give 50,000l. It is proposed that the colony shall consist of 1000 persons, who understand the watch manufacture; and they are to have a charter of incorporation, by which they will be enabled to elect their own magistrates, and to regulate entirely their own internal police. The Duke of Leinster, by letter, invites the colony to settle upon his estate in the county of Wexford, in the province of Leinster. He offers to give them, by a pure and perpetual donation, a very large tract of ground which he now lets (though much below its value) for 600l. a-year; he engages to procure them places of abode, and particularly offers his own house, Leinster Lodge, a mansion capable of lodging one hundred persons, till they can build houses for themselves. The spot of ground where he proposes that they should build their little city is, he says, in one of the most fertile and temperate parts of Ireland, at the confluence of two rivers, at a convenient vicinity to the sea, and distant about thirty miles from Dublin. All this news you may depend on, for I have seen the order of the Irish Council, and the letters of Lord Temple and the Duke of Leinster. Other noblemen have invited the colony to settle upon their estates, but none offer terms so advantageous and so noble as the Duke of Leinster. You will wonder how I gained all this intelligence, but your astonishment will cease when I inform you that I have had some visits from D'Ivernois. He hinted to me that, besides the watch manufactory, there was some thought of instituting a French college at the New Geneva (for so the city is to be called). It is to resemble the old Geneva in every thing, except in having an upper and a lower town, "et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis Pergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum You were perfectly right in supposing that no such opinion is to be found in Hume, as M*** ascribes to the philosophe Anglais. That writer does say, it is true, that England has not produced any orator who may be compared with those of antiquity; but far from prophesying that it never will, he writes purposely to exhort his countrymen to the imitation of those great models; and instead of imputing the want of success in oratory of the English to their great sense, he entirely refutes that opinion. The Essay of Hume, which I suppose is alluded to, is, in my opinion, a very indifferent performance. In examining all the causes of our inferiority in eloquence, the writer passes over in silence that which seems to me to be the most material I mean the different application which the ancients gave to that science from that which we give it. Our great men are every thing; geometricians, historians, poets, orators, and I know not what. Demosthenes was an orator alone. Till we have seen men of genius shut themselves up for whole months, to study only the force and beauty of their language, transcribing with their own hands eight several times the works of an eloquent writer, and struggling with unremitting efforts to overcome every imperfection in their nature, we cannot * Virgil. Æn. iii. 349. wonder that we have not a modern Demosthenes. Hume is the more surprised that we have had no orators (though he must or might have heard Lord Chatham, Mr. Pulteney, Lord Hardwicke, Lord Mansfield, and Lord Camden), when we have had such a writer as Lord Bolingbroke. You know Lord Bolingbroke's history: during the greater part of his life he was debarred a seat in Parliament, or, in his own words, he was "stripped of the right of a British subject, of all except the meanest of them, that of inheriting;" but, if his delivery was equal to his style (and according to Lord Chesterfield it was so), he was, at least, capable of rivalling Cicero. You are unacquainted, I believe, with his writings; let me, therefore, give you a specimen of some of his figures. I have a multitude of them present to my memory. Speaking of the criminal indifference and gaiety of some of his contemporaries, he says, that "they were men ready to drown the dying groans of their country in peals of unseasonable mirth and laughter;" of Catherine of Medicis, that "she first blew up the flames of religious faction, and then endeavoured in vain to extinguish them in a deluge of blood;" of Philip the IV. of Spain, that "he languished rather than lived from the cradle to the grave." To Sir Robert Walpole he speaks of the many crimes which might now be proved against him, of the many more which were ready to start into light the moment the power by which he concealed them should determine. Pray, thank my dear Kitty for her letter I mean to answer her soon, and am rejoiced to find she continues to draw the beautiful prospects that surround you. To gaze on those sublime views, to be conversing with you and my dear sister, and walking with you and your little boy over your grounds, are the frequent, but, alas! the imaginary occupations of your affectionate brother, SAMUEL ROMILLY. LETTER XXVI. Gray's Inn, Dec. 10. 1782. Before I take any notice, my dear Roget, of the contents of your letters of the 13th and 23d of last month, I must hasten to communicate to you the agreeable news I have to tell you. It is much less agreeable however than we were flattered with hopes of, a fortnight ago. We have had the greatest expectations of peace: the Parliament, which was to have met the 26th of last month, was adjourned to the 5th of the present: a letter was sent from the Secretary of State to the Governor of the Bank, informing him that a negotiation had been begun, and was very far advanced, and that, before the meeting of Parliament, either peace would be concluded, or all negotiations would be at an end. The dealers in stocks were immediately in an uproar and tumult, which has lasted almost ever since. The stocks rose and fell, one, two, and sometimes three per cent. every day; from 57, the price at which they were when this news arrived, they one day rose to 65. The opening of Parliament, however, has disappointed much of our expectations: how much of them has been fulfilled, I cannot state to you more accurately than by transcribing a part of the King's speech. It shall be only a part, for, whatever other merits it may possess, it has so little of that "imperatoria brevitas" which Tacitus commends, that it fills very nearly two columns in the newspapers. "Since the close of the last Session, I have employed my whole time in the care and attention which the important and critical conjuncture of public affairs required of me. I have pointed all my views and measures, as well in Europe as in North America, to an entire and cordial reconciliation with the colonies. Finding it indispensable to the attainment of this object, I did not hesitate to go the full length of the powers vested in me, and offered to declare them free and independent States, by an article to be inserted in the treaty of peace. Provisional articles are agreed upon, to take effect whenever terms of peace shall be finally settled with the court of France. In thus admitting their separation from the crown of these kingdoms, I have sacrified every consideration of my own to the wishes and opinion of my people. I make it my humble and earnest prayer to Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which might result from so great a dismemberment of the empire, and that America may be free from those calamities which have formerly proved, in the mother country, how essential monarchy is to the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Religion, language, interest, affections may, and I hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union between the |