alecto of the North, the legislatress and the usurper of Poland, has occasioned the spilling of larger torrents!

I am almost sorry that your letter arrived at this crisis; I cannot help venting a little of what haunts me. But it is better to thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Woolstoncrofts. I am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer. I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists on the latter, and borrowed her title from the demon's book, which aimed at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the pale of my library. We have had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much, already.

Let us descend to private life. Your friend Mrs. Boscawen, I fear, is unhappy: she has lost most suddenly her son-in-law, Admiral Leveson. Mrs. Garrick I have scarcely seen this whole summer. She is a liberal Pomona to me—I will not say an Eve; for though she reaches fruit to me, she will never let Me in, as if I were a boy, and would rob her orchard.

As you interest yourself about a certain trumpery old person, I with infinite gratitude will add a line on him. He is very tolerably well, weak enough certainly, yet willing to be contented; he is satisfied with knowing that he is at his best. Nobody grows stronger at seventy-five, nor recovers the use of limbs half lost; nor-though neither deaf nor blind, nor in the latter most material point at all impaired; nor, as far as he can find on strictly watching himself, much damaged as to common uses in his intellects—does the gentleman expect to avoid additional decays, if his life shall be further protracted. He has been too fortunate not to be most thankful for the past, and most submissive for what is to come, be it more or less. He forgot to say, that the warmth of his heart towards those he loves and esteems has not suffered the least diminution, and consequently he is as fervently as ever Saint Hannah's most sincere friend and humble servant, ORFORD.

(839) Now first collected.

(840) From the 2d to the 6th of September, these internal atrocities proceeded uninterrupted, protracted by the actors for the sake of the daily pay of a Louis to each. M. Thiers states, that Billaud Varennes appeared publicly among the assassins, and encouraged what were called the labourers. "My friends," said he, "by taking the lives of villains you have saved the country. France owes you eternal gratitude, and the municipality offers you twenty livres apiece, and you shall be paid immediately." All the reports of the time differ in their estimate of the number of the victims. "That estimate," says M. Thiers, varies from six to twelve thousand in the prisons of France." Vol. ii. p. 45.-E.

(841) This fact is confirmed by M. Thiers. "During the irruption of the populace into the Thuilleries, on the 20th of June, Madame Elizabeth," he says, "followed the King from window to window, to share his danger. The people, when they saw her, took her for the Queen. Shouts of 'There's the Austrian!' were raised in an alarming manner. The national grenadiers, who had surrounded the Princess, endeavoured to set the people right. 'Leave them,' said that generous sister, 'leave them in their error, and save the Queen!' Vol. i. p. 306.-E.

(842) An allusion to the lively interest Miss More was taking in the abolition of the slave trade.-E.

(843) At the storming of the Thuilleries. "The Marseillais," says M. Thiers, "made themselves masters of the palace: the rabble, with pikes, poured in after them, and the rest of the scene was soon but one general massacre; the unfortunate Swiss in vain begged for quarter, at the Same time throwing down their arms; they were butchered without mercy." Vol. i. P. 380.-E.

Letter 399 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.
Strawberry Hill, August 31, 1792. (PAGE 533)

Your long letter and my short one crossed one another upon the road. I knew I was in your debt; but I had nothing to say but what you know better than I; for you read all the French papers, and I read none, as they have long put me out of all patience: and besides, I hear so much of their horrific proceedings, that they quite disturb me, and have given me what I call the French disease; that is, a barbarity that I abhor, for I cannot help wishing destruction to thousands of human creatures whom I never saw. But when men have worked themselves up into tigers and hyenas, and labour to communicate their appetite for blood, what signifies whether they walk on two legs or four, or whether they dwell in cities, or in forests and dens? Nay, the latter are the more harmless wild beasts; for they only cranch a poor traveller now and then, and when they are famished with hunger: the others, though they have dined, cut the throats of some hundreds of poor Swiss for an afternoon's luncheon. Oh! the execrable nation! I cannot tell you any new particulars, for Mesdames de Cambis and d'Hennin, my chief informers, are gone to Goodwood to the poor Duchesse de Biron, of whose recovery I am impatient to hear; and so I am of the cause of her very precipitate flight and panic. She must, I think, have had strong motives; for two years ago I feared she was much too courageous, and displayed her intrepidity too publicly. If I did not always condemn the calling bad people mad people, I should say all Paris had gone distracted: they furnish provocation to every species of retaliation, by publishing rewards for assassination of Kings and generals, and cannot rest without incensing all Europe against them.

