nion over him than the being born two years sooner seems to justify.

In the subsequent letters, we find a number of short expressions that are quite characteristic, as; ' I have not above a note's worth to say' - 'The hardest frost alive.' P. 136. he says in his usual light and easy way: 'I was thinking of writing, but have not a pen-full of matter.' Mr. Conway having praised a garden in France which Mr. W. disapproved- And you like this! I will tell Park-Place' (Mr. C.'s own beautiful seat). My love to the old parliament.' - The sloop with rebellious news from America, at the beginning of resistance, is indeed a man of war!' P. 176. We are at our wits end, which was no great journey.' At p. 179. we have comical stuff about fairings, as he calls presents from Paris. P. 180. describing his bad state of health, he says: 'The moment I am out of pain I am in high spirits; and though I never take any medicines, there is one thing absolutely necessary to be put into my mouth-a gag. At present the town is so empty that my tongue is a fine cure.' P. 182. My pen is not always on its guard, but is apt to say every thing that comes into its nib. Ib. Lady Harriet's wishes have done me a great deal of good.' Ib. I walk! I walk! walk alone! and my month is not up.' From Paris, 1775, describing the busy life which he leads, he says: (p.188.)

• In short, I need have the activity of a squirrel, and the strength of a Hercules, to go through my labours-not to count how many demêlés I have had to raccommode, and how many memoires to present against Tonton *, who grows the greater favourite the more people he devours. As I am the only person who dare correct him, I have already insisted on his being confined in the Bastile every day after five o'clock. 'Tother night he flew at lady Barrymore's face, and I thought would have torn her eye out; but it ended in biting her finger. She was terrified; she fell into tears. Madame du Deffand, who has too much parts not to see every thing in its true light, perceiving that she had not beaten Tonton half enough, immediately told us a story of a lady, whose dog having bitten a piece out of a gentleman's leg, the tender dame, in a great fright, cried out, "Won't it make my dog sick?"

P. 203. He begins a letter, Oct. 1788, with a dash :

having thus told you all I know, I shall add a few words, to say I conclude you have known as much, by my not having heard from you. Should the post-office or secretary's office set their wits at work to bring to light all the intelligence contained under the above hiatus, I am confident they will discover nothing, though it gives an exact description of all they have been about themselves.

My personal history is very short. I have had an assembly and • * A favourite dog of madame du Deffand's."

the rheumatism-and am buying a house-and it rains and I shall plant the roses against my treillage to-morrow. Thus you know what I have done, suffered, am doing, and shall do. Let me know as much of you, in quantity, not in quality. Introductions to and conclusions of letters are as much out of fashion, as to, at, &c. on letters. This sublime age reduces every thing to its quintessence: all periphrases and expletives are so much in disuse, that I suppose soon the only way of making love will be to say "Lie down." Luckily, the lawyers will not part with any synonymous words, and will, consequently, preserve the redundances of our language

Dixi.

P. 207. Lord North has boasted of such mines (supplies) for next year, that one would think he believed next year would never come?' - Ever bitterly severe against all ministers but his father: strong instances appear in p. 208 and 213.

At p. 215. we find a paragraph truly Walpolean :

• I told you in my last, that Tonton * was arrived. I brought him this morning to take possession of his new villa; but his inauguration has not been at all pacific. As he has already found out that he may be as despotic as at saint Joseph's, he began with exiling my beautiful little cat;-upon which, however, we shall not quite agree. He then flew at one of my dogs, who returned it, by biting his foot till it bled; but was severely beaten for it. I immediately rung for Margaret † to dress his foot; but in the midst of my tribulation could not keep my countenance; for she cried, " Poor little thing, he does not understand my language!"-I hope she will not recollect too that he is a papist!"

P. 220. Last week (June 1781) we had two or three mastiff days, for they were fiercer than our common dog days." Complaining of cold weather in June 1784, he says, p. 232, I have ordered my bed to be heated as hot as an oven, and Tonton and I must go into it.' In August, the same year: 'I wish you joy of the summer being come now it is gone." P. 233. A pleasant and fanciful letter on balloons.

