“Pleas’d let me own, in Esher’s peaceful grove,
Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham’s love,
The scene, the master, opening to my view,
I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew."-E
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(1460) A cant name for the Duke of Cumberland.

561 Letter 259
To The Hon. H. S. Conway. 
Strawberry Hill, Aug. 29, 1748.

Dear Harry, Whatever you may think, a campaign at Twickenham furnishes as little matter for a letter as an abortive one in Flanders.  I can’t say indeed that my generals wear black wigs, but they have long full- bottomed hoods which cover as little entertainment to the full.

There’s General my Lady Castlecomer, and General my Lady Dowager Ferrers!  Why, do you think I can extract more out of them than you can out of Hawley or Honeywood?(1461) Your old women dress, go to the Duke’s levee, see that the soldiers cock their hats right, sleep after dinner, and soak with their led-captains till bed-time, and tell a thousand lies of what they never did in their youth.  Change hats for head-clothes, the rounds for visits, and led-captains for toad-eaters, and the life is the very same.  In short, these are the people I live in the midst of, though not with; and it is for want of more important histories that I have wrote to you seldom; not, I give you my word, from the least negligence.  My present and sole occupation is planting, in which I have made great progress, and talk very learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce run to seed overturns all my botany, as I have more than once taken it for a curious West-Indian flowering shrub.  Then the deliberation with which trees grow, is extremely inconvenient to my natural impatience.  I lament living in so barbarous an age, when we are come to so little perfection in gardening.  I am persuaded that a hundred and fifty years hence it will be as common to remove oaks a hundred and fifty years old, as it is now to transplant tulip-roots.  I have even begun a treatise or panegyric on the great discoveries made by posterity in all arts and sciences, wherein I shall particularly descant on the great and cheap convenience of making trout-rivers-One Of the improvements which Mrs. Kerwood wondered Mr. Hedges would not make at his country-house, but which was not then quite so common as it will be.  I shall talk of a secret for roasting a wild-boar and a whole pack of hounds alive, without hurting them, so that the whole chase may be brought up to table; and for this secret, the Duke of Newcastle’s grandson, if he can ever get a son, is to give a hundred thousand pounds.  Then the delightfulness of having whole groves of hummingbirds, tame tigers taught to fetch and carry, pocket spying-glasses to see all that is doing in China, with a thousand other toys, which we now look upon as impracticable, and which pert posterity would laugh in one’s face for staring at, while they are offering rewards for perfecting discoveries, of the principles of which we have not