The Duchess of York gave a great entertainment at Oatlands on her Duke's birthday; sent to his tradesmen in town to come to it, and allowed two guineas apiece to each for their carriage; gave them a dance, and opened the ball herself with the Prince of Wales. A company of strollers came to Weybridge to act in a barn: she was solicited to go to it, and did out of charity, and carried all her servants. Next day a Methodist teacher came to preach a charity sermon in the same theatre, and she Consented to hear it on the same motive; but her servants desired to be excused, on not understanding English. "Oh!" said the Duchess, "but you went to the comedy, which you understood less, and you shall go to the sermon;" to which she gave handsomely, and for them. I like this.

Tack this to my other fragment, and then, I trust, I shall not be a defaulter in correspondence. I own I am become an indolent poor creature: but is that strange? With seventy-five years over my head, or on the point of being so; with a chalk-stone in every finger; with feet so limping, that I have been but twice this whole summer round my own small garden, and so much weaker than I was, can I be very comfortable, but when sitting quiet and doing nothing? All my strength consists in my sleep, which is as vigorous as at twenty: but with regard to letter-writing, I have so many to write on business which I do not understand, since the unfortunate death of my nephew, that, though I make them as brief as possible, half-a-dozen short ones tire me as much as a long One to an old friend; and as the busy ones must be executed, I trespass on the others, and remit them to another day. Norfolk has come very mal-apropos into the end of my life, and certainly never entered into my views and plans; and I, who could never learn the multiplication table, was not intended to transact leases.. direct repairs of farm-houses, settle fines for church lands, negotiate for lowering interest on mortgages, etc. In short, as I was told formerly, though I know several things, I never understood any thing useful. Apropos, the letter of which Lady Cecilia Johnstone told you is not at all worth your seeing. It was an angry one to a parson who oppresses my tenants, and will go to law with them about tythes. She came in as I was writing it; and as I took up the character of parson myself, and preached to him as pastor of a flock which it did not become him to lead into the paths of law, instead of those of peace, I thought it would divert and showed it to her. Adieu! I have been writing to you till midnight, and my poor fingers ache. Yours ever.

Letter 400 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 9, 1793. (PAGE 535)

My holy Hannah, WITH your innate and usual goodness and sense, you have done me justice by guessing exactly at the cause of my long silence. You have been apt to tell me that my letters diverted you. How then could I write, when it was impossible but to attrist you! when I could speak of nothing but unparalleled horrors! and but awaken your sensibility, if it slumbered for a moment! What mind could forget the 10th of August and the 2d of September; and that the black and bloody year 1792 has plunged its murderous dagger still deeper, and already made 1793 still more detestably memorable! though its victim(844) has at last been rewarded for four years of torture by forcing from him every kind of proof of the most perfect character that ever sat on a throne. Were these, alas! themes for letters? Nay, am I not sure that you have been still more shocked by a crime that passes even the guilt of shedding the blood of poor Louis, to hear of atheism avowed, and the avowal tolerated by monsters calling themselves a National Assembly! But I have no words that can reach the criminality of such inferno-human beings, but must compose a term that aims at conveying my idea of them. For the future it will be sufficient to call them the French; I hope no other nation will ever deserve to be confounded with them!

