she, "when it is done, what shall we call it ?" "Why," said I, "what would you call it but Drury-lane?"

Arlington-street, Nov. 20, 1754.-Bon mot of Madame de Sévigné.-In the mean time, can you be content with one of Madame Sévigné's best bon mots, which I found among her new letters? Do you remember her German friend, the Princess of Tarente, who was always in mourning for some sovereign Prince or Princess? One day Madame de Sévigné happening to meet her in colours, made her a low curtsey, and said, "Madame, je me rejouis de la santé de l'Europe."

know whether he had done very

SCARCE BOOKS.-I cannot conclude my letter without telling you what an escape I had at the sale of Dr. Meade's library, which goes extremely dear. In the catalogue I saw Winstanley's View of Audley's Inn, which I concluded was, as it really was a thin dirty folio, worth about fifteen shillings. As I thought it might be scarce, it might run to two or three guineas; however, I bid Graham certainly buy it for me. He came the next morning in a great fright:-said, he did not right or very wrong:-that he had gone as far as nine and forty guineas. I started in such a fright! Another bookseller had, luckily, had as unlimited a commission, and bid fifty, when my Graham begged it might be adjourned, till they could consult their principals. I think I shall never give an unbounded commission again, even for Views of les Rochers! Adieu! any more of your hand-drawing? Adieu!

Madame de Sévigné's seat in Bretagne.

Am I ever to see

Your's ever,

HOR. WALPOLE.

Strawberry Hill, Dec. 24, 1754. —When Lord Bath was told of the first determination of turning out Pitt, and letting Fox remain, he said, it put him in mind of a story of the gunpowder plot. The Lord Chamberlain was sent to examine the vaults under the Parliament House, and returning with his report, said, "He had found five and twenty barrels of gunpowder; that he had removed ten of them, and hoped the other fifteen would do no harm." Was ever any thing so well and so just ?

Arlington-street, Jan. 9, 1755.—REMARKABLE SUICIDES.I have been twice this Christmas at Strawberry Hill, for a few days, and, at each return, been not a little surprised: the first time at the very unexpected death of my Lord Albermarle, who was taken ill at Paris, going home from supper, and expired in a few

sums at

hours; and last week, at the far more extraordinary death of He himself, with all his judgment in bets, I think would have betted any man in England against himself, for selfmurder: yet, after having been supposed the sharpest genius of his time, he, by all that appears, shot himself on the distress of his circumstances; an apoplectic disposition, I believe, concurring, either to lower his spirits, or to alarm them. Ever since Miss lived with him, either from liking her himself, as some think, or to tempt her to marry his Lilliputian figure, he had squandered vast and in living. He lost twelve hundred a year by Lord Albermarle's death, and four by Lord Gage's, the same day. He asked immediately for the government of Virginia, or the Foxhounds, and pressed for an answer with an eagerness that surprised the Duke of N. who never had a notion of planning down the relief of his own or any other man's wants to a day. Yet that seems to have been the case of who determined to throw the die of life or death Tuesday was se'nnight, on the answer he was to receive from court, which did not prove favourable. He consulted, indirectly, and at last pretty directly, several people on the easiest method of finishing life, and seems to have thought that he had been too explicit; for he invited company to dinner for the day after his death, and ordered a supper at White's, where he supped too the night before. He played at whist till one in the morning; it was New Year's morning: Lord Robert Bertie drank to him a happy New Year: he clapped his hands strangely to his eyes! In the morning he had a lawyer and three witnesses, and executed his will, which he made them read twice over, paragraph by paragraph and then asking the lawyer, if that will would stand good, though a man were to shoot himself? and being assured it would, he said, "Pray stay while I step into the next room ;"-went into the next room and shot himself. He clapped the pistol so close to his head, that they heard no report. The housekeeper' heard him fall, and, thinking he had a fit, ran up with drops, and found his skull and brains shot about the room! You will be charmed with the friendship and generosity of Sir opened his circumstances to him. Sir

- a little time since said,

if it

will be of any service to you, you shall see what I have done for you;" pulled out his will, and read it, where he had left him a vast legacy. The beauty of this action is heightened by Sir life not being worth a year's purchase. I own I feel for the distress this man must have felt, before he decided on so desperate an action, I knew him but little; but he was good natured and agree

able enough, and had the most compendious understanding I ever knew. He had affected a finesse in money matters beyond what he deserved, and aimed at reducing even natural affections to a kind of calculation, like Demoivre's. He was asked soon after his daughter's marriage, if she was with child :-He replied, "Upon my word, I don't know; I have no bet upon it."

On the occasion of- story, I heard another more extraordinary. If a man insures his life, this killing himself vacates the bargain. This (as in England, almost every thing begets a contradiction) has produced an office for insuring in spite of selfmurder; but not beyond three hundred pounds. I suppose voluntary deaths, were not then the bon-ton of people in higher life. A man went and insured his life, securing this privilege of a free-dying Englishman. He carried the insurers to dine at a tavern, where they met several other persons. After dinner, he said to the life and death brokers, "Gentlemen, it is fit that you should be acquainted with the company: these honest men are tradesmen, to whom I was in debt, without any means of paying but by your assistance, and now I am your humble servant!" He pulled out a pistol and shot himself. Did you ever hear of such a mixture of honesty and knavery?

