or being ashamed of our country? Dr. Barnard, the master,
is the Pitt of masters, and has raised the school to the most
flourishing state it ever knew.

Lady Mary Wortley[1] has left twenty-one large volumes in prose and
verse, in manuscript; nineteen are fallen to Lady Bute, and will not see
the light in haste. The other two Lady Mary in her passage gave to
somebody in Holland, and at her death expressed great anxiety to have
them published. Her family are in terrors lest they should be, and have
tried to get them: hitherto the man is inflexible. Though I do not doubt
but they are an olio of lies and scandal, I should like to see them. She
had parts, and had seen much. Truth is often at bottom of such
compositions, and places itself here and there without the intention of
the mother. I dare say in general, these works are like Madame del
Pozzo's _Memoires_. Lady Mary had more wit, and something more delicacy;
their manners and morals were a good deal more alike.

[Footnote 1: In a note to this letter, subsequently added by Walpole, he
reduces this statement to seventeen, saying: "It was true that Lady Mary
did leave seventeen volumes of her works and memories. She gave her
letters from Constantinople to Mr. Sowden, minister of the English
Church at Rotterdam, who published them; and, the day before she died,
she gave him those seventeen volumes, with injunctions to publish them
too; but in two days the man had a crown living from Lord Bute, and Lady
Bute had the seventeen volumes."]

There is a lad, a waiter at St. James's coffee-house, of thirteen years
old, who says he does not wonder we beat the French, for he himself
could thrash Monsieur de Nivernois. This duke is so thin and small, that
when minister at Berlin, at a time that France was not in favour there,
the King of Prussia said, if his eyes were a little older, he should
want a glass to see the embassador. I do not admire this bon-mot.
Voltaire is continuing his "Universal History"; he showed the Duke of
Grafton a chapter, to which the title is, _Les Anglois vainqueurs dans
les Quatres Parties du Monde_. There have been minutes in the course of
our correspondence when you and I did not expect to see this chapter. It
is bigger by a quarter than our predecessors the Romans had any
pretensions to, and larger than I hope our descendants will see written
of them, for conquest, unless by necessity, as ours has been, is an
odious glory; witness my hand

H. WALPO