“Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.”

I believe the duke wishes he could make them green too.  The house is large and bad; it was built by Lord Arlington, and stands, as all old houses do for convenience of water and shelter, in a hole; so it neither sees, nor is seen:  he has no money to build another.  The park is fine, the old woods excessively so:  they are much grander than Mr. Kent’s passion clumps-that is, sticking a dozen trees here and there, till a lawn looks like the ten of spades.  Clumps have their beauty; but in a great extent of country, how trifling to scatter arbours, where you should spread forests!  He is so unhappy in his heir apparent,(832) that he checks his hand in almost every thing he undertakes.  Last week he heard a new complaint of his barbarity.  A tenant of Lord Euston, in Northamptonshire, brought him his rent:  the Lord said it wanted three and sixpence:  the tenant begged he would examine the account, that it would prove exact-however, to content him, he would willingly pay him the three and sixpence.  Lord E. flew into
                            a rage, and vowed he would write
to the Duke to have him turned out of a little place he has in the post-office of thirty pounds a-year.  The poor man, who has six children, and knew nothing of my lord’s
                            being upon no terms of power with
his father, went home and shot himself!

I know no syllable of news ’. but that my Lady Carteret is dead at Hanover, and Lord Wilmington dying.  So there will be to let a first
minister’s ladyship and a first
lordship of the Treasury.  We have nothing from the army, though the King has now been there some time.  As new a thing as it is, we don’t talk much about it.

Adieu! the family are gone a fishing:  I thought I stayed at home to write to you, but I have so little to say that I don’t believe you will think so.

(832) George, Earl of Euston, who died in the lifetime of his father.  He seems to have been a man of the most odious character.  He has been already mentioned in the course
of these letters, upon the
occasion of his marriage with the ill-fated lady Dorothy Boyle, who died from his ill-treatment of her.  Upon a picture of lady Dorothy at the Duke of Devonshire’s at Chiswick, is the following touching inscription, written by her mother, which commemorates her virtues and her fate:-

“lady Dorothy Boyle, Born May the 14th, 1724.  She was the comfort and joy of her parents, the delight of all who knew her angelick of temper, and the admiration of all who saw her beauty.  She was marry’d October the 10th, 1741, and delivered (by death) from misery, May the 2nd, 1742.  This picture was drawn seven weeks after her death (from memory) by her most affectionate mother, Dorothy Burlington."-D.

329 letter 111 To Sir Horace Mann.  Friday noon, July 29, 1743.