"I am very sorry, Madam," replied he, very gravely, "but I don't know whom your Highness will get to tally to you; you know I am ruined by dealing." "Oh!" says she, "the Count will deal to us." "I would with all my soul," said the Count, "but I protest I have no money about me." She insisted: at last the Count said, "Since your Highness commands us peremptorily, I believe Sir William has four or five hundred pounds of mine, that I am to pay away in the city to-morrow; if he will be so good as to step to his bureau for that sum, I will make a bank of it." Mr. Rodney owns he was a little astonished at seeing the Count shuffle with the faces of the cards upwards; but concluding that Sir William Burdett, at whose house he was, was a relation or particular friend of Lord Castledurrow, he was unwilling to affront my lord. In short, my lord and he lost about a hundred and fifty a-piece, and it was settled that they should meet for payment the next morning at breakfast at Ranelagh. In the mean time Lord C. had the curiosity to inquire a little into the character of his new friend the Baronet; and being au fait, he went up to him at Ranelagh and apostrophized him; "Sir William, here is the sum I think I lost last night; since that I have heard that you are a professed pickpocket, and therefore desire to have no farther acquaintance with you." Sir William bowed, took the money and no notice; but as they were going away, he followed Lord Castledurrow and said, "Good God, my lord, my equipage is not come; will you be so good as to set me down at Buckingham-gate?" and without staying for an answer, whipped into the chariot, and came to town with him. If you don't admire the coolness of this impudence, I shall wonder. Adieu! I have written till I can scarce write my name.1

1 The letter which immediately followed this miscarried.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, March 4, 1749.

I HAVE been so shut up in the House of Commons for this last fortnight or three weeks, that I have not had time to write you a line: we have not had such a session since the famous beginning of last Parliament. I am come hither for a day or two of rest and air, and find the additional pleasure of great beauty in my improvements: I could talk to you through the whole sheet, and with much more satisfaction, upon this head; but I shall postpone my own amusement to yours, for I am sure you want much more to know what has been doing in Parliament than at Strawberry Hill. You will conclude that we have been fighting over the peace; but we have not. It is laid before Parliament, but will not be taken up; the Opposition foresee that a vote of approbation would pass, and therefore will not begin upon it, as they wish to reserve it for censure in the next reign-or perhaps the next reign does not care to censure now what he must hereafter maintain · and the ministry do not seem to think their treaty so perfect as not to be liable to blame, should it come to be canvassed. We have been then upon several other matters: but first I should tell you, that from the utmost tranquillity and impotence of a minority, there is at once started up so formidable an Opposition as to divide 137 against 203.1 The minority is headed by the Prince, who has continued opposing, though very unsuccessfully, ever since the removal of Lord Granville, and the desertion of the patriots. He stayed till the Pelhams had bought off every man of parts in his train, and then began to form his party. Lord Granville has never come into it, for fear of breaking with the King; and seems now to be patching up again with his old enemies. If Lord Bath has dealt with the Prince, it has been underhand. His ministry has had at the head of it poor Lord Baltimore, a very

1

Upon the last clause of the Mutiny-bill, an amendment to render half-pay officers subject to the act, only in case of actual war, insurrection, rebellion, or invasion, was rejected by 203 to 137.-E.

good-natured, weak, honest man; and Dr. Lee, a civilian, who was of Lord Granville's admiralty, and is still much attached to him. He is a grave man, and a good speaker, but of no very bright parts, and, from his way of life and profession, much ignorant of, and unfit for, a ministry. You will wonder what new resources the Prince has discoveredwhy, he has found them all in Lord Egmont, whom you have heard of under the name of Lord Perceval; but his father, an Irish Earl, is lately dead. As he is likely to make a very considerable figure in our history, I shall give you a more particular account of him. He has always earnestly studied our history and constitution and antiquities, with very ambitious views; and practised speaking early in the Irish Parliament. Indeed, this turn is his whole fund, for though he is between thirty and forty, he knows nothing of the world, and is always unpleasantly dragging the conversation to political dissertations. When very young, as he has told me himself, he dabbled in writing Craftsmen and party-papers; but the first event that made him known, was his carrying the Westminster election at the end of my father's ministry, which he amply described in the history of his own family, a genealogical work called "The History of the House of Yvery," a work which cost him three thousand pounds, as the heralds informed Mr. Chute and me, when we went to their office on your business; and which was so ridiculous, that he has since tried to suppress all the copies. It concluded with the description of the Westminster election, in these or some such words, "And here let us leave this young nobleman struggling for the dying liberties of his country!" When the change in the ministry happened, and Lord Bath was so abused by the remnant of the patriots, Lord Egmont published his celebrated pamphlet, called "Faction Detected,"