Indeed, my dear friend, I have another reason for wishing to burn my pen entirely: all my ideas are confounded and overturned; I do not know whether all I ever learned in the seventy first years of my seventy-five was not wrong and false: common sense, reasoning, calculation, conjecture from analogy and from history of past events, all, all have been baffled; nor am I sure that what used to be thought the result of experience and wisdom was not a mass of mistakes. Have I not found, do I not find, that the invention of establishing metals as the signs of property was an useless discovery, or at least only useful till the art of making paper was found out? Nay, the latter is preferable to gold and silver. If the ores were adulterated and cried down, nobody would take them in exchange. Depreciate paper as much as you will, and it will still serve all the purposes of barter. Tradesmen still keep shops, stock them with goods, and deliver their commodities for those coined rags. Poor Reason, where art thou?

To show you that memory and argument are Of no value, at least with me, I thought a year or two that this papermint would soon blow UP, because I remembered that when Mr. Charles Fox and one or two more youths of brilliant genius first came to light, and into vast debts at play, they imparted to the world an important secret which they had discovered. It was, that nobody needed to want money, if they would pay enough for it. Accordingly, they borrowed of Jews at vast usury: but as they had made but an incomplete calculation, the interest so soon exceeded the principal, that the system did not maintain its ground for above two or three years. Faro has proved a more substantial speculation. But I miscarried in applying my remembrance to the assignats, which still maintain their ground against that long-decried but as long-adored corrupter of virtue, gold.(845) Alack! I do not hear that virtue has flourished more for the destruction of its old enemy!

Shall I add another truth? I have been so disgusted and fatigued by hearing of nothing but French massacres, etc. and found it so impossible to shift conversation to any other topic, that before I had been a month in town, I wished Miss Gunning would revive, that people might have at least one other subject to interest the ears and tongues of the public. But no wonder universal attention is engrossed by the present portentous scene! It seems to draw to a question, whether Europe or France is to be depopulated; whether civilization can be recovered, or the republic of Chaos can be supported by assassination. We have heard of the golden, silver, and iron ages; the brazen one existed while the French were only predominantly insolent. What the present age will be denominated, I cannot guess'. Though the paper age would be characteristic, it is not emphatic enough, nor specifies the enormous sins of the fiends that are the agents. I think it may be styled the diabolical age -. the Duke of Orleans has dethroned Satan, who since his fall has never instigated such crimes as Orleans has perpetrated.(846)

Let me soften my tone a little, and harmonize your poor mind by sweeter accents. In this deluge of triumphant enormities, what trails of the sublime and beautiful may be gleaned! Did you hear of Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister? a saint like yourself. She doted on her brother, for she certainly knew his soul. In the tumult in July, hearing the populace and the poissardes had broken into the palace, she flew to the King, and by embracing him tried to shield his person. The populace took her for the Queen, cried out "Voil`a cette chienne, cette Autrichienne!" and were proceeding to violence. Somebody to save her, screamed "Ce n'est pas la Reine, c'est—" The Princess said, "Ah! mon Dieu! ne les d`etrompez pas." If that was not the most sublime instance of perfect innocence ready prepared for death, I know not where to find one. Sublime indeed, too, was the sentence of good Father Edgeworth, the King's confessor, who, thinking his royal penitent a little dismayed just before the fatal stroke, cried out "Montez, digne fils de St. Louis! Le ciel vous est ouvert." The holy martyr's countenance brightened up, and he submitted at once. Such victims, such confessors as those, and Monsieur do Malesherbes, repair some of the breaches in human nature made by Orleans, Condorcet, Santerre, and a legion of evil spirits.

The tide of horrors has hurried me much too far, before I have vented a note of my most sincere concern for your bad account of your health. I feel for it heartily, and wish your frame were as sound as your soul and understanding. What can I recommend? I am no physician but for my own flimsy texture; which by studying, and by contradicting all advice, I have drawn to this great age. Patience, temperance, nay, abstinence, are already yours; in short, you want to be corrected of nothing but too much piety, too much rigour towards yourself, and too much sensibility for others. Is not it possible to serve mankind without feeling too great pity? Perhaps I am a little too much hardened, I am grown too little alarmed for the health of my friends, from being become far more indifferent to life; I look to the nearness of' my end, as a delivery from spectacles of wo. We have even amongst us monsters, more criminal, in speculation at least, than the French. They had cause to wish for correction of a bad government; though, till taught to dislike it, three-fourths of the country, I maintain, adored theirs. We have the perfectest ever yet devised; but if to your numerous readings of little pamphlets. you would add one more, called "Village Politics,"(847) infinitely superior to any thing on the subject, clearer, better stated, and comprehending the whole mass of matter in the shortest compass, you will be more mistress of the subject than any man in England. I know Who wrote it, but will not tell you, because you did not tell me.

