relative velocity equal to that with which the wind moves; or (which is the same thing in other words) with a velocity equal to that with which the air is impelled on the fore part of the vane.-Let us take a more simple case. Suppose it possible that a vane moves so that a point, bisecting the distance between its extremity and axis, should have a velocity equal to that of the wind: - then all the points between the middle axis and the extremity would move faster than the wind; and the differences of their velocities and that of the wind would form a series of relative velocities, where the lowest term would be O, and the highest term a quantity equal to that which represents the velocity of the wind:-but, with these relative velocities, the * back part of the vane would act against the air, and produce a resistance greater than the power acting on the fore part:-for, to the resistance and power belong equal velocities, and surfaces, but the former acts on a part at a greater distance from the axis than that on which the power acts. We have used the words resistance and power for the sake of clearness alone, and not to designate effects of a different class.

Although we think that Mr. B. has failed in establishing his position that a horizontal mill, like a vertical one, may be made to move with any velocity, yet his essay well deserves notice for the simplicity of his principle, for its extensive application, and for the perspicuity with which he has explained the machinery necessary to its action.

ART. V. The Works of Horatio Walpole Earl of Orford.
[Article concluded from p. 189.]

T
THE fifth volume of this extensive collection contains the
author's epistolary correspondence; and here we must
own that, in spite of his lordship's singularities, prepossessions,
and weaknesses, which we have freely pointed out, his letters,
as well as his narrations vivâ voce, were extremely original,
often comic, and always amusing.

The first of a long series of letters in this volume, To the Honourable Henry Seymour (afterward Field Marshal) Conway,' written in the year 1740, when Mr. Walpole was 23 and Mr. Conway 21 years old, has a peculiar cast of affection and drollery. We have at times been rather out of humour with our noble author: but we have pretty well made it up with him, in perusing the chief part of his letters to various persons; in which his friendliness must conciliate esteem, while his

* We mean only that part of the back of the vane which is in tercepted between the middle and the extremity.

descriptions,

descriptions, his knowlege of the world, his playful satire, wit, and humour, will fascinate the reader's attention. A little coolness, however, returned on observing (page 25) the contempt with which he treats The Pleasures of Imagination, and The Art of preserving Health: poems which we loved in our youth, and of which, in age, we have more clearly seen the merit.

Being unable to allow space for many whole letters, as specimens of the writer's peculiar wit and humour, which often depend on the application of common words and phrases to uncommon purposes, we shall extract some of the happiest of his bons mots and pleasantries, from the several series of his letters in the course of this most entertaining volume; the only one, of which the whole contents are new to the public.

We cannot, however, prevail on ourselves to curtail the following letter to his cousin Conway, dated Twickenham, June 8th, 1747; the former part of it is jocosely descriptive of his house at Strawberry-Hill, which he had then just entered, and which has since been so famous :

• You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little play-thing-house that I got out of Mrs. Chenevix's * shop, and is the prettiest bawble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with philigree hedges:

A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd,
And little finches wave their wings in gold.

Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window; Richmond-hill and Ham-walks bound my profpect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. I have about land enough to keep such a farm as Noah's, when he set up in the ark with a pair of each kind; but my cottage is rather cleaner than I believe his was after they had been cooped up together forty days. The Chenevixes had tricked it out for themselves: up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chenevix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me here, and insituted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.

You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all this tranquillity while a parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be dissolved: I am told, you are taken care of, though I don't know where, nor whether any body that chooses you will

quarrel with me because he does choose you, as that little bug did; one of the calamities of my life which I have bore [borne] as abominably well as I do most about which I don't care. They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry: - he had much better have saved it to buy the parliament after it is chosen. A new set of peers are in embryo, to add more dignity to the silence of the house of lords.

• I make no remarks on your campaign *, because, as you say, you do nothing at all; which, though very proper nutriment for a thinking head, does not do quite so well to write upon. If any one of you can but contrive to be shot upon your post, it is all we desire, shall look upon it as a great curiosity, and will take care to set up a monument to the person so slain, as we are doing by vote to captain ---, who was killed at the beginning of the action in the Mediterranean four years ago. In the present dearth of glory, he is canonized; though, poor man! he had been tried twice the year before for cowardice.

• I could tell you much election-news, none else; though not being thoroughly attentive to so important a subject, as to be sure one ought to be, I might now and then mistake, and give you a candidate for Durham in place of one for Southampton, or name the returning-officer instead of the candidate. In general, I believe, it is much as usual--those sold in detail that afterwards will be sold in the representation-the ministers bribing jacobites to choose friends of their own-the name of well-wishers to the present establishment, and patriots, outbidding ministers that they may make the better market of their own patriotism :-in short, all England, under fome name or other, is just now to be bought and sold; though, whenever we become posterity and forefathers, we shall be in high repute for wisdom and virtue. My great great grand-children will figure me with a white beard down to my girdle; and Mr. Pitt's will believe him unspotted enough to have walked over nine hundred hot plough. shares, without hurting the sole of his foot. How merry my ghost will be, and shake its ears to hear itself quoted as a person of confummate prudence! - Adieu, dear Harry! Yours ever,

HOR. WALPOLE.'

