128 Letter 58 To Sir Horace Mann. Arlington Street, May 13, 1752.
By this time you know my way, how much my letters grow out of season, as it grows summer. I believe it is six weeks since I wrote to you last; but there is not only the usual deadness of summer to account for my silence; England itself is no longer England. News, madness, parties, whims, and twenty other causes, that used to produce perpetual events are at an end; Florence itself is not more inactive. Politics,
"Like arts and sciences are travelled west."
They are cot into Ireland, where there is as much bustle to carry a question in the House of Commons, as ever it was here in any year forty-one. Not that there is any opposition to the King's measures; out of three hundred members, there has never yet been a division of above twenty-eight against the government: they are much the most zealous subjects the king has. The Duke of Dorset has had the art to make them distinguish between loyalty and aversion to the Lord Lieutenant.
I last night received yours of May 5th; but I cannot deliver your expressions to Mr. Conway, for he and Lady Ailesbury are gone to his regiment in Ireland for four months, which is a little rigorous, not only after an exile in Minorca, but more especially unpleasant now as they have just bought one of the most charming 'places in England, Park-place, which belonged to Lady Archibald Hamilton, and then to the Prince. You have seen enough of Mr. Conway to judge how patiently he submits to his duty. Their little girl is left with me.
The Gunnings are gone to their several castles, and one hears no more of them, except that such crowds flock to see the Duchess Hamilton pass, that seven hundred people sat up all night in and about an inn in Yorkshire to see her get into her postchaise next morning.
I saw lately at Mr. Barret's a print of Valombrosa, which I should be glad to have, if you please; though I don't think it gives much idea of the beauty of the place: but you know what a passion there is for it in England, as Milton has mentioned it.
Miss Blandy died with a coolness of courage that is astonishing, and denying the fact,(310) which has made a kind of party in her favour as if a woman who would not stick at parricide, would scruple a lie!
We have made a law for immediate execution on conviction of murder: it will appear extraordinary to me if it has any effect;(311) for I can't help believing that the terrible part of death must be the preparation for it.
(310) Miss Blandy was executed at Oxford, on the 6th of April, "I am perfectly innocent," she exclaimed, "of any intention to destroy or even hurt my dear father; so help me God in these my last moments!"-E.