"Stick to that, Louis, and none can hurt you! The Duke of Clarence says, he understands they are to send the Queen to Havre de Grace." 57. "Florence, Jan. 8, 1793. "Here am I reduced to the being citoyen passif et meme en etat d'arrestation depuis 5 semaines. Gout in both feet, and all the miseries that attend it. I am, however, getting better; and hope soon to get to Pisa, and from thence to Rome. Your letters found me here. I know not what to say; I trust to the good sense, or, if you will, to the prejudices of our countrymen, that the tree of liberty will not easily strike root with us. Ministers are hereby truly in a whimsical situation; if they do nothing in such times, and mischief overtakes us, they will be stoned in the streets; and, what is more, they will deserve it! If they interfere, whatever precaution they take is a cause of clamour. Every body can find fault; but I suppose of all the niceties of the Cabinet, the most delicate in such a nation as ours is to know, how far to yield and where to check the humours that arise amongst us. "I shall not say all I think on a letter that is to be opened in every municipality; but I will own I am not without my doubts as to the institution of certain clubs, especially the last, which professes to be upon a more extended plan, and to give its profession de foi, which is such as for the world I would not set my hand to. Fox's speech is that of a Cataline; and proves that his part is taken. He is to be the Mirabeau of the country; may he meet the fate whilst living that the other has done when he was insensible to it! By the bye, have you read the letters Mirabeau wrote when in the dungeon of Vincennes to Madame Monnier, whom he had stolen from her husband? such a rhapsody of sublime indecency, sublime ethics, and determined atheism, was never I believe thrown together upon paper. It is really curious to see how a man can at once avow himself the apostle of the two extremes of both virtue and vice, justifying every excess that his own passions prompt him to, and at the same time dictating to others moral precepts, and fulminating his censures upon his neighbours like a Cato. What a time we live in! I have just heard here a report of a Gun-powder plot at Vienna that is so shocking that I tell every body I will not believe it till I am absolutely obliged to it. Poor Louis Capet! he has shewn two things at his first appearance at the bar, first, that he is no coward, for a brave man might well have lost his presence of mind under such circumstances; the second, that he is no fool, for his attorney could not have answered more to the purpose; but, alas! he has answered like an attorney, not like a King. Is it not a lion in the toils? but is it his fault that he was born without a kingly spirit? Poor man! his death will be the corner-stone of the counter-revolution, He will be known then only by his virtues and his sufferings; his weaknesses and his awkward person will be forgotten. I wish tờ God I could shew you a Ciceronian speech that has been read to me, as if it had been spoken upon his first appearance; it is a fine canvass, voila tous mes forfaits en voici le salaire.' Necker has made little or nothing of it. Apropos, read his work sur le Pouvoir Executif; it is far the best of his productions. The conspiracy at the King's Bench was dans le vrai genre. I tremble at every possibility; and wish, with a friend of mine here, that I was four-score. In return for Lucy's prophecy, I pray you to hunt for an old book printed in or near the time, which I have never seen, containing le reve de Catherine de Medicis. I am told it sets forth the league, the murder of Henri Quatre, Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIV., and every thing down to the present reign, when nothing presented itself but a black veil, and rats and cats eating one another. This I will believe when I see it. "I am glad you was so well pleased with your Irish tour; but I am disappointed in what you tell me of the head of the law there. I never should expect to find there either elegance of manners or sound judgments; but handsome women in plenty for those who are a match for them, which, alas! I am not. My journey has been trist enough; and where I now am it is as cold as Christmas, and I have been shut up in a room where no glean of sun ever enters. Italy is quiet since the dispersion of the French fleet, which was owing to the relics of two Saints exposed on the beach at Cagliari. In every capital resides a little Minister, who gives law to the Sovereign as the Russian Ambassador does to the poor King of Poland at Warsaw." 