Strawberry Hill, August 15, 1775.-GARRICK.-I dined today at Garrick's; there were the Duke of Grafton, Lady Rochford, Lady Holderness, the crooked Mostyn, and Dabreu, the Spanish Minister; two Regents, of which one is Lord Chamberlain, and the other Groom of the Stole; and the wife of a Secretary of State. This is being sur un assez bon-ton for a player! Don't you want to ask me how I like him? Do want, and I will tell you. -I like her exceedingly; her behaviour is all sense, and all sweetness too. I don't know how, he does not improve so fast upon me! there is a great deal of parts and vivacity, and variety; but there is a great deal too of mimicry and burlesque. I am very ungrateful, for he flatters me abundantly; but unluckily I know it. I was accustomed to it enough when my father was first minister; on his fall I lost it all at once.

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 18, 1755.-GRAY'S BARD.-Gray has lately been here. He has begun an ode, which, if he finishes equally, will, I think, inspirit all your drawing again. It is founded on an old tradition of Edward I. putting to death the Welsh Bards. Nothing but you, or Salvator Rosa, and Nicolo Poussin, can paint up to the expressive horror and dignity of it. Don't

think I mean to flatter you; all I would say is, that now the two latter are dead, you must of necessity be Gray's painter.

Arlington-street, Oct. 19, 1755.

EFFRONTERY OF MINGOTTI-an Opera Singer.--I believe I scarce ever mentioned to you, last winter, the follies of the opera: the impertinences of a great singer were too old, and too common a topic. I must mention them now, when they rise to any improvement in the character of national folly. The Mingotti, a noble figure, a great mistress of music, and a most incomparable actress, surpassed any thing I ever saw for the extravagance of her humours. She never sung above one night in three, from a fever upon her temper; and never would act at all when Ricciarelli, the first man, was to be in dialogue with her. Her fevers grew so high, that the audience caught them, and hissed her more than once: she herself once turned and hissed again. Tit pro tat geminat Tov d'anaμslovn. -Well, among the treaties which a secretary of state has negociated this summer, he has contracted for a succedaneum to the Mingotti. In short, there is a woman hired to sing, when the other shall be out of humour.

Arlington-street, Nov. 16, 1755.

ELOQUENCE OF MR. PITT.-Pitt surpassed himself, and then I need not tell you that he surpassed Cicero, and Demosthenes. What a figure would they, with their formal, laboured, cabinet orations make vis-a-vis his manly vivacity and dashing eloquence at one o'clock in the morning, after sitting in that heat for eleven hours! He spoke above an hour and a half, with scarce a bad sentence the most admired part was a comparison he drew of the two parts of the new administration, to the conflux of the Rhone and the Soane; "the latter a gentle, feeble, languid stream, languid but not deep; the other a boisterous and overwhelming torrent but they join at last, and long may continue united, to the comfort of each other, and to the glory, honour, and happiness of the nation!"

P. S. G. Selwyn hearing much talk of a sea war or a continent, said, "I am for a sea-war, and a continent admiral.”

[To be continued.]

D-VOL. XII.

THE BATHS OF THE EMPEROR JULIEN*.

AN ANECDOTE OF THE FOURTH CENTURY,

From the French.

M. LUNIGIANI, a learned Italian, sent me, at the time the French were in possession of Tuscany, a very curious Italian manuscript, which he had found in an obscure corner of the Marciana library at Florence. "I transmit you," says my friend, " something that will interest you. It is a manuscript which has escaped all our literati; in which some mention is made of ancient Paris, and particularly of a monument, the ruins of which are still to be seen in your city."

Not being accustomed to the form of the letters, it was with some difficulty that I could make out the manuscript. A marginal note informed me that it was a translation, made in 1431, from à Greek MS. brought from Constantinople by Cardinal Bessarion; that the cardinal had discovered it in the library belonging to the Emperors, and that he supposed it to have been the work of one of the secretaries, which Julien, the apostate, had taken with him to Constantinople, after his elevation to the empire. Nicolo Nicoli, the author of this note, adds, that after having translated Cardinal Bessarion's manuscript into Italian, he returned it to the cardinal, who expressed his intention of depositing it in the Vatican.

I know not whether the MS. has been preserved by the Popes: this note, however, explains how the Italian translation happened to reach my hands; for it appears, in Tiraboschi, that Cosmo de Medicis purchased the library of Nicolo Nicoli, and added it to the Marciana, where my friend discovered it.

I pique myself very much upon the fidelity of my translation, since I have been unwilling to make the slightest alteration in a composition of this antiquity. I have carried my scruples so far as to preserve even the expressions which the author makes use of, in speaking of the Christians; expressions which I am very far from approving. It should be recollected that this sect was then very much despised by the Gauls, although Constantine had already rendered it predominant in the capital of the empire. Nor should we forget that the article is drawn up by the secretary of an emperor, who, with all the generous qualities that constitute the character of

* The ruins of this palace, constructed, or at least enlarged, by the Emperor Julien, are still to be seen at Paris, between the street of La Harpe and the ancient Hotel de Cluni.