persons! They had the comfort this spring
of seeing Lord Graham marry: the Duchess said, "I thought I should die
of grief, and now I am ready to die of joy." Lady Graham soon proved
with child, but soon miscarried; and the Duke and Duchess may not live
to have the consolation of seeing an heir--for we must hope and make
visions to the last! _I_ am asking for samples of Ginori's porcelain at
sixty-eight! Well! are not heirs to great names and families as frail
foundations of happiness? and what signifies what baubles we pursue?
Philosophers make systems, and we simpletons collections: and we are as
wise as they--wiser perhaps, for we know that in a few years our
rarities will be dispersed at an auction; and they flatter themselves
that their reveries will be immortal, which has happened to no system
yet. A curiosity may rise in value; a system is exploded.

Such reflections are applicable to politics, and make me look on them as
equally nugatory. Last year Mr. Fox was burnt in effigy; now Mr. Pitt
is. Oh! my dear Sir, it is all a farce! On _this day_, about a hundred
years ago (look at my date), was born the wisest man I have seen.[1] He
kept this country in peace for twenty years, and it flourished
accordingly. He injured no man; was benevolent, good-humoured, and did
nothing but the common necessary business of the State. Yet was he
burnt in effigy too; and so traduced, that his name is not purified
yet!--Ask why his memory is not in veneration? You will be told, from
libels and trash, that he was _the Grand Corruptor_.--What! did he
corrupt the nation to make it happy, rich, and peaceable? Who was
oppressed during his administration? Those saints Bolingbroke and
Pulteney were kept out of the Paradise of the Court; ay, and the
Pretender was kept out and was kept quiet. Sir Robert fell: a Rebellion
ensued in four years, and the crown shook on the King's head. The
nation, too, which had been tolerably corrupted before his time, and
which, with all its experience and with its eyes opened, has not cured
itself of being corrupt, is not quite so prosperous as in the day of
that man, who, it seems, poisoned its morals. Formerly it was the most
virtuous nation on the earth!

[Footnote 1: He means his own father, the Prime Minister from 1720 to
1741.]

Under Henry VIII. and his children there was no persecution, no
fluctuation of religion: their Ministers shifted their faith four times,
and were sincere honest men! There was