P. 236. He speaks, we think, with too great a degree of decision and perhaps some injustice of the painted windows at New-College Oxford; of which he says:

'I do not wonder you was disappointed with Jarvis's windows at New College: I had foretold their miscarriage: the old and the new are as mismatched as an orange and a lemon, and destroy each other; nor is there room enough to retire back and see half of the new; and sir Joshua's washy Virtues make the Nativity a dark spot from the darkness of the Shepherds, which happened, as I knew it would, from most of Jarvis's colours

* Madame du Deffand's dog, which she left by will to Mr.

Walpole.'

Mr. Walpole's housekeeper.'

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mot

not being transparent.' The expression, Sir Joshua's washy Virtues, is a harsh sarcasm. If the colouring on the glass be faint, it is the fault of Jarvis: but was there nothing to say of the design, expression, and divine grace of the outline ?

P. 237. Another furious attack on Johnson; which we shall insert here, to display the noble critic's taste and judgment:

Have you got Boswell's most absurd enormous book? - The best thing in it is a bon mot of lord Pembroke. The more one learns of Johnson, the more preposterous assemblage he appears of strong sense, of the lowest bigotry and prejudices, of pride, brutality, fretfulness, and vanity-and Boswell is the ape of most of his faults, without a grain of his sense. It is the story of a mountebank and his zany.'*

Mr. W. is more amusing in his trifling jocund humours, than instructive when he is cross and serious. At p. 254. he says in June 1793: 'I am wishing for rain, and I shall not have a mouthful of hay, nor a noseful of roses. Indeed, as I have seen several fields of hay cut, I wonder it has not brought rain, as usual! During Robespierre's reign of terror in France, Mr.W. (now Lord Orford) seems, for the first time, in good-humour with his country and its government, in spite of all their imperfections. We shall insert, for his honour, the effusions produced by his amor patria on this occasion. He says, p.255, after having spoken of the excessive heat which had raged for twelve days in July:

• It is much cooler to day, yet still delicious; for be it known to you that I have enjoyed weather worthy of Africa, and yet without swallowing mouthfuls of musketos, nor expecting to hear hyænas howl in the village, nor to find scorpions in my bed. Indeed, all the way I came home, I could but gaze at the felicity of my countrymen. The road was ore string of stage-coaches loaded within and without with noisy jolly folks, and chaises and gigs that had been pleasuring in clouds of dust; every door and every window of every house was open, lights in every shop, every door with women sitting in the street, every inn crowded with jaded horses, and every ale-house full of drunken topers; for you know the English always announce their sense of heat or cold by drinking. Well! it was impossible not to enjoy such a scene of happiness and affluence in every village, and amongst the lowest of the people and who are told by villainous scribblers that they are oppressed and miserable.-New streets, new towns are rising every day and every where; the earth is covered with gardens and crops of grain.

• How bitter to turn from this Elysium to the Temple at Paris! The fiends there have now torn her son from the queen! Can one believe that they are human beings, who 'midst all their confusions

* There is some chronological mistake in dating this letter 1785. The first edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson was not published till 1791.

sit coolly meditating new tortures, new anguish for that poor, helpless, miserable woman, after four years of unexampled sufferings? Oh! if such crimes are not made a dreadful lesson, this world might become a theatre of canibals!'

P.257. Speaking of the royal visit to Strawberry-Hill, he says: • Besides the Queen and the six Princesses, I am to have the Duchess of York and the Princess of Orange! Woe is me! at seventy-eight, and with scarce a hand or foot to my back!'

Though our author, both as Mr. W and as Lord O. speaks contemptuously, and indeed with rancour, of kings in general, he does not seem to wish for a republic here: if he ever did, the French induced him to change his mind: but, perhaps from a general spleen that he could not himself succeed his father, there has been no British minister since, whom he did not wish to pull down; though we have not been able to discover whom he wished to set up.

