I am obliged to you about the gladiator, etc.: the temptation of having them at all is great, but too enormous. If I could have the gladiator for about an hundred pounds, I would give it.
I enclose one of the bills of lading of the things that I sent you by your secretary: he sets out tomorrow. By Oswald's (433) folly, to whom I entrusted the putting them on board, they are consigned to Goldsworthy, (434) but pray take care that he does not open them. The captain mortifies me by proposing to stay three weeks at Genoa. I have sent away to-night a small additional box of steel wares, which I received but to-day from Woodstock. As they are better than the first, you will choose out some of them for Prince Craon, and give away the rest as you please.
We have a new opera by Pescetti, but a very bad one; however, all the town runs after it, for it ends with a charming dance.(435) They have flung open the stage to a great length, and made a perfect view of Venice, with the Rialto, and numbers of gondolas that row about full of masks, who land and dance. You would like it.
Well, I have done. Excuse me if I don't take the trouble to read it all over again, for it is immense, as you will find. Good night!
(414) Sir Robert Wilmot also, in a letter to the Duke of Devonshire, written on the 12th, Sir Robert was today observed to be more naturally gay and full of spirits than he has been for some time past."-E.
(415) HUme Campbell was twin brother of Hugh, third Earl of Marchmont. They were sons of Alexander, the second earl, who had quarrelled with Sir Robert Walpole at the time of the excise scheme in 1733. Sir Robert, in consequence, prevented him from being reelected one of the sixteen representative Scotch peers in 1734; in requital for which, the old earl's two sons became the bitterest opponents of the Minister. They were both men of considerable talents; extremely similar in their characters and dispositions, and so much so in their outward appearance that it was very difficult to know them apart.-D. The estimation in which Lord Marchmont was held by his contemporaries, maybe judged of by the fact, that Lord Cobham gave his bust a place in the Temple of Worthies, at Stowe, and the mention of him in Pope's inscription in his grotto at Twickenham;-
"Where British siglis from dying Wyndham stole,
And the bright flame was shot through Marchmont's soul."
We are told by Coxe, that Sir Robert Walpole "used frequently to rally his sons, who were praising the speeches of Pultney, Pitt, Lyttelton, and others, by saying, "You may cry up their speeches if you please, but when I have answered Sir John Barnard and Lord Polwarth, I think I have concluded the debate.">[
(416) Glover, a merchant, author of "Leonidas," a poem, "Boadicea," a tragedy, etc. [Glover's talent for public speaking, and information concerning trade and Commerce, naturally pointed him out to the merchants of London to conduct their application to parliament on the neglect of their trade.]
(417) Lord Vere, Lord Henry, and Lord Sidney Beauclerc, sons of the Duchess Dowager of St. Albans, who is painted among the beauties at Hampton Court.