at St. Petersburgh, vainly endeavouring to detach the empress from the coalition which she had determined to form with Austria and France; when his health suddenly failed, the powers of his mind evidently became debilitated; and he resolved to return in the autumn of 1757 without delay to England.

During his journey, these disorders rapidly increased, and at Hamburgh, he was clearly in a state of insanity; was entrapped there by a wretched female, who prevailed on him to give her a security for two thousand pounds, and a promise of marriage, his lady being still living. On his sea voyage, he had a dangerous fall into the hold of the ship, and the copious bleedings which were deemed necessary on that account probably relieved the distraction of his intellect. Soon after his arrival, he seemed to be perfectly recovered: retired to his Monmouthshire mansion, Coldbrook-house; and resumed his former amusements there with pleasure, and even with energy. We have a letter from him to his

riend Mr. Keith, written there during this inerval, in which, while he rescues the character

of an admirable woman from oblivion, he quits those of the wit and the statesman to delight our feelings as the father and the friend.

By a letter," says he, "which I wrote to Baron Wolfe some time ago, and which I don't doubt he showed you, you have been informed already of the wretched state of my health, both at Hamburgh and since my return to England; but I am now as perfectly well as ever I was in my life, and improving this charming place, where I hope to see you one day, to talk over things that nobody but you and I in England understand. My beloved Lady Essex, who, I assure you, has a great friendship for you, and who I believe esteems you as much as any man in the world who is not of her own family, will, I hope, be very soon here, to pass away the best part of the Summer with me. I leave you to imagine my happiness in seeing her to behold what I love much the best in the world endowed with every exterior

charm, and an inside that at least equals her beautiful person. Her knowledge of the court and of the world is prodigious. She has many acquaintances among her own sex, and two of the most exemplary women we have in England for her friends-I mean Lady Caroline Fox, and the Countess of Dalkeith. She is distinguished more than any woman that comes to court by the king, and for good breeding and good sense has hardly her equal in England; but one thing, which perhaps you don't know about her, is that she shines full as much in the character of a good housewife as she does in that of a fine lady; and that all the accounts of my lord's estates, and the expenses of his house, are neatly kept in books by her own hand. In short, she has exceeded all my hopes, and requited my fondest wishes about her; and I will not imagine this description to be tedious to you, because I am sure the friend will feel and read with pleasure what the father feels with transport, and writes with truth.”

This period of a tranquillity which he had never before enjoyed, and of his capacity to

enjoy which, he had perhaps been hitherto unconscious, was very brief indeed. In the Summer of 1759 his reason again forsook him, and he died in that deplorable state, it has been said by his own hand, on the second of November in that year.

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams left two daughters, his co-heirs. Frances, whose character we have just now seen, married to William Anne Holles Capel, fourth Earl of Essex of his family; and Charlotte, wife to the Hon. Robert Boyle Walsingham, a commodore in the navy,* fifth and youngest son of Henry, first Earl of Shannon of the second creation.

It is through the favour of the noble heir of the former of those marriages, the present Earl of Essex, and of the Right Hon. Henry Vassall, Lord Holland, that the Editor is now enabled to lay these sheets before the public. A great mass of the original papers of Sir Charles Han

* Who was unfortunately lost in the West Indies in 1779, on board the Thunderer of 74 guns: the whole of the crew perished.

bury Williams fell, by inheritance, into possession of the noble Earl, who, with that liberality which attends on every act of his life, has permitted the Editor to select from them the poetical pieces which appear in these Volumes. From the numerous literary relics remaining in the hands of Lord Holland, of the entire friendship and confidence which subsisted between Sir Charles and the Right Hon. Henry Fox, his Lordship has been pleased to allow him to enrich his book with the curious historical epistles on the state of Poland, and many other original Letters; and to add also a multiplicity of Notes from the pen of all others the most capable of illustrating the localities of such a writer as Sir Charles Hanbury Williams-the pen of Horace Walpole. To those noble persons the Editor presumes thus to offer his most humble and grateful acknowledgments for this addition to the innumerable favours and benefits with which their Lordships have already been pleased to honour him.