MR. PITT TO LADY HESTER PITT. St. James's Square, Tuesday night. July 17, 1759. I TRUST this will find you arrived safe and well at Wotton (1); and may you have found the dear brother and sister with health unshaken under their heavy load of grief! (2) How will your own spirits and scarce-restored strength have borne the sad meeting? My whole heart follows you, my dearest love, and shares your feelings, in a scene so many ways interesting to me, that I must pass from the subject or put an end to writing. Our meeting last night, long and fatiguing as it was, made not the least impression on my ailments; nor has the business of this day, together with a review, of no short duration, brought back any disagreeable symptom. Nothing could make a better appearance than the two Norfolk battalions. (1) Wotton became the property of Richard de Grenvylle, about the year 1097, and from him it has descended, through twenty generations, to the present Duke of Buckingham. The mansion in which Mr. George Grenville resided was built in 1705, after the model of Buckingham House. The staircase and saloon were painted by Sir James Thornhill; for which he received a thousand pounds annually, for three years. In October, 1820, the whole of the interior of the house, including the library and pictures, was destroyed by fire. It has since been rebuilt and refitted by the Marquis of Chandos, who now resides there. (2) On the morning of the date of this letter, Lady Hester had hastened to Mr. and Mrs. George Grenville at Wotton, on receiving intelligence of the death of their eldest son, Richard Percy Grenville, in his eighth year. Lord Orford (1), with the port of Mars himself, and really the genteelest figure under arms I ever saw, was the theme of every tongue. The King was extremely pleased, and the public so much so, that the Park, through which the militia passed to Kensington, was hardly pervious to my coach at half-past twelve, and the multitude retarded the march of the battalions above half an hour, the King waiting under the portico of the palace. This warlike spectacle-pleasing, and particularly interesting as it is to me (2)-could engage but in part the attention of such of the spectators as expect, on pretty certain grounds, the accounts of two decisive battles; Prince Ferdinand having moved so (1) George, third earl of Orford, grandson of Sir Robert Walpole, at this time lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of the county of Norfolk. He died in 1791, and was succeeded by his uncle Horace Walpole; who, on the 19th of July, thus writes to Mr. Montagu: — "The militia passed just by us yesterday; the crowds in Hyde Park, when the King reviewed them, was inimaginable. My lord Orford, their colonel, I hear looked gloriously martial and genteel; and I believe it: his person and air have a noble wildness in them; the regiments, too, are very becoming-scarlet faced with black, buff waistcoats, and gold buttons. How knights of shires, who have never shot any thing but woodcocks, like this warfare I don't know; but the towns through which they pass adore them; every where they are treated and regaled." (2) On the 30th of May, three days previous to the close of the session, Mr. Pitt had brought down a message from the King to the House of Commons, desiring to be enabled to march the militia out of their several counties, on the apprehension of an invasion from France. 66 Though it ended in smoke," says Walpole, "it was seriously projected, and hung over us for great part of the summer; nor was it radically baffled till the winter following." as to bring on an action, and Dohna having been almost up with the Russians some days since. Your loving husband, W. PITT. LADY HESTER PITT TO MR. PITT. Wotton, July 19, 1759. WHAT a charming account of our militia! By your description of Lord Orford, I think it cannot fail of growing into fashion; for the ladies must certainly grow partial to it, and then who will venture to slight it? But, to be serious; I do really rejoice that he was the military figure you describe, since it shows that that is to be acquired out of the army, and without long practice ;-the true British soul will give the rest.(') The approbation it received from the King and from the public are happy circumstances, and such as, I trust, will spread the ardour which prevails already so nobly in some. 66 What (1) "My principal obligation to the militia," says Gibbon -at this time a captain in the Hampshire regiment was the making me an Englishman, and a soldier. In this peaceful service, I imbibed the rudiments of the language, and science of tactics, which opened a new field of study and observation. The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire." - Misc. Works, vol. i. p. 136. ed. 1814. you tell me of Prince Ferdinand and Count Dohna makes me all impatience. I trust, with a happy dependence upon Him in whom alone is victory, that he will mercifully grant we may be blessed with happy news from both. Health and success attend my beloved life! His loving wife, HESTER PITT. MR. PITT TO LADY HESTER PITT. Monday night, August 6, 1759. I CANNOT let the groom go without a line to my sweetest life, especially as I have the joy to tell her that our happy victory (') ne fait que croitre et embellir. By letters come to-day, the hereditary Prince(2), with his corps, had passed the Weser, and (1) The celebrated battle of Minden, won from the French by the allied armies under Prince Ferdinand, on the 1st of August. (2) Charles William Ferdinand, hereditary Prince of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle. He was born in 1735; entered the military profession, under the auspices of his renowned uncle Prince Ferdinand, in 1758; married the Princess Augusta, eldest sister of George the Third, in 1764; and succeeded to the dukedom, upon the demise of his father, in 1780. In 1806, he took the command of the Prussian army; and, being mortally wounded at the battle of Jena, he was removed to the neutral town of Altona, where he expired on the 10th of November. An application from his son, for permission to lay his father's body in attacked, with part of it, a body of six thousand French, defeated it, took many prisoners, some trophies and cannon. M.de Contades's baggage, coaches, mules, letters, and correspondencies (') have fallen the tomb of his ancestors, being rejected with the same sternness which had characterised Buonaparte's conduct to him when living, the successor thenceforward clothed his little army in black, vowing that they should wear no other colour, until he had avenged the insults offered to his parent and fell, fighting at their head, in the field of Waterloo. In Lord Byron's beautiful description of the evening which preceded that memorable battle, the fate of sire and of son is thus immortalised: 66 But, hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! arm! it is it is the cannon's opening roar! (1) These "correspondencies" were afterwards made public. "They included," says Walpole, "his correspondence with Marshal Belleisle, who directed the operations of the war, and gave orders for the conduct of it, with a barbarity that spoke very plainly how little France was influenced by sentiments of humanity or good faith in pursuit of her views. The Germans were treated in those despatches with the most marked contempt; the princes suspected by them, despotically; and even their friends, the electors of Cologne and Palatine, were to be made to feel the misery of being connected with a too powerful and arrogant ally. They were to be plundered, under the observance of the most insulting ceremonial; but what shocked Europe most, were repeated commands to reduce the most |