1 Compiled principally for Lord Egmont by Anderson, the genealogist. It was printed, but not published, in 1742. "Some," says Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, "have affected to laugh at the History of the House of Yvery: it would be well if many others would transmit their pedigrees to posterity, with the same accuracy and generous zeal with which the noble Lord who compiled that work has honoured and perpetuated his ancestry. Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the ancients, excite to virtue." Vol. viii. p. 188.-E.

a work which the Pitts and Lytteltons have never forgiven him; and which, though he continued voting and sometimes speaking with the Pelhams, made him quite unpopular during all the last Parliament. When the new elections approached, he stood on his own bottom at Weobly in Herefordshire; but his election being contested, he applied for Mr. Pelham's support, who carried it for him in the House of Commons. This will always be a material blot in his life; for he had no sooner secured his seat, than he openly attached himself to the Prince, and has since been made a lord of his bedchamber. At the opening of this session, he published an extreme good pamphlet, which has made infinite noise, called "An Examination of the Principles and Conduct of the two Brothers," (the Pelhams,) and as Dr. Lee has been laid up with the gout, Egmont has taken the lead in the Opposition, and has made as great a figure as perhaps was ever made in so short a time. He is very bold and resolved, master of vast knowledge, and speaks at once with fire and method. His words are not picked and chosen like Pitt's, but his language is useful, clear, and strong. He has already by his parts and resolution mastered his great unpopularity, so far as to be heard with the utmost attention, though I believe nobody had ever more various difficulties to combat. All the old corps hate him on my father and Mr. Pelham's account; the new part of the ministry on their own. The Tories have not quite forgiven his having left them in the last Parliament: besides that, they are now governed by one Prowse, a cold, plausible fellow, and a great well-wisher to Mr. Pelham. Lord Strange,1 a busy Lord of a party by himself, yet voting generally with the Tories, continually clashes with Lord Egmont; and besides all this, there is a faction in the Prince's family, headed by Nugent, who are for moderate measures.

Nugent is most affectedly an humble servant of Mr. Pel

1 James, Lord Strange, eldest son of Edward Stanley, eleventh Earl of Derby. In 1762 he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and died, during his father's life-time, in 1771. He always called himself Lord Strange; though the title, which was a barony in fee, had in fact descended to the Duke of Atholl, as heir-general of James, seventh Earl of Derby.-D.

ham, and seems only to have attached himself to the Prince, in order to make the better bargain with the ministry: he has great parts, but they never know how to disentangle themselves from bombast and absurdities. Besides these, there are two young men who make some figure in the rising Opposition, Bathurst,' attorney to the Prince; and Potter, whom I believe you have had mentioned in my letters of last year; but he has a bad constitution, and is seldom able to be in town. Neither of these are in the scale of moderation.

The Opposition set out this winter with trying to call for several negotiations during the war; but the great storm which has so much employed us of late, was stirred up by Colonel Lyttelton; who, having been ill-treated by the Duke, has been dealing with the Prince. He discovered to the House some innovations in the Mutiny-bill, of which, though he could not make much, the Opposition have, and fought the bill for a whole fortnight; during the course of which the world has got much light into many very arbitrary proceedings of the Commander-in-chief, which have been the more believed too by the defection of my Lord Townshend's eldest son, who is one of his aide-de-camps. Though the ministry, by the weight of numbers, have carried their point in a great measure, yet you may be sure great heats have been raised; and those have been still more inflamed by a correspondent practice in a new Navy-bill, brought in by the direction of Lord Sandwich and Lord Anson, but vehemently opposed by half the fleet, headed by Sir Peter Warren, the conqueror of

3

The Hon. Henry Bathurst, second son of Allen, first Lord Bathurst. He became heir to the title upon the death, without issue, of his elder brother, the Hon. Benjamin Bathurst, in 1761. In 1746 he was appointed Attorney-General to Frederick, Prince of Wales; in 1754, one of the puisne judges of the court of Common Pleas, and in 1771, Lord Chancellor. He was, upon this occasion, created a peer, by the title of Lord Apsley. He succeeded his father as second Earl Bathurst in 1775, and died in 1794.-D.

2 Richard, third son of Sir Thomas, and brother of Sir George Lyttelton he married the Duchess-dowager of Bridgewater, and was afterwards made a knight of the Bath.

3 William, Duke of Cumberland. He was Captain-general of the Forces," having been so created in 1745.-D.

George Townshend, afterwards the first Marquis of that name and title.-D.