of him
in Colburn's Magazine, where this author, of course, makes a distinguished
figure.

The late Professor Pictet, of Geneva, who had spent some of his early days
in England, and was very fond of it, told me some curious anecdotes of
his countryman De Lolme, whose book on the English constitution is much
more commended than it deserves. He once endeavoured to set up a rival
Journal to Old Swinton's _Courrier de l'Europe_, but his absurd denial of
Rodney's victory ruined the project. De Vergennes, the French minister,
patronized it. Brissot was connected with Swinton in the above-named
Journal. One of Swinton's sons holds a high situation in the British
Government in India:--another commanded a ship in the Company's service.
Old Swinton was a Scotch jacobite, and forfeited.

Horace Walpole, who died Earl of Orford, was a little old man with small
features--very lively and amusing,--who talked just as he wrote: but a
little too fond of baubles and curiosities. He had a witty mind, but not a
great one:--yet he was a man of genius. His family was ancient, but his
vanity made him always endeavour to represent it of much more consequence
than it was. They had a great deal of the Norfolk squierarchy about them.
He could not bear his uncle Horace, the diplomatist, whose son, the
grandfather of the present earl, with his little tie-wig, looked like an
old-fashioned glover.

I have mentioned Mrs. Macauley, the historian. She had a dog latterly, of
which she made a great pet, and on being asked why she bestowed so much
care on it, she answered--"Why! are you aware whence it came? It is a true
republican, and has been stroked by the hand of Washington!" The event of
the French Revolution maddened her with joy; but when the news came of
Louis the Sixteenth's escape, and before she heard he had been brought
back, she took to her bed, wrote to her friends that she should die of the
disappointment--and did die. She complained that Dr. Graham had given her
a love-potion! Her young husband used her ill.

Tom Warton, the poet, was a good-natured man, but addicted to low company.
He was fond of

"Smoking his pipe upon an alehouse bench;"

He was tutor to Colonel North, the son of the minister, who thought he
neglected him. This connexion, perhaps, led him to write the _Life of Sir
Thomas Pope_, or rather that this family were founders of Warton's college.
He also wrote the life of the President Bathurst, who was elder brother of