58. LADY CAMELFORD to Mr. HARDINGE. "MY DEAR SIR, Feb. 19, 1794. "As it is impossible for me either to speak or write upon the subject that wholly occupies my mind, I will not attempt to make a reply to the kind letter I have received from you; but I can thank you for it, which I now do most sincerely. Indeed I should have conveyed those thanks sooner but for a little inflammation in my eyes, which made writing troublesome to me. "I hope it will not be long before I shall be able to see you, without distressing your feelings more than may naturally be expected, on your entering this melancholy house. "I cannot close this short note without assuring you that both General Cowper and Sir Wdid justice upon a late occasion, not only to your talents, but to that zeal of friendship which prompted their exertion. "I better know how to value such friendship than by words to express iny sense of it I beg you to present my compli ments to Mrs. Hardinge; and to believe me, dear Sir, your faithful and obliged friend and servant, A. CAMELFORD *." [The following letter should have been inserted before; but the year is uncertain.] 59. "Brussels, June 27, 178-. "I am not sure I should have been so good a boy as to have written before I got to Spa, but for the anxiety I feel for the precarious state of health of your poor woman. We hope to have a letter from you at Spa, to tell us the Bristol waters have removed all your apprehensions. I fear I cannot comply with your request as to Journal, which I am too lazy to undertake; and, in truth, the road to Spa is too hackneyed to require it. Rich cultivation in an endless extent of flat territory; fortifications, wet ditches, and lines of shady trees upon old ruinous ramparts, with frogs croaking under them; large venerable cities of antient commerce; gothic piles of devotion filled with pictures, and deformed at the same time by the most stupid superstitions ; clean well-paved spacious streets with few inhabitants; unsocial nobility in coaches of the last century; soldiers, monks, and merchants mixed together; these are all the ideas that have presented themselves to me since I left England, or rather since I left M. Dessein, which, however, are entertaining enough to me, though not descriptive to others. This day, in a real deluge of rain, and amidst the crackling of a most violent thunder-storm, we reached the beautiful scene from whence I write this. From my window I look directly upon the verdure of trees, richly clothing a large garden, with some inequality of ground mixed with statues and ornaments, the extent at least equal to Lincoln's-inn-fields, surrounded with palaces, one line of which, of the noblest architecture, and all of stone, is foreshortened to the eye, whilst at the same time, through a break over a theatrical wall of ballustrades and vases, I command the distant view of an extensive country over the roofs of the old city, which lies directly under our view. "We are all well; and have slept in our coach but one night. We shall proceed in a few days for Spa, where, thank God, there is yet nobody; but the Archduke of Milan and his Consort, who are now here, will be there in a fortnight; if it were her grandfather he would be an acquaintance of mine. Take care of all my worldly concerns; and believe me ever 66 • Yours, CAMELFORD." This Lady, as before noticed in p. 72, was Anne, daughter and coheir of Pinkney Wilkinson, of Burnham, co. Norfolk, Esq. In the constant exercise of the most amiable qualities of the heart, she lived universally beloved, and died as universally lamented, May 5, 1805, aged 65, and was interred in the family vault at Boconnoc, attended by her son and daughter. 140 REV. B. N. TURNER. The Rev. Baptist-Noel Turner, M. A. Rector of Denton, co. Lincoln, and of Wing, co. Rutland, was the eldest son of the Rev. James Turner, his predecessor in the Rectory of Wing*; and grandson of the Rev. James Turner, Vicar of Garthorpe, Leicestershire, whose elder brother, William, Master of the Grammar School of Stamford (then one of the most flourishing schools in the kingdom), was a man of great erudition, and in his time, a celebrated grammarian. He was author of "Turner's Exercises," and other school books, once famous, but now out of date. He published also an elegant piece of classical humour, intituled, "Bellum Grammaticale," which is well worth the perusal of the curious. The subject of our biography was born at the close of the year 1739, and baptized on New-year's day 1740; Baptist Noel, Earl of Gainsborough, after whom he was named, being one of his godfathers. He received the first rudiments of his education at the Grammar School of Oakham in Rutland, and completed it at Emanuel-college, Cambridge, where he was about two years senior to Dr. William Bennet, the Bishop of Cloyne, with whom, on his first arrival at College, he instantly cultivated such an intimacy as proved most happy and honourable to both parties. He was under the tuition of Mr. Hubbard, and took his degree of B. A. 1762; M.A. * Mr. Turner never spoke of his father without feelings of the highest affection and veneration. In a short sketch of his life, which he has left behind him, he writes of his father thus: "My father's passing through Clare Hall, Cambridge, was with the same blameless and noiseless tenour of his way, for which he was conspicuous in after life. His acquirements were of the most solid and useful kind; not evincing any ambition of acquiring academical honours, but aiming to support the truly estimable character of a good parish priest." |