Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow!

[Footnote 1:  Count Orloff was one of the Czarina’s earlier lovers, and was universally understood to have been the principal agent in the murder of her husband.]

We have had two or three simpletons return from Russia, charmed with the murderess, believing her innocent, because she spoke graciously to them in the drawing-room.  I don’t know what the present Grand Signior’s name is, Osman, or Mustapha, or what, but I am extremely on his side against Catherine of Zerbst; and I never intend to ask him for a farthing, nor write panegyrics on him for pay, like Voltaire and Diderot; so you need not say a word to him of my good wishes.  Benedict XIV. deserved my friendship, but being a sound Protestant, one would not, you know, make all Turk and Pagan and Infidel princes too familiar.  Adieu!

[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT WALPOLE

From a mezzotint by J. Simon after a picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller]

WILKES—­BURKE’S PAMPHLET—­PREDICTION OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS—­EXTRAVAGANCE IN ENGLAND.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, May 6, 1770.

I don’t know whether Wilkes is subdued by his imprisonment, or waits for the rising of Parliament, to take the field; or whether his dignity of Alderman has dulled him into prudence, and the love of feasting; but hitherto he has done nothing but go to City banquets and sermons, and sit at Guildhall as a sober magistrate.  With an inversion of the proverb, “Si ex quovis Mercurio fit lignum!” What do you Italians think of Harlequin Potesta?[1] In truth, his party is crumbled away strangely.  Lord Chatham has talked on the Middlesex election till nobody will answer him; and Mr. Burke (Lord Rockingham’s governor) has published a pamphlet[2] that has sown the utmost discord between that faction and the supporters of the Bill of Rights.  Mrs. Macaulay[3] has written against it.  In Parliament their numbers are shrunk to nothing, and the session is ending very triumphantly for the Court.  But there is another scene opened of a very different aspect.  You have seen the accounts from Boston.  The tocsin seems to be sounded to America.  I have many visions about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to be kept in subjection to half a dozen exhausted nations in Europe.  As the latter sinks, and the others rise, they who live between the eras will be a sort of Noahs, witnesses to the period of the old world and origin of the new.  I entertain myself with the idea of a future senate in Carolina and Virginia, where their future patriots will harangue on the austere and incorruptible virtue of the ancient English! will tell their auditors of our disinterestedness and scorn of bribes and pensions, and make us blush in our graves at their ridiculous panegyrics.  Who knows but even our Indian usurpations and villanies may become topics of praise to American schoolboys?  As I believe our virtues are extremely like those of our predecessors the Romans, so I am sure our luxury and extravagance are too.