[Footnote 3:  It is a singular thing that this most eminent man should be so constantly spoken of by a title which he never had.  His first title in the peerage was Baron Verulam; his second, on a subsequent promotion, was Viscount St. Albans; yet the error is as old as Dryden, and is defended by Lord Macaulay in a sentence of pre-eminent absurdity:  “Posterity has felt that the greatest of English philosophers could derive no accession of dignity from any title which power could bestow, and, in defiance of letters-patent, has obstinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Viscount St. Albans.”  But, without stopping to discuss the propriety of representing a Britiph peerage, honestly earned, and, in his case as Lord Chancellor, necessarily conferred, as a “degradation,” the mistake made is not that of continuing to call him Francis Bacon, a name by which at one time he was known, but that of calling him “Lord Bacon,” a title by which he was never known for a single moment in his lifetime; while, if a great philosopher was really “degraded” by a peerage, it is hard to see how the degradation would have been lessened by the title being Lord Bacon, which it was not, rather than Viscount St. Albans, which it was.]

[Footnote 4:  The “Biographie Universelle” (art. Newcomen) says of the Marquis:  “Longtemps avant lui [Neucomen] on avait remarque la grande force expansive de la vapeur, et on avait imagine de l’employer comme puissance.  On trouve deja cette application proposee et meme executee dans un ouvrage publie en 1663, par le Marquis de Worcester, sous le titre bizarre, ‘A Century of Inventions.’”]

If I happen to be less punctual in my correspondence than I intend to be, you must conclude I am writing my book, which being designed for a panegyric, will cost me a great deal of trouble.  The dedication with your leave, shall be addressed to your son that is coming, or, with Lady Ailesbury’s leave, to your ninth son, who will be unborn nearer to the time I am writing of; always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley.

Well!  I have here set you the example of writing nonsense when one has nothing to say, and shall take it ill if you don’t keep up the correspondence on the same foot.  Adieu!

REJOICINGS FOR THE PEACE—­MASQUERADE AT RANELAGH—­MEETING OF THE PRINCES PARTY AND THE JACOBITES—­PREVALENCE OF DRINKING AND GAMBLING—­WHITEFIELD.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, May 3, 1749.

I am come hither for a few days, to repose myself after a torrent of diversions, and am writing to you in my charming bow-window with a tranquillity and satisfaction which, I fear, I am grown old enough to prefer to the hurry of amusements, in which the whole world has lived for this last week.  We have at last celebrated the Peace, and that as much in extremes as we generally do everything, whether we have reason to be glad or sorry, pleased or angry.  Last Tuesday