I despise your literati enormously for their opinion of Montesquieu’s book.  Bid them read that glorious chapter on the subject I have been mentioning, the selling of African slaves.  Where did he borrow that?  In what book in the world is there half so much wit, sentiment, delicacy, humanity?

I shall speak much more gently to you, my dear child, though you don’t like Gothic architecture.  The Grecian is only proper for magnificent and public buildings.  Columns and all their beautiful ornaments look ridiculous when crowded into a closet or a cheesecake-house.  The variety is little, and admits no charming irregularities.  I am almost as fond of the Sharavaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in buildings, as in grounds or gardens.  I am sure, whenever you come to England, you will be pleased with the liberty of taste into which we are struck, and of which you can have no idea!  Adieu!

(102) Daughter of John, second Lord Gower.  Married in 1751 to the Hon. John Waldegrave.-D.

(103) madame de Mirepoix, eldest daughter of Prince Craon, and widow of the Prince of Lixin.

(104) The midwife.

(105) Atina Chamber, wife of Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, afterwards Earl Temple.

(106) George, eldest son of John, late Lord Hervey, son of the Earl of Bristol, whom this George succeeded in the title.

(107) George, Lord Hervey, was a very effeminate-looking man; which probably encouraged Lord Temple to risk this disgusting act of incivility.-D.

(108) Wraxall, in his historical Memoir Vol:’I. p. 139, relates the same story, with a few trifling alterations.-E.

(109) The Hon. Richard Leveson Gower, second son of John, second Lord Gower, member for Lichfield.  Born 1726; died 1753.-D.

(110) Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll, during the lifetime of bis elder brothers Duke John, Earl of Islay.  He died in 1765.-D.

(111) Algernon, last Duke of Somerset, of the younger branch.-D.

(112) Dodington, in his Diary of the 25th of February, says, " I met the Prince and Princess, by order, at Lady Middlesex’s where came Madame de Munchausen:  we went to a fortune-teller’s, who was young Des Noyers, disguised and instructed to surprise Madame de Munchausen, which he effectually did."-E.

(113) This sentiment is highly creditable to Walpole’s humanity.  It will remind the reader of a passage in Cowper’s Task, written thirty years after:—­

" And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man! 
I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned,"-E.

(114) There was a notion that King Stanislaus, who lived in Lorraine, was in love with her.

58 Letter 21 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, March 11, 1750.