(160) Thomas Ashton, fellow of Eton College, and rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate.

(161) Dr. Conyers Middleton, author of the Life of Cicero. [The Doctor died three days after the date of this letter, in his sixty-seventh year.]

73 Letter 27 To sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, August 2, 1750.

I had just sent my letter to the ’@Secretary’s office the other day, when I received yours:  it would have prevented my reproving you for not mentioning the quarrel between the Pope and the Venetians; and I should have had time to tell you that Dr. Mead’s bankruptcy is contradicted.  I don’t love to send you falsities, so I tell you this is contradicted, though it is by no means clear that he is not undone-he is scarce worth making an article in two letters.

I don’t wonder that Marquis Acciaudi’s villa did not answer to you; by what I saw in Tuscany, and by the prints, their villas are strangely out of taste, and laboured by their unnatural regularity and art to destroy the romanticness of the situations.  I wish you could see the villas and seats here! the country wears a new face; every body is improving their places, and as they don’t fortify, their plantations with intrenchments of walls and high hedges, one has the benefit of them even in passing by.  The dispersed buildings, I mean temples, bridges, etc. are generally Gothic or Chinese, and give a whimsical air of novelty that is very pleasing.  You would like a drawing-room in the latter style that I fancied and have been executing at Mr. Rigby’s, in Essex. it has large and Very fine Indian landscapes, with a black fret round them, and round the whole entablature of the room, and all the ground or hanging is of pink paper.  While I was there, we had eight of the hottest days that ever were felt; they say, some degrees beyond the hottest in the East Indies, and that the Thames was more so than the hot well at Bristol.  The guards died )n their posts at Versailles:  and here a captain Halyburton, brother-in-law of lord Moncton, went mad with the excess

Your brother Gal. will, I suppose, be soon making improvements like the rest of the world:  he has bought an estate in Kent, called Bocton Malherbe, famous enough for having belonged to two men who, in my opinion, have very little title to fame, Sir Harry Wotton and my lord Chesterfield.  I must have the pleasure of being the first to tell you that your pedigree is finished at last; a most magnificent performance, and that will make a pompous figure in a future great hall at Bocton Malherbe when your great nephews or great-grandchildren shall be Earls, etc.  My cousin Lord Conway is made Earl of Hertford, as a branch of the somersets:  Sir Edward Seymour gave his approbation handsomely.  He has not yet got the dukedom himself, as there is started up a Dr. Seymour who claims it, but will be able to make nothing out.