Mr. Chute and I have been at Mr. Barrett's' at Belhouse [in Essex]; I never saw a place for which one did not wish, so totally void of faults. What he has done is in Gothic, and very true, though not up to the perfection of the Committee. The hall is pretty the great dining-room hung with good family pictures; among which is his ancestor, the Lord Dacre who was hanged." I remember when Barrett was first initiated in the College of Arms by the present Dean of Exeter' at Cambridge, he was overjoyed at the first ancestor he put up, who was one of the murderers of Thomas Becket. The chimney-pieces, except one little miscarriage into total Ionic (he could not resist statuary and Siena marble), are all of a good King James the First Gothic. I saw the heronry so fatal to Po Yang, and told him that I was persuaded they were descended from Becket's assassin, and I hoped from my Lord Dacre too. He carried us to see the famous plantations and buildings of the last Lord Petre. They are the Brobdingnag of bad taste. The unfinished house is execrable, massive, and split through and through: it stands on the brow of a hill, rather to see for a prospect than to see one, and turns its back upon an outrageous avenue, which is closed with a screen of tall trees, because he would not be at the expense of beautifying the back front of his house. The clumps are gigantic, and very ill placed.

George Montagu and the Colonel have at last been here, and have screamed with approbation through the whole Cu-gamut. Indeed, the library is delightful. They went to the Vine, and approved as much. Do you think we wished for you? I carried down incense and mass-books, and we had most Catholic enjoyment of the chapel. In the evenings, indeed, we did touch a card a little to please George -so much, that truly I have scarce an idea left that is not spotted with clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. There is a vote of the Strawberry committee for great embellishments to the chapel, of which it will not be long before you hear something. It will not be longer than the spring, I trust, before you see something of it. In the mean time, to rest your impatience, I have enclosed a scratch

1 Afterwards Lord Dacre.-WALPOLE.

2 See vol. ii. p. 301.-CUNNINGHAM.

3 Dr. Charles Lyttelton, brother of Lord Lyttelton. He was first a barrister-at-law, but in 1742 entered into holy orders, and in 1762 was consecrated Bishop of Carlisle. He died in 1768 unmarried.-WRIGHT.

4 Robert James Petre, eighth Lord Petre (died 1742), son of the Lord Petre of the 'Rape of the Lock.' The seat of the Petres is Thorndon Hall, near Brentwood, in Essex. CUNNINGHAM.

VOL. II.

DD

of mine, which you are to draw out better, and try if you can give yourself a perfect idea of the place. All I can say is, that my sketch is at least more intelligible than Gray's was of Stoke, from which you made so like a picture.'

Thank you much for the box of Guernsey lilies, which I have received. I have been packing up a few seeds, which have little merit but the merit they will have with you, that they come from the Vine and Strawberry. My chief employ in this part of the world, except surveying my library, which has scarce any thing but the painting to finish, is planting at Mrs. Clive's,' whither I remove all my superabundancies. I have lately planted the green lane, that leads from her garden to the common: "Well," said she, "when it is done, what shall we call it ?"-"Why," said I, "what would you call it but Drury Lane?" I mentioned desiring some samples of your Swiss's abilities: Mr. Chute and I even propose, if he should be tolerable, and would continue reasonable, to tempt him over hither, and make him work upon your designs-upon which, you know, it is not easy to make you work. If he improves upon our hands, do you think we shall purchase the fec-simple of him for so many years, as Mr. Smith did of Canaletti ? We will sell to the English. Can he paint perspectives, and cathedral-aisles, and holy glooms? I am sure you could make him paint delightful insides of the chapel at the Vine, and of the library here. I never come up the stairs without reflecting how different it is from its primitive state, when my Lady Townshend all the way she came up the stairs, cried out, "Lord God! Jesus; what a house! It is just such a house as a parson's, where the children lie at the feet of the bed!" I can't say that to-day it puts me much in mind of another speech of my lady's, "That it would be a very pleasant place, if Mrs. Clive's face did not rise upon it and make it so hot!" The sun and Mrs. Clive seem gone for the winter.

The West Indian war has thrown me into a new study: I read

The view of the old house at Stoke Pogeis engraved in Bentley's designs for Six Poems, by Mr. T. Gray, 1753.-CUNNINGHAM.

2 At Little Strawberry Hill, or Cliveden, as Walpole loved to call it, between Strawberry Hill and Teddington. Walpole left Little Strawberry Hill to the Miss Berrys for their lives. It is now (1857) the property of Frances Countess Waldegrave.CUNNINGHAM.

