always in fine order and great spirits when they are in cold blood: I am sorry you thought it worth while to realize what I should have thought you could have seen in your mind's eye. However, I hope you will be amused and pleased with viewing heroes, both in their autumn and their bud. Vienna will be a new sight; so will the Austrian eagle and its two heads. I should like seeing, too, if any fairy would present me with a chest that would fly up into the air by touching a peg, and transport me whither I pleased in an instant: but roads, and inns, and dirt are terrible drawbacks on my curiosity. I grow so old, or so indolent, that I scarce stir from hence; and the dread of the gout makes me almost as much a prisoner, as a fit of it. News I know none, if there is any. The papers tell me the city was to present a petition to the King against the Quebec-bill yesterday; and I suppose they will tell me to-morrow whether it was presented. The King's Speech tells me, there has nothing happened between the Russians and the Turks.' Lady Barrymore told me t'other day, that nothing was to happen between her and Lord Egremont. I am as well satisfied with these negatives, as I should have been with the contrary. I am much more interested about the rain, for it destroys all my roses and orange-flowers, of which I have exuberance; and my hay is cut, and cannot be made. However, it is delightful to have no other distresses. When I compare my present tranquillity and indifference with all I suffered last year, I am thankful for my happiness, and enjoy it—unless the bell rings at the gate early in the morning-and then I tremble, and think it an express from Norfolk.

2

It is unfortunate, that when one has nothing to talk of but one's self, one should have nothing to say of one's self. It is shameful, too, to send such a scrap by the post. I think I shall reserve it till Tuesday. If I have then nothing to add, as is probable, you must content yourself with my good intentions,

1 Peace between Russia and Turkey was proclaimed at St. Petersburgh on the 14th of August 1774.-E.

2 During the illness of his nephew, Lord Orford.

as you, I hope, will with this speculative campaign. Pray, for the future, remain at home and build bridges: I wish you were here to expedite ours to Richmond, which they tell me will not be passable these two years. I have done looking so forward. Adieu !

DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. COLE.

Matson, near Gloucester, Aug. 15, 1774.

As I am your disciple in antiquities (for you studied them when I was but a scoffer), I think it my duty to give you some account of my journeyings in the good cause. You will not dislike my date. I am in the very mansion where King Charles the First and his two eldest sons lay during the siege; and there are marks of the last's hacking with his hanger on a window, as he told Mr. Selwin's grandfather afterwards. The present master has done due honour to the royal residence, and erected a good marble bust of the Martyr, in a little gallery. In a window is a shield in painted glass, with that King's and his Queen's arms, which I gave him. So you see I am not a rebel, when alma mater antiquity stands godmother.

I went again to the cathedral, and, on seeing the monument of Edward II. a new historic doubt started, which I pray you to solve. His Majesty has a longish beard; and such were certainly worn at that time. Who is the first historian that tells the story of his being shaven with cold water from a ditch, and weeping to supply warm, as he was carried to Berkeley Castle? Is not this apocryphal? The house whence Bishop Hooper1 was carried to the stake, is still standing tale quale. I made a visit to his actual successor, Warburton, who is very infirm, speaks with much hesitation, and, they say, begins to lose his memory. They

1 John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, who, having refused to recant his opinions, was burned alive before the cathedral of Gloucester in the year 1554.-E.

have destroyed the beautiful cross; the two battered heads of Henry III. and Edward III. are in the post-master's garden.

Yesterday I made a jaunt four miles hence that pleased me exceedingly, to Prinknash, the individual villa of the abbots of Gloucester. I wished you there with their mitre on. It stands on a glorious, but impracticable hill, in the midst of a little forest of beech, and commanding Elysium. The house is small, but has good rooms, and though modernized here and there, not extravagantly. On the ceiling of the hall is Edward IVth's jovial device, a fau-con serrure. The chapel is low and small, but antique, and with painted glass, with many angels in their coronation robes, i. e. wings and crowns. Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour lay here: in the dining-room are their arms in glass, and of Catherine of Arragon, and of Brays and Bridges. Under the window, a barbarous bas

is still on a sign of an aleThink of my amazement,

relief head of Harry, young: as it house, on the descent of the hill. when they showed me the chapel plate, and I found on it, on four pieces, my own arms, quartering my mother-in-law, Skerret's, and in a shield of pretence, those of Fortescue; certainly by mistake, for those of my sister-in-law, as the barony of Clinton was in abeyance between her and Fortescue Lord Clinton. The whole is modern and blundered: for Skerret should be impaled, not quartered, and instead of our crest, are two spears tied together in a ducal coronet, and no coronet for my brother, in whose time this plate must have been made, and at whose sale it was probably bought; as he finished the repairs of the church at Houghton, for which, I suppose, this decoration was intended. But the silversmith was no herald, you see.

