morning star, full of life and splendour and joy.  Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall!  Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men and cavaliers.  I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult” ("Reflections on the French Revolution “).]

My poor old friend, the Duchesse de la Valiere, past ninety and stone-deaf, has a guard set upon her, but in her own house; her daughter, the Duchesse de Chatillon, mother of the Duchesse de la Tremouille, is arrested; and thus the last, with her attachment to the Queen, must be miserable indeed!—­but one would think I feel for nothing but Duchesses:  the crisis has crowded them together into my letter, and into a prison;—­and to be a prisoner among cannibals is pitiable indeed!

Thursday morning, 17th, past ten.

I this moment receive the very comfortable twin-letter.  I am so conjugal, and so much in earnest upon the article of recovery, that I cannot think of a pretty thing to say to very pretty Mrs. Stanhope; nor do I know what would be a pretty thing in these days.  I might come out with some old-fashioned compliment, that would have been very genteel

    In good Queen Bess’s golden day, when I was a dame of honour.

Let Mrs. Stanhope imagine that I have said all she deserves:  I certainly think it, and will ratify it, when I have learnt the language of the nineteenth century; but I really am so ancient, that as Pythagoras imagined he had been Panthoides Euphorbus[1] in the Trojan war, I am not sure that I did not ride upon a pillion behind a Gentleman-Usher, when her Majesty Elizabeth went into procession to St. Paul’s on the defeat of the Armada!  Adieu! the postman puts an end to my idle speculations—­but, Scarborough for ever! with three huzzas!

[Footnote 1:  “Euphorbus.” This is an allusion to the doctrine of metempsychosis taught by the ancient philosopher Pythagoras of Samos, according to which when a man died his soul remained in the shades below suffering any punishment which the man had deserved, till after a certain lapse of time all the taint of the former existence had been worn away, when the soul returned to earth to animate some other body.  The passage referred to here by Walpole occurs in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” xvi. 160, where Pythagoras is expounding his theory, which is also explained to Aeneas by Anchises in the shades below (Aeneid, vi. 745).  But the two poets differ in more points than one.  According to Anchises, one thousand years are required between the two existences; according to Pythagoras, not above four hundred or five hundred.  According to Anchises, before the soul revives in another body it must have forgotten all that happened to it in the body of its former owner.  As Dryden translates Virgil—­