k, Offley will be upon the watch, will conclude you took your
pattern from M. de Bareil, and in a week's time we shall all be equipped
like Dutch skippers. You see I speak very disinterestedly; for, as I
never wear a hat myself, it is indifferent to me what sort of hat I
don't wear.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Lord Frederick Cavendish is returned from France. He confirms and adds
to the amiable accounts we have received of the Duc d'Aiguillon's
behaviour to our prisoners. You yourself, the pattern of attentions and
tenderness, could not refine on what he has done both in good-nature and
good-breeding: he even forbad any ringing of bells or rejoicings
wherever they passed--but how your representative blood will curdle when
you hear of the absurdity of one of your countrymen: the night after the
massacre at St. Cas, the Duc d'Aiguillon gave a magnificent supper of
eighty covers to our prisoners--a Colonel Lambert got up at the bottom
of the table, and, asking for a bumper, called out to the Duc, "My Lord
Duke, here's the Roy de Franse!" You must put all the English you can
crowd into the accent. _My Lord Duke_ was so confounded at this
preposterous compliment, which it was impossible for him to return, that
he absolutely sank back into his chair and could not utter a syllable:
our own people did not seem to feel more.

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Well! and so you think we are undone!--not at all; if folly and
extravagance are symptoms of a nation's being at the height of their
glory, as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners of its ruin,
we never were in a more flourishing situation. My Lord Rockingham and my
nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between
five turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London. Don't you
believe in the transmigration of souls? And are you not convinced that
this race is between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus? And
don't you pity the poor Asiatics and Italians who comforted themselves,
on their resurrection, with their being geese and turkeys?

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

Here's another symptom of our glory! The Irish Speaker, Mr. Ponsonby,
has been _reposing_ himself at _Newmarket_. George Selwyn, seeing him
toss about bank-bills at the hazard-table, said, "How easily the Speaker
passes the money-bills!"

[Sidenote: _Horace Walpole_]

You would be more diverted with a Mrs. Holman, whose passion is keeping
an assembly,