years ago that suggested the idea of an alna-mater, suckling the three hundred and sixty-five bantlings of the Countess of Hainault.  Well, as your newly-adopted pensioners have two babes, I insist on your accepting two guineas for them instead of one at present (that is, when you shall be present). i If you cannot circumscribe your own charities, you shall not stint mine, Madam, who can afford it much better, and who must be dunned for alms, and do not scramble over hedges and ditches in searching for opportunities of flinging away my money on good works.  I employ mine better at auctions, and in buying pictures and baubles, and hoarding curiosities, that in truth I cannot keep long but that will last for ever in my catalogue, and make me immortal!  Alas! will they cover a multitude of sins?  Adieu!  I cannot jest after that sentence.  Yours sincerely.

(688) Miss More was at this time raising a subscription for the benefit of the family of a poor man who had been cut down after he had nearly hung himself.-E.

Letter 349 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(689) Strawberry Hill, June 25, 1790. (PAGE 447)

I am glad at least that you was not fetched to town on last Tuesday, which was as hot as if Phaeton had once more gotten into his papa’s curricle and driven it along the lower road; but the old king has resumed the reins again, and does not allow us a handful more of beams than come to our northern share.  I am glad, too, that I was not summoned also to the Fitzroyal arrangement:  it was better to be singed here, than exposed between two such fiery furnaces as Lady Southampton and my niece Keppel.  I pity Charles Fox to be kept on the Westminster gridiron.(690) Before I came out of town, I was diverted by a story from the hustings:  one of the mob called out to Fox, “Well, Charley, are not you sick of your coalition?” “Poor gentleman!” cried an old woman in the crowd, “why should not he like a collation?”

I am very sorry Mrs. Damer is so tormented, but I hope the new inflammation will relieve her.  As I was writing that sentence this morning, Mesdames de Boufflers came to see me from Richmond, and brought a Comte de Moranville to see my house.  The puerile pedants of their `Etats are going to pull down the statues of Louis Quatorze, like their silly ancestors, who proposed to demolish the tomb of John Duke of Bedford.  The Vicomte de Mirabeau is arrested somewhere for something, perhaps for one of his least crimes; in short, I M angry that the cause of liberty is profaned by such rascals.  If the two German Kings make peace, as you hear and as I expected, the Brabanters, who seem not to have known much better what to do with their revolution, will be the first sacrifice on the altar of peace.

I stick fast at the beginning of the first volume of Bruce,(691) though I am told it is the most entertaining; but I am sick of his vanity, and (I believe) of his want of veracity; but I am sure of his want of method and of his obscurity.  I hope my wives were not at Park-place in your absence:  the loss of them is irreparable to me, and I tremble to think how much more I shall feel it in three months, when I am to part with them for—­who can tell how long?  Adieu!