As I descended the hill, I found in a wretched cottage a child, in an ancient oaken cradle, exactly in the form of that lately published from the cradle of Edward II. I purchased it for five shillings; but don't know whether I shall have fortitude enough to transport it to Strawberry Hill. would conclude me in my second childhood.

People

To-day I have been at Berkeley and Thornbury Castles.

The first disappointed me much, though very entire. It is much smaller than I expected, but very entire, except a small part burnt two years ago, while the present Earl was in the house. The fire began in the housekeeper's room, who never appeared more; but as she was strict over the servants, and not a bone of her was found, it was supposed that she was murdered, and the body conveyed away. The situation is not elevated nor beautiful, and little improvements made of late, but some silly ones à la Chinoise, by the present Dowager. In good sooth, I can give you but a very imperfect account; for, instead of the lord's being gone to dine with the mayor of Gloucester, as I expected, I found him in the midst of all his captains of the militia. I am so sillily shy of strangers and youngsters, that I hurried through the chambers, and looked for nothing but the way out of every room. I just observed that there were many bad portraits of the family, but none ancient; as if the Berkeleys had been commissaries, and raised themselves in the last war. There is a plentiful addition of those of Lord Berkeley of Stratton, but no knights templars, or barons as old as Edward I.; yet are there three beds on which there may have been as frisky doings three centuries ago, as there probably have been within these ten years. The room shown for the murder of Edward II, and the shrieks of an agonizing king, I verily believe to be genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at top of the house, quite detached, and to be approached only by a kind of foot-bridge, and from that descends a large flight of steps that terminate on strong gates; exactly a situation for a corps de garde. In that room they show you a cast of a face in plaister, and tell you it was taken from Edward's. I was not quite so easy of faith about that; for it is evidently the face of Charles I.

The steeple of the church, lately rebuilt handsomely, stands some paces from the body; in the latter are three tombs of the old Berkeleys, with cumbent figures. The wife of the Lord Berkeley,1 who was supposed to be privy to the murder,

1 Thomas, third Lord Berkeley, was entrusted with the custody of Edward II; but, owing to the humanity with which he treated the captive monarch, he was forced to resign his prisoner and his castle to Lord

has a curious head-gear; it is like a long horse-shoe, quilted in quatrefoils; and, like Lord Foppington's wig, allows no more than the breadth of a half-crown to be discovered of the face. Stay, I think I mistake; the husband was a conspirator against Richard II. not Edward. But in those days, loyalty was not so rife as at present.

From Berkeley Castle I went to Thornbury, of which the ruins are half ruined. It would have been glorious, if finished.1 I wish the lords of Berkeley had retained the spirit of deposing till Henry the VIIIth's time! The situation is fine, though that was not the fashion; for all the windows of the great apartment look into the inner court. The prospect was left to the servants. Here I had two adventures. I could find nobody to show me about. I saw a paltry house that I took for the sexton's, at the corner of the close, and bade my servant ring, and ask who could show me the Castle. A voice in a passion flew from a casement, and issued from a divine. "What! was it his business to show the Castle? Go look for somebody else! What did the fellow ring for as if the house was on fire?" The poor Swiss came back in a fright, and said, the doctor had sworn at him. Well - we scrambled over a stone stile, saw a room or two glazed near the gate, and rung at it. A damsel came forth, and satisfied our curiosity. When we had done seeing, I said, "Child, we don't know our way, and want to be directed into the London road; I see the Duke's steward yonder at the window, pray desire him to come to me, that I may consult him." She went- he stood staring at us at the window, and sent his footman. I do not think courtesy is resident at Thornbury. As I returned through the close, the divine came running out of breath, and without his beaver or band, and calls out, "Sir, I am come to justify myself: your servant says I swore

Maltravers and Sir Thomas Gournay. After the murder of Edward, Lord Berkeley was arraigned as a participator in the crime, but honourably acquitted. The Lady Berkeley alluded to by Walpole was his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March, and widow of Robert Vere, Earl of Oxford.-E.

1

Thornbury Castle was designed, but never finished, by the Duke of Buckingham, in Henry VIII.'s time.-E.