We have got a second volume of Bower’S(143) History of the Popes, but it is tiresome and pert, and running into a warmth and partiality that he had much avoided in his first volume.  He has taken such pains to disprove the Pope’s supremacy being acknowledged pretty early, that he has convinced me it was acknowledged.  Not that you and I care whether it were or not.  He is much admired here; but I am not good Christian enough to rejoice over him, because turned Protestant; nor honour his confessorship, when he ran away with the materials that were trusted to him to write for the papacy, and makes use of them to write against it.  You know how impartial I am; I can love him for being shocked at a system of cruelty supporting nonsense; I can be pleased with the truths he tells; I can and do admire his style, and his genius in recovering a language that he forgot by six years old, so well as to excel in writing it, and yet I wish that all this had happened without any breach of trust!

Stosch has grievously offended me; but that he will little regard, as I can be of no use to him:  he has sold or given his charming intaglio of the Gladiator to Lord Duncannon.  I must reprove you a little who sent it; you know how much I pressed you to buy it for me, and how much I offered.  I still think it one of the finest rings(144) I ever saw, and am mortified at not having it.

Apropos to Bower; Miss Pelham had heard that he had foretold the return of the earthquake-fit:  her father sent for him, to COnVince her that Bower was too sensible; but had the precaution to talk to him first:  he replied gravely, that a fire was kindled under the earth, and he could not tell when it would blaze out.  You may be sure he was not carried to the girl!  Adieu!

(140) Jonas, sixth Duke of Hamilton, the Husband of the beautiful Miss Gunning. he died in 1758.-D.

(141) Mademoiselle Gauchet.

(142) William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, Lord Lieutenant.

(143) Archibald Bow(@r, a man of disreputable character, who was born in Scotland, of a Roman Catholic family, was educated at Douay and Rome, and became a Jesuit.  Having been detected, as it is said, in an intrigue with a nun, he was forced to fly from Perugia, where he resided:  and after a series of strange and not very creditable adventures, he arrived in England.  Here he declared himself a Protestant; but, after some years, wishing to swindle the English Jesuits out of an annuity, be again returned to their order.  Having got all he could from them, he again returned to Protestantism, and wrote his “History of the Popes,” which was his principal literary work.-D. (Gibbon, speaking of Bower, in his Extraits (le mon Journal for 1764, says, " He is a rogue unmasked, who enjoyed, for twenty years, the favour of the public, because he had quitted a sect to which he still secretly adhered; and because he had been a counsellor of the inquisition in the town of Macerata, where an inquisition never existed.”  Bower died in Bond Street, in September, 1766, in his eighty-first year, and was buried in Mary-le-bone churchyard, where there is a monument to his memory.]