Marshal Conway died July 10, 1795, three days after the date of Lord Orford's last letter to him, which concludes thus: I have not redde the new French constitution, which seems longer than probably its reign will be. The five sovereigns will, I suppose, be the first guillotined. Adieu!-O.'

The next series of letters is that which is addressed to Mr. Bentley, son of the celebrated learned commentator; bearing date from 1752 to 1756. This gentleman, being a great friend of the poet Gray, designed the humorous plates to the folio edition of his poems. He likewise produced an unsuccessful comedy called The Wishes*, founded on les trois Souhaits of la Fontaine. The first of these letters is extremely amusing, it occupies nine 4to pages, and is wholly descriptive of a Kentish tour, including Knowle, the castle in Tunbridge town, Summerhill, Lamberhurst, Bayham Abbey, Hurst Monceaux, Battel, and Penshurst, written in a lively, minute, and discriminate manner; particularly the descriptions of Knowle and Penshurst.

The Ild letter describes Yorkshire; the IIId, Worcestershire, Hagley, Worcester city, Malvern Abbey, and, afterward, Gloucester cathedral, &c. The IVth contains nothing very memorable, except the author's public declaration that he hated his uncle, old Horace Walpole, as much as George II. feared his young nephew, Frederic II. of Prussia. Vth, Miscellaneous. Vlth, An unchristian, sarcastic, and mock elegiac letter, on the death of Mr. Pelham, chancellor of the Exchequer. VII. Political scandal. VIII. Chiefly about Gothic ornaments for Strawberry-Hill. IX. Castles, Chinese houses,

* It miscarried on the stage in the year 1761. See M. R. vol. xxv. Tombs,

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Tombs, Negroes, Jews, Irishmen, Princesses, and Mohawksall ridiculed. X. More Strawberry-beds, and enviously severe criticisms on other places. The end of this letter, however, is good. The XIth is in his first and best manner: here follows a specimen :

' If you was dead, to be sure you would have got somebody to tell me so. If you was alive, to be sure in all this time you would have told me so yourself. It is a month to-day since I received a line from you. There was a Florentine ambassador here in Oliver's reign, who with great circumspection wrote to his court, "Some say the protector is dead, others say he is not: for my part, I believe neither one nor t'other." I quote this sage personage, to shew you that I have a good precedent, in case I had a mind to continue neutral upon the point of your existence. I can't resolve to believe you dead, lest I should be forced to write to Mr. S. again to bemoan you: and on the other hand, it is convenient to me to believe you living, because I have just received the inclosed from your sister, and the money from Ely. However, if you are actually dead, be so good as to order your executor to receive the money and to answer your 'sister's letter. If you are not dead, I can tell you who is, and at the same time whose death is to remain as doubtful as yours till tomorrow morning. Don't be alarmed! it is only the queen dowager of Prussia. As excessive as the concern for her is at court, the whole royal family, out of great consideration for the mercers, lacemen, &c. agreed not to shed a tear for her till to-morrow morning, when the birth-day will be over; but they are all to rise by six o'clock to-morrow morning to cry quarts. This is the sum of all the news that I learnt to-day on coming from Strawberry-hill, except that lady Betty Waldegrave was robbed t'other night in Hyde-park, under the very noses of the lamps and the patrole. If any body is robbed at the ball at court to-night, you shall hear in my next dispatch.'

XII. P. 299. A scolding letter to his friend, terminated with two bons mots of Madame de Sevigné. XIII. Comic and jocose. My lady 'T. has been dying, and was wofully frightened, and took prayers; but she is recovered now, even of her repentance.' The XIVth, XVth, and XVIth, are chatty and entertaining.

These letters, amounting to thirty-five, are too numerous for the rest even of their contents to be separately mentioned. What Mr.W. says of learned men, p. 322, is not very flattering to the son of one of the most learned men of our country: You know I have always thought a running footman as meritorious a Being as a learned man. Why is there more merit in having travelled one's eyes over so many reams of paper, than in having carried one's legs over so many acres of ground?"

The anecdotes of the times in these letters, particularly during the eventful year 1755, as the breaking out of the war with France