(844) On the 21st of January, Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded in the Place Louis Quinze, erected to the memory of his grandfather. M. Thiers thus concludes his account of this horrible event:—"At ten minutes past ten, the carriage stopped. Louis rising briskly, stepped out into the Place. Three executioners came up; he refused their assistance, and stripped off his clothes himself; but, perceiving that they were going to bind his hands, he betrayed a movement of indignation, and seemed ready to resist. M. Edgeworth, whose every expression was then sublime, gave him, a last look, and said, 'I Suffer this outrage, as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be your reward.' At these words the victim, resigned and submissive, suffered himself to be bound and conducted to the scaffold. All at once, Louis took a hasty step, separated himself from the executioners, and advanced to address the people. 'Frenchmen,' said he, in a firm voice, 'I die innocent of the crimes which are imputed to me; I forgive the authors of my death, and I pray that my blood may not fall upon France.' He would have continued but the drums were instantly ordered to beat: their rolling drowned the voice of the Prince, the executioners laid hold of him, and M. Edgeworth took his leave in these memorable words, ''Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!' As soon as the blood flowed, furious wretches dipped their pikes and their handkerchiefs in it spread themselves throughout Paris, shouted Vive la Republique! vive la nation! and even went to the gates of the Temple to display their brutal and factious joy." Vol. ii. p. 228.-E.

(845) "The causes which at this time put assignats apparently on a par with specie were the following. A law forbade, under heavy penalties, the traffic in specie, that is, the exchange at a loss of the assignat against money: another law decreed very severe penalties against those who, in purchases, should bargain for different prices according as payment was to be made in paper or in cash: by a last law, it was enacted, that hidden gold, silver, or jewels, should belong partly to the state, partly to the informer. Thenceforth people could neither employ specie in trade nor conceal it; it became troublesome; it exposed the holders to the risk of being considered suspected persons; they began to be afraid of it, an(l to find the assignat preferable for daily use." Thiers, vol. iii. p. 213.-E.

(846) Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Duke of Orleans, who had relinquished his titles and called himself Philippe Egalit`e, and become a member of the National Convention, in giving his vote for the death of his kinsman, had read these words:—"Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death!" The atrocity of this vote occasioned great agitation in the -assembly; it seemed as if, by this single vote, the fate of the Monarch was irrevocably sealed. On the 6th of November, in the same year, the Duke was himself brought before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned on account of the suspicions which he had excited in all parties. "Odious," says M. Thiers "to the emigrants, Suspected by the Girondins and the Jacobins, he inspired none of those regrets which afford some consolation for an unjust death. A universal disgust, an absolute scepticism were his last sentiments; and he went to the scaffold with extraordinary composure and indifference, As he was drawn along the Rue St. Honor`e, he beheld his palace with a dry eye, and never belied for a moment his disgust of men and of life," Vol. iii, P. 205—E.

(847) A little work which Miss More had Just published anonymously. The sale of it was enormous. Many thousands were sent by government to Scotland and Ireland. Several persons printed large editions Of it at their own expense; and in London Only many hundred thousands were circulated.-E.

