men much the more considerable.  Of ships we lost but one, taken after the fight as going into port to refit.  Sir Charles Hardy and D’Orvilliers have not met; the latter is at Brest, the former at Portsmouth.  I never penetrated an inch into what is to be; and into some distant parts of our history, I mean the Eastern, I have never liked to look.  I believe it an infamous scene; you know I have always thought it so; and the Marattas are a nation of banditti very proper to scourge the heroes of Europe, who go so far to plunder and put themselves into their way.  Nature gave to mankind a beautiful world, and larger than it could occupy,—­for, as to the eruption of Goths and Vandals occasioned by excess of population, I very much doubt it; and mankind prefers deforming the ready Paradise, to improving and enjoying it.  Ambition and mischief, which one should not think were natural appetites, seem almost as much so as the impulse to propagation; and those pious rogues, the clergy, preach against what Nature forces us to practise (or she could not carry on her system), and not twice in a century say a syllable against the Lust of Destruction!  Oh! one is lost in moralising, as one is in astronomy!  In the ordinance and preservation of the great universal system one sees the Divine Artificer, but our intellects are too bounded to comprehend anything more.

Lord Temple is dead by an accident.  I never had any esteem for his abilities or character.  He had grown up in the bask of Lord Chatham’s glory, and had the folly to mistake half the rays for his own.  The world was not such a dupe; and his last years discovered a selfish restlessness, and discovered to him, too, that no mortal regarded him but himself.

The Lucans are in my neighbourhood, and talk with much affection of you.  Adieu!

CHANCES OF WAR WITH HOLLAND—­HIS FATHER’S POLICY—­POPE—­CHARACTER OF BOLINGBROKE.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

BERKELEY SQUARE, Jan. 13, 1780.

In consequence of my last, it is right to make you easy, and tell you that I think we shall not have a Dutch war;[1] at least, nobody seems to expect it.  What excuses we have made, I do not know; but I imagine the Hollanders are glad to gain by both sides, and glad not to be forced to quarrel with either.

[Footnote 1:  Walpole was mistaken in his calculations.  “Holland at this time was divided by two great parties—­the party of the Staatholder, the Prince of Orange, and the party inclining to France—­of which the Pensionary, Van Bethel, was among the principal members; and this party was so insulting in their tone and measures, that at the end of 1780 we were compelled to declare war against them” (Lord Stanhope, “History of England,” c. 63).  But the war was not signalised by any action of importance.]