I could not find any one in town that ever heard of it (though the subject is well known there) and if any body saw its name in the advertisements, I believe they only took it for a scrutoire to be sold. The Nation is in the same hands as the University, and really does not make so manful a resistance. Grumble indeed every one does, but since Wilkes's affair, they fall off their metal, and seem to shrink under the brazen hand of Norton and his colleagues.

I hear there will be no parliament till after Christmas. If the French should be so unwise as to suffer the Spanish Court to go on in their present measures (for they refuse to pay the ransom of Manilla, and have driven away our logwood cutters already), down go their friends in the ministry, and all the schemes of right divine, and prerogative; and this is perhaps the best chance we have. Are you not struck with the great similarity there is between the first years of Charles I. and the present times? who would have thought it possible five years ago?

a

The old rogue Lord Bath is dead at last. I understood the contest for his spoils lay between your noble friend at Raby, and Mr. Colman, the comic poet, but whether they are fallen to either of them I have not heard as yet. Pray, what is the policy of that castle? the elder brother lives more than usual in the country, as if he were not in the best humour with his friends at court; and the younger has been at times an orator in the opposition. Have they been disobliged, or do they fear to disoblige their former friends who may come into play again?

Two more volumes of Buffon are come over; I mention them in case you choose to have them. I know of nothing

else, except half a dozen new works of that inexhaustible, eternal, entertaining scribbler Voltaire, who at last (I fear) will go to heaven, for to him entirely it is owing, that the king of France and his council have received and set aside the decision of the parliament of Thoulouse in the affair of Calas: the man, 'tis true, has been broke on the wheel long ago; but his widow and wretched family may have some reparation, and his murtherers may smart a little for it. You see a scribbler may be of some use in the world.

poor

If you see Stonehewer at his return from Buxton, be so good to tell him, that there will be only 200 copies of Lord Herbert's Life printed, half of which are for Lord Powis, and the rest will be given away only. If I happen to have two (which I do not expect) he shall have one of them.

Ah! poor James Lyon!-how do the family bear it? My best respects to the lady of Old-Park (the duchess I should say) and lady Mary, &c. I hope they are all well. Are Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan with you? Do you say your prayers o'nights? Adieu !

I am ever yours,

T. G.

Mr. Brown, who is quite well, presents, his humble service. He would wish to come to-morrow, only he thinks it impossible, and does not believe any body did ever really go so far.

* The Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, for the first time printed at the Strawberry Hill Press, in small 4to. in 1764. 200 Copies. See Walpole's Works, II. p. 515.-Ed.

LETTER CXV.

MR. GRAY TO MR. NICHOLLS,

I RECEIVED your letter at Southampton; and as I would wish to treat every body, according to their own rule and measure of good breeding, have, against my inclination, waited till now before I answered it, purely out of fear and respect, and an ingenuous diffidence of my own abilities. If you will not take this as an excuse, accept it at least as a well-turned period, which is always my principal concern.

So I proceed to tell you that my health is much improved by the sea, not that I drank it, or bathed in it, as the common people do no! I only walked by it, and looked upon it. The climate is remarkably mild, even in October and November; no snow has been seen to lie there for these thirty years past; the myrtles grow in the ground against the houses, and Guernsey lilies bloom in every window; the town, clean and wellbuilt, surrounded by its old stone-walls, with their towers and gateways, stands at the point of a peninsula, and opens full south to an arm of the sea, which, having formed two beautiful bays on each hand of it, stretches away in, direct view, till it joins the British Channel; it is skirted on either side with gently-rising grounds, cloathed with thick wood, and directly cross its mouth rise the high lands of the Isle of Wight at

distance, but distinctly seen. In the bosom of the woods (concealed from prophane eyes) lie hid the ruins of Netley abbey; there may be richer and greater houses of religion, but the Abbot is content with his situation. See there, at the top of that hanging meadow, under the shade of those old trees that bend into a half circle about it, he is walking slowly (good man!) and bidding his beads for the souls of his benefactors, interred in that venerable pile that lies beneath him. Beyond it (the meadow still descending) nods a thicket of oaks that mask the building, and have excluded a view too garish and luxuriant for a holy eye; only on either hand they leave an opening to the blue glittering sea. Did you not observe how, as that white sail shot by and was lost, he turned and crossed himself to drive the tempter from him that had thrown that distraction in his way? I should tell you that the ferryman who rowed me, a lusty young fellow, told me that he would not for all the world pass a night at the abbey (there were such things seen near it) though there was a power of money hid there. From thence I went to Salisbury, Wilton, and Stonehenge; but of these I say no more, they will be published at the University press.

P. S. I must not close my letter without giving you one principal event of my history; which was, that (in the course of my late tour) I set out one morning before five o'clock, the moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal air, and got to the sea-coast time enough to be at the Sun's Levee. I saw the clouds and dark vapours open gradually to right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide (as it flowed gently in upon the sands) first whitening, then slightly tinged with gold and blue; and all at once a little line of insufferable brightness that (before I can write these five words) was grown to half an orb, and now to a whole one,

too glorious to be distinctly seen*. It is very odd it makes no figure on paper; yet I shall remember it as long as the sun, or at least as long as I endure. I wonder whether any body ever saw it before? I hardly believe it.

LETTER CXVI.

MR. GRAY TO MR. WALPOLE.

Sunday, Dec. 30, 1764.

I HAVE received the Castle of Otranto, and return

you my thanks for it. It engages our attention heret, makes

some of us cry a little, and all in general afraid to go to bed o' nights. We take it for a translation, and should believe it to be a true story, if it were not for St. Nicholas.

* This puts me in mind of a similar description written by Dr. Jereiny Taylor, which I shall here beg leave to present to the reader, who will find by it that the old Divine had occasionally as much power of description as even our modern Poet. "As when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, "he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness; "gives light to the cock, and calls up the lark to mattins; and by and by gilds “the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden "horns ***; and still (while a man tells the story) the sun gets up higher till "he shews a fair face and a full light."-J. Taylor's Holy Dying, p. 17.-Mason.

+ At Cambridge.