ire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the
"Botanic Garden,"[2] the "Arabian Nights," and King's Chapel are above
all rules: and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is
imitated even from the best models! Your partiality to the pageantry of
popery I do approve, and I doubt whether the world would not be a loser
(in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it
was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen
deities. Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the
legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be
regent.

[Footnote 1: The story of Eurydice's death and the descent of Orpheus,
her husband, to hell for her recovery, with which Virgil closes the
fourth Georgic, is among the most exquisite passages in all Latin
poetry. Pope made it the subject of his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day; but if
Pluto and Proserpine really relented at the doggerel that the English
poet puts into the mouth of the half-divine minstrel, they cannot
deserve the title of _illacrymabiles_ which Horace gives them. Some of
the pedantic scientists (to borrow a new word) have discovered in this
tale of true love an allegory about the alternations of Day and Night,
Sun and Moon, and what not, for which they deserve the anathema of every
scholar and lover of true poetry.]

[Footnote 2: "The Botanic Garden," a poem by Dr. Darwin; chiefly
remembered for Mr. Gladstone's favourite "Upas-tree," a plant which has
not, and never had, any existence except in the fancy of some traveller,
who hoaxed the too-scientific poet with the story, which, years
afterwards, hoaxed the orator also.]

_DISMISSAL OF NECKER--BARON DE BRETEUIL--THE DUC D'ORLEANS--MIRABEAU._

TO THE HON. H.S. CONWAY.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Wednesday night, July_ 15, 1789.

I write a few lines only to confirm the truth of much of what you will
read in the papers from Paris. Worse may already be come, or is expected
every hour.

Mr. Mackenzie and Lady Betty called on me before dinner, after the post
was gone out; and he showed me a letter from Dutens, who said two
couriers arrived yesterday from the Duke of Dorset and the Duchess of
Devonshire, the latter of whom was leaving Paris directly. Necker had
been dismissed, and was thought to be set out for Geneva.[1] Breteuil,
who was at his country-house, had been sent for to succeed him. Paris
was in an uproar; and, after the couriers