THE ENGLISH CLIMATE.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

STRAWBERRY HILL, June 15, 1768.

No, I cannot be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased with your situation.  You are so apt to take root, that it requires ten years to dig you out again when you once begin to settle.  As you go pitching your tent up and down, I wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters perpetually.  Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first, when do your Duke and Duchess [the Argylls] travel to the North?  I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see their house comfortably when they are not there.

I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us.  It began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-forty hours without intermission.  My poor hay has not a dry thread to its back.  I have had a fire these three days.  In short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason:  it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing.  Our poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters.  They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore-throats and agues with attempting to realise these visions.  Master Damon writes a song, and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening.  Zephyr is a north-east wind, that makes Damon button up to the chin, and pinches Chloe’s nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry, This is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other.  The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other.  We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and making our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects.  How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back!  Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again.

There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the hot-house in St. Stephen’s chapel.  My own sagacity makes me very vain, though there was very little merit in it.  I had seen so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it is most indifferent to me who is in or who is out, or which is set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield.  I see the country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it.  That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the undoing it?  I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject:  my patriotism could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.

I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady Hinchinbrook:  I heard a very bad account of her when I was last in town.  Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle letters no longer; therefore, good night!