P. 32. Comic and sarcastic reflections on the peace of 1748; after which, he says:

• Then Charles Frederick has turned all his virtù into fire-works, and by his influence at the Ordnance, has prepared such a spectacle for the proclamation of the peace as is to surpass all its predecessors of bouncing memory. It is to open with a concert of fifteen hundred hands, and conclude with so many hundred thousand crackers all set to music, that all the men killed in the war are to be wakened with the crash, as if it was the day of judgment, and fall a dancing, like the troops in the Rehearsal. I wish you could see him making squibs of his papillotes, and bronzed over with a patina of gunpowder, and talking himself still hoarser on the superiority that his firework will have over the Roman naumachia.'

* Mr. Conway was in Flanders with William duke of Cumberland." REV. Nov. 1798.

U

At

At p. 42. we have an account of Mr. Hamilton's single speech, and of the first Mr., Pitt's eloquence in 1755. This was the earthquake year; on which subject our facetious author says:

'Between the French and the earthquakes*, you have no notion how good we are grown; nobody makes a suit of clothes now but of sackcloth turned up with ashes. The fast was kept so devoutly, that Dick Edgecumbe †, finding a very lean hazard at White's, said with a sigh, "Lord, how the times are degenerated! Formerly a fast would have brought every body hither; now it keeps every body away!" A few nights before, two men walking up the Strand, one said to t'other, "Look how red the sky is! Well, thank God! there is to be no masquerade!"

P. 57. I believe I shall be with you on Wednesday; but I can take my own word so little, that I will not give it you.' P. 58. speaking of Frederic K. of Prussia, ' If he sets over night in a defeat, he always rises in the morning in a triumph.' P. 62. 'Prince Edward (afterward D. of York) has asked to go to Quebec, and been refused. If I was sure they would refuse me, I would ask to go thither too. I should not dislike about as much laurel as I could stick in my window at Christmas.'

Ib. Speaking of new fashions, he says: • You see I speak very disinterestedly; for as I never wear a hat myself, it is indifferent to me what sort of hat I don't wear.' P. 80. a descrip. tion of the Queen's arrival on Sept. 9, 1761. In the next page, he is angry with Mr. Pitt for accepting a title and a pension: "But," say the Pittites, "what did he and his brother, and all his father's family and adherents, accept? 'tis incalculable."

P. 101. A character of the French of the antient regime, outrageously severe; also an account of Miss Chudleigh's ball, in his natural and best manner, which had constantly ridicule and sarcasm for its basis. It has been said by careless observers, that our author's humour was not ill-natured: Voltaire's did not seem so: but who cut so deep into character and reputation as he did, with a single phrase, and a broad grin on his face? Mr. W. may be said to be an excellent carver of characters; no one could cut up more dexterously, and to the taste and palate of his company; all of them forgetting, in the facility and seeming good-humour with which it was done, that it would be their turn next. Yet, in general, how superior are his letters to his Reminiscences! On Mr. Conway's dismission, how ever, he becomes a sour oppositionist, and talks of lost liberty! a ruined country! and self banishment! Indeed his bitterness against government for persecuting his friend, because he was a

** The dreadful earthquake which had taken place at Lisbon towards the end of the preceding year.'

•† Richard Edgecumbe second lord Edgecumbe."

Wilkite,

Wilkite, is somewhat ungovernable. He threatens (p. 106) both the K. and the minister: 'I have passed a night, for which and the duke of shall pass many an uneasy one!' Yet his affectionate friendship is highly praiseworthy, as the following letters exemplify :

Arlington-street, April 19, 1764.

I am just come from the duchess of Argyll's *, where I dined. General Warburton was there, and said it was the report at the house of lords, that you are turned out-He imagined, of your regimentbut that I suppose is a mistake for the bedchamber t. I shall hear more to-night, and lady Strafford, who brings you this, will tell you; though to be sure you will know earlier by the post to-morrow. My only reason for writing is, to repeat to you, that whatever you do I shall act with you . I resent any thing done to you as to myself. My fortunes shall never be separated from yours-except that some time or other I hope yours will be great, and I am content with mine.

• The Manns go on with the business -The letter you received was from Mr. Edward Mann, not from Gal's widow. Adieu! I was going to say, my disgraced friend-How delightful to have a character so unspotted, that the word disgrace recoils on those who displace you! Yours unalterably,

HOR. WALPOLE."

Let me beg you, in the most earnest and most sincere of all professions, to suffer me to make your loss as light as it is in my power to make it: I have six thousand pounds in the funds; accept all, or what part you want. Do not imagine I will be put off with a refusal. The retrenchment of my expences, which I shall from this hour commence, will convince you that I mean to re-place your fortune as far as I can. When I thought you did not want it, I had made another disposicion. You have ever been the dearest person to me in the world. You have shown that you deserve to be so. - You suffer for your spotless integrity. - Can I hesitate a moment to show that there is at least one man who knows how to value you? The new will, which I am going to make, will be a testimonial of my own sense of virtue.'

At p. 125. Mr. W. seems to acknowlege the indecision of Mr.C. which was the chief fault that was generally laid to his chargeat that time: Your defect is irresolution.' He speaks very freely to his friend in this letter, assuming rather more domi

* Widow of John Campbell, duke of Argyll. She was sister to general Warburton, and had been maid of honour to queen Anne.'

+ Mr. Conway was dismissed from all his employments, civil and military, for having opposed the ministry in the house of commons, on the question of the legality of general warrants, at the time of the prosecution of Mr. Wilkes for the publication of The North Briton. E.'

1

† Mr. Walpole was then in the house of commons, member for King's Lynn in Norfolk.'

U 2

Of army-clothiers."