Letter 401 To Miss Hannah More.
Berkeley Square, March 23, 1793.(page 538)

I shall certainly not leave off taunting your virtues, my excellent friend, for I find it sometimes makes you correct them. I scolded you for your modesty in not acquainting me with your "Village Politics" even after they were published; and you have already conquered that unfriendly delicacy, and announced another piece of which you are in labour. Still I se there wanted your ghostly father, the )Bishop of London, to join you to be quite shameless and avow your natural child.(848) I do approve his doctrine: calling it by your own name will make its fortune. If, like Rousseau, you had left your babe among the enfans trouv`es, it might never be heard of more than his poor issue have been; for I can but observe that the French patriots, who have made such a fuss with his ashes, have not taken the smallest pains to attempt to discover his real progeny, which might not have been impossible by collating dates and circumstances. I am proud of having imitated you at a great distance, and been persuaded, much against my will and practice, to let my name be put to the second subscription for the poor French clergy, as it was thought it might tend to animate that consumptive contribution.

I am impatient for your pamphlet, not only as being yours, but hoping it will invigorate horror against French atheism, which, I am grieved to say did not by any means make due impression. very early apply to your confessor, to beg he would enjoin his clergy to denounce that shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to suggest the hint to them.

24th.

I must modify the massacre of Manuel; he has been a good deal stabbed, but will, they say, recover.(849) Perhaps it is better that some of those assassins should live to acknowledge, that "Do not to others what you would not have done to you" is not so silly a maxim as most of the precepts of morality and Justice have lately been deemed by philosophers and legislators—titles self-assumed by men who have abolished all other titles; and who have disgraced and debased the former denomination, and under the latter have enjoined triple perjuries, and at last cannot fix on any code which should exact more forswearing. I own I am pleased that that ruffian pedant Condorcet's new constitution was too clumsy and unwieldy to go down the throats of those who have swallowed every thing else. I did but just cast my eyes on the beginning and end, and was so lucky as to observe the hypocrite's contradiction: he sets out with declaration of equality, and winds up with security of property; that is, we will plunder every body, and then entail the spoils on ourselves and our (wrong) heirs.(850)

Well! that bloody chaos seems recoiling on themselves! It looks as if civil war was bursting out in many provinces, and will precipitate approaching famine. When, till now, could one make such a reflection without horror to one's self? But, alas! have not the French brought it to the question, whether Europe or France should be laid desolate'! Religion, morality, justice, have been stabbed, torn up by the roots: every right has been trampled under foot. Marriage has been profaned and undermined by law; and no wonder, that, amidst such excesses, the poor arts have shared in the common ruin! And who have been the perpetrators of, or advocates for, such universal devastation? Philosophers, geometricians, astronomers—a Condorcet, a Bailly, a Bishop of Autun, and a Doctor Priestley, and the last the worst. The French had seen grievances, crying grievances! yet not under the good late King. But what calamities or dangers threatened or had fallen on Priestley, but want of papal power, like his predecessor Calvin? If you say his house was burnt -but did he intend the fire should blaze on that side of the street? Your charity may believe him innocent, but your understanding does not. Well! I am glad to hear he is going to America; I hope he will not bring back scalping, even to that National Assembly of which he was proud of being elected a member! I doubt if Cartouche would have thought it an honour. It was stuck up in Lloyd's coffeehouse lately, that the Duke of Orleans was named "Chef de la R`epublique." I thought it should be "Chef de la Lie publique."

(848) Miss More had informed Walpole, that she was occupied in writing her "Remarks" on the atheistical speech of M. Dupont, made in the National Convention; and to which the Bishop of London had recommended her to put her name.-E.

(849) Manuel was deeply implicated in the massacres of 1792; in consequence of which he was nominated a deputy to the National Convention. He resigned his seat in January 1793, and retired to Montargis, where he narrowly escaped assassination. He was afterwards seized as a suspected person. On being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, he reminded his judges of his services, and desired it might be engraved on his tombstone, that he had occasioned the events of the 10th of August. He was guillotined in November 1793.-E.

(850) In the following July, Condorcet was accused of being an accomplice with Brissot, and, to save his life, concealed himself in the house of Madame Verney, where he remained eight months. Having at length learned that death was denounced against all who harboured a proscribed individual, he fled in disguise from Paris. He wandered about for some time, until, driven by hunger, he entered a small public-house at Clamar, where he was arrested as a suspicious person, and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28, 1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having apparently swallowed poison, which he always carried about with him.-E.