3 Mr. Muntz, a Swiss painter.-Walpole.

Mr. Smith, the English consul at Venice, had engaged Canaletti for a certain number of years to paint exclusively for him, at a fixed price, and sold his pictures at an advanced price to English travellers [vol. i. pp. 239 and 307].-BERRY.

nothing but American voyages, and histories of plantations and settlements. Among all the Indian nations, I have contracted a particular intimacy with the Ontaouanoucs, a people with whom I beg you will be acquainted: they pique themselves upon speaking the purest dialect. How one should delight in the grammar and dictionary of their Crusca! My only fear is, that if any of them are taken prisoners, General Braddock is not a kind of man to have proper attentions to so polite a people; I am even apprehensive that he would damn them, and order them to be scalped, in the very worst plantation-accent. I don't know whether you know that none of the people of that immense continent have any labials: they tell you que c'est ridicule to shut the lips in order to speak. Indeed, I was as barbarous as any polite nation in the world, in supposing that there was nothing worth knowing among these charming savages. They are in particular great orators, with this little variation from British eloquence, that at the end of every important paragraph they make a present; whereas we expect to receive one. They begin all their answers with recapitulating what has been said to them; and their method for this is, the respondent gives a little stick to each of the by-standers, who is, for his share, to remember such a paragraph of the speech that is to be answered. You will wonder that I should have given the preference to the Ontaouanoucs, when there is a much more extraordinary nation to the north of Canada, who have but one leg, and p from behind their ear; but I own I had rather converse for any time with people who speak like Mr. Pitt, than with a nation of jugglers, who are only fit to go about the country, under the direction of Taafe and Montagu.' Their existence I do not doubt; they are recorded by Père Charlevoix, in his much admired history of New France, in which there are such outrageous legends of miracles for the propagation of the Gospel, that his fables in natural history seem strict veracity.

Adieu! You write to me as seldom as if you were in an island where the Duke of Newcastle was sole minister, parties at an end, and where every thing had done happening. Yours ever.

P.S. I have just seen in the advertisements that there are arrived two new volumes of Madame de Sévigné's Letters. Adieu, my American studies;-adieu, even my favourite Ontaouanoucs!

Two English gentlemen who were shut up in Fort l'Evêque for cheating a Jew. [Vol. ii. p. 273.]—WALPOLE.

398. TO RICHARD BENTLEY, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Nov. 11, 1754.

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 show 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 enclosed 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 to-morrow 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 anybody is robbed at the ball at court to-night, you shall hear in my next dispatch. I told you in my last that I had just got two new volumes of Madame Sévigné's Letters; but I have been cruelly disappointed; they are two hundred letters which have been omitted in the former editions, as having little or nothing worth reading. How provoking, that they would at last let one see that she could write so many letters that were not worth reading? I will tell you truth: as they

1

Lady Elizabeth Gower, daughter of John, first Earl Gower, and wife of the Hon. John Waldegrave, afterwards (1763) third Earl of Waldegrave. She died in 1784. Her name frequently occurs in Rigby's entertaining letters to the Duke of Bedford.CUNNINGHAM.

are certainly hers, I am glad to see them, but I cannot bear that anybody else should. Is not that true sentiment? How would you like to see a letter of hers, describing a wild young Irish lord, a Lord P * * *, who has lately made one of our ingenious wagers, to ride I don't know how many thousand miles in an hour, from Paris to Fontainebleau ?1 But admire the politesse of that nation: instead of endeavouring to lame his horse, or to break his neck, that he might lose the wager, his antagonist and the spectators showed all the attention in the world to keep the road clear, and to remove even pebbles out of his way. They heaped coals of fire upon his head with all the good breeding of the Gospel. Adieu!-If my letters are short, at least my notes are long.

399. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Nov. 16, 1754.

You are over-good to me, my dear Sir, in giving yourself the trouble of telling me you was content with Strawberry Hill. I will not, however, tell you, that I am content with your being there, till you have seen it in all its greenth and blueth. Alas! I am sorry I cannot insist upon as much with the Colonel.

Mr. Chute, I believe, was so pleased with the tenebra in his own chapel, that he has fairly buried himself in it. I have not even had so much as a burial card from him since.

The town is as full as I believe you thought the room was at your ball at Waldershare. I hear of nothing but the parts and merit of Lord North. Nothing has happened yet, but sure so many English people cannot be assembled long without committing something extraordinary!

I have seen and conversed with our old friend Cope; I find him grown very old: I fear he finds me so too; at least as old as I ever intend to be. I find him very grave too, which I believe he does not find me.

Solomon and Hesther, as my Lady Townshend calls Mr. Pitt and Lady Hester Grenville, espouse one another to-day. I know nothing more but a new fashion which my Lady Hervey has brought from Paris. It is a tin funnel covered with green ribbon, and holds

1 This wager will remind many readers of Dr. Johnson's admirable paper in The Idler,' No. 6 (20 May, 1758) of the lady who had undertaken to ride on one horse a thousand miles in a thousand hours.-CUNNINGHAM.