Volume Ii Part 8 (1/2)
[Footnote 1: Count Orloff was one of the Czarina's earlier lovers, and was universally understood to have been the princ.i.p.al agent in the murder of her husband.]
We have had two or three simpletons return from Russia, charmed with the murderess, believing her innocent, _because_ she spoke graciously to _them_ in the drawing-room. I don't know what the present Grand Signior's name is, Osman, or Mustapha, or what, but I am extremely on his side against Catherine of Zerbst; and I never intend to ask him for a farthing, nor write panegyrics on him for pay, like Voltaire and Diderot; so you need not say a word to him of my good wishes. Benedict XIV. deserved my friends.h.i.+p, but being a sound Protestant, one would not, you know, make all Turk and Pagan and Infidel princes too familiar.
Adieu!
[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR ROBERT WALPOLE
_From a mezzotint by J. Simon after a picture by Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller_]
_WILKES--BURKE'S PAMPHLET--PREDICTION OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS--EXTRAVAGANCE IN ENGLAND._
TO SIR HORACE MANN.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 6, 1770.
I don't know whether Wilkes is subdued by his imprisonment, or waits for the rising of Parliament, to take the field; or whether his dignity of Alderman has dulled him into prudence, and the love of feasting; but hitherto he has done nothing but go to City banquets and sermons, and sit at Guildhall as a sober magistrate. With an inversion of the proverb, ”Si ex quovis Mercurio fit lignum!” What do you Italians think of Harlequin Potesta?[1] In truth, his party is crumbled away strangely.
Lord Chatham has talked on the Middles.e.x election till n.o.body will answer him; and Mr. Burke (Lord Rockingham's governor) has published a pamphlet[2] that has sown the utmost discord between that faction and the supporters of the Bill of Rights. Mrs. Macaulay[3] has written against it. In Parliament their numbers are shrunk to nothing, and the session is ending very triumphantly for the Court. But there is another scene opened of a very different aspect. You have seen the accounts from Boston. The tocsin seems to be sounded to America. I have many visions about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to be kept in subjection to half a dozen exhausted nations in Europe. As the latter sinks, and the others rise, they who live between the eras will be a sort of Noahs, witnesses to the period of the old world and origin of the new. I entertain myself with the idea of a future senate in Carolina and Virginia, where their future patriots will harangue on the austere and incorruptible virtue of the ancient Englis.h.!.+ will tell their auditors of our disinterestedness and scorn of bribes and pensions, and make us blush in our graves at their ridiculous panegyrics. Who knows but even our Indian usurpations and villanies may become topics of praise to American schoolboys? As I believe our virtues are extremely like those of our predecessors the Romans, so I am sure our luxury and extravagance are too.
[Footnote 1: Podesta was an officer in some of the smaller Italian towns, somewhat corresponding to our mayor. The name is Italianised from the Roman Potestas--
Hajus, quo trahitur, praetextam sumere mavis, An Fidenarum, Gabiorumque esse Potestas.
(Juv., x. 100).]
[Footnote 2: The pamphlet is, ”Thoughts on the Present Discontents,”
founding them especially on the unconst.i.tutional influence of ”the King's friends.”]
[Footnote 3: Mrs. Macaulay was the wife of a London physician, and auth.o.r.ess of a ”History of England” from the accession of James I. to that of George I., written in a spirit of the fiercest republicanism, but long since forgotten.]
What do you think of a winter Ranelagh[1] erecting in Oxford Road, at the expense of sixty thousand pounds? The new bank, including the value of the ground, and of the houses demolished to make room for it, will cost three hundred thousand; and erected, as my Lady Townley[2] says, _by sober citizens too_! I have touched before to you on the incredible profusion of our young men of fas.h.i.+on. I know a younger brother who literally gives a flower-woman half a guinea every morning for a bunch of roses for the nosegay in his b.u.t.ton-hole. There has lately been an auction of stuffed birds; and, as natural history is in fas.h.i.+on, there are physicians and others who paid forty and fifty guineas for a single Chinese pheasant; you may buy a live one for five. After this, it is not extraordinary that pictures should be dear. We have at present three exhibitions. One West,[3] who paints history in the taste of Poussin, gets three hundred pounds for a piece not too large to hang over a chimney. He has merit, but is hard and heavy, and far unworthy of such prices. The rage to see these exhibitions is so great, that sometimes one cannot pa.s.s through the streets where they are. But it is incredible what sums are raised by mere exhibitions of anything; a new fas.h.i.+on, and to enter at which you pay a s.h.i.+lling or half-a-crown. Another rage, is for prints of English portraits: I have been collecting them above thirty years, and originally never gave for a mezzotinto above one or two s.h.i.+llings. The lowest are now a crown; most, from half a guinea to a guinea. Lately, I a.s.sisted a clergyman [Granger] in compiling a catalogue of them; since the publication, scarce heads in books, not worth threepence, will sell for five guineas. Then we have Etruscan vases, made of earthenware, in Staffords.h.i.+re, [by Wedgwood] from two to five guineas, and _ormoulu_, never made here before, which succeeds so well, that a tea-kettle, which the inventor offered for one hundred guineas, sold by auction for one hundred and thirty. In short, we are at the height of extravagance and improvements, for we do improve rapidly in taste as well as in the former. I cannot say so much for our genius.
Poetry is gone to bed, or into our prose; we are like the Romans in that too. If we have the arts of the Antonines,--we have the fustian also.
[Footnote 1: _”A winter Ranelagh._”--the Pantheon in Oxford Street.]
[Footnote 2: Lady Townley is the princ.i.p.al character in ”The Provoked Husband.”]
[Footnote 3: West, as a painter, was highly esteemed by George III., and, on the death of Sir J. Reynolds, succeeded him as President of the Royal Academy.]
Well! what becomes of your neighbours, the Pope and Turk? is one Babylon to fall, and the other to moulder away? I begin to tremble for the poor Greeks; they will be sacrificed like the Catalans, and left to be impaled for rebellion, as soon as that vainglorious woman the Czarina has glutted her l.u.s.t of fame, and secured Azoph by a peace, which I hear is all she insists on keeping. What strides modern ambition takes! _We_ are the successors of Aurungzebe; and a virago under the Pole sends a fleet into the Aegean Sea to rouse the ghosts of Leonidas and Epaminondas, and burn the capital of the second Roman Empire! Folks now scarce meddle with their next door neighbours; as many English go to visit St. Peter's who never thought of stepping into St. Paul's.
I shall let Lord Beauchamp know your readiness to oblige him, probably to-morrow, as I go to town. The spring is so backward here that I have little inducement to stay; not an entire leaf is out on any tree, and I have heard a syren as much as a nightingale. Lord Fitzwilliam, who, I suppose, is one of your latest acquaintance, is going to marry Lady Charlotte Ponsonby, Lord Besborough's second daughter, a pretty, sensible, and very amiable girl. I seldom tell you that sort of news, but when the parties are very fresh in your memory. Adieu!
_MASQUERADES IN FAs.h.i.+ON--A LADY'S CLUB._
TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.
STRAWBERRY HILL, _May_ 6, 1770.
If you are like me, you are fretting at the weather. We have not a leaf, yet, large enough to make an ap.r.o.n for a Miss Eve of two years old.