natives of that country. Lady Chesterfield writes to a lady at Paris on the 30th of December, 1751;"We look upon Lady Hervey as having forsaken her own country, and being naturalized a Frenchwoman. I regret, but do not blame her, for I know others that would do the same if they could." Again, she writes to the same correspondent on the 3rd of May, 1753,-" You will soon see Lady Hervey again; she is heartily sick of London, and longs to be at Paris. I shall lament her absence, but cannot blame her taste; it comes into my system of philosophy." Lady Hervey, in her letters, alludes to her foreign partialities as if they were notorious among her friends; and Horace Walpole, in his correspondence, speaks incidentally of her as "doting" on everything French. We have now brought our notices of Lady Hervey very nearly to a close. After the death of her husband, she resided principally with his father, the Earl of Bristol, dedicating herself to the performance of her social duties, and more especially to the education of her children. By Lord Hervey she was the mother of four sons and four daughters :-of the former, George,* Augustus, and Frederick, were successively Earls * George, second Earl of Bristol, inherited the effeminate appearance, and, it was thought, the effeminate character of his father: like his father, however, he knew how to resent an insult when thoroughly provoked. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann, 25th of February, 1750,—“ About ten days of Bristol, and William, the youngest, was a member of Parliament, and a general in the army. Of the daughters,-Lepel married Constantine, Lord Mulgrave; Lady Mary married George Fitzgerald, Esq.; and Lady Emily and Lady Caroline died unmarried. Horace Walpole says of the elder daughter, in one of his letters,"she is a fine, black girl, as masculine as her father should be." But it seems to have been the youngest, Lady Caroline, who inherited, in the ago, at the new Lady Cobham's assembly, Lord Hervey was leaning over a chair, talking to some women, and holding his hat in his hand. Lord Cobham came up and spit in it !—and then, with a loud laugh, turned to Nugent, and said,-' Pay me my wager!' In short, he had laid a guinea that he committed this absurd brutality, and that it was not resented. Lord Hervey, with great temper and sensibility, asked if he had any farther occasion for his hat?-Oh! I see you are angry I'— 'Not very well pleased.' Lord Cobham took the fatal hat, and wiped it, made a thousand foolish apologies, and wanted to pass it off as a joke. Next morning he rose with the sun, and went to visit Lord Hervey; so did Nugent: he would not see them, but wrote to the Spitter, (or, as he is now called, Lord Gob'em,) to say, that he had affronted him very grossly before company; but having involved Nugent in it, he desired to know to which he was to address himself for satisfaction. Lord Cobham wrote to him a most submissive answer, and begged pardon both in his own and Nugent's name. Here it rested for a few days; till getting wind, Lord Hervey wrote again to insist on an explicit apology under Lord Cobham's own hand, with a rehearsal of the excuses that had been made to him. This, too, was complied with, and the fair conqueror shows all the letters."— Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 319. For a further account of this disreputable frolic, see Wraxall's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 128, et seq. most eminent degree, the attractions of her mother. Churchill celebrates, "That face, that form, that dignity, that ease, Those powers of pleasing, with that will to please, Lady Hervey expired on the 2nd of September, 1768, having nearly completed the sixtyeighth year of her age. For many years she had suffered severely from the gout, the frequent attacks of which she endured with extraordinary resignation and unrepining gentleness. * Horace Walpole writes to the Earl of Hertford on the 16th of December, 1763, "Poor Lady Hervey desires you will tell Mr. Hume how incapable she is of answering his letter. She has been terribly afflicted for these six weeks with a complication of gout, rheumatism, and a nervous complaint. She cannot lie down in her bed, nor rest two minutes in her chair: I never saw such continued suffering." Two days before * This disease, which was hereditary in Lady Hervey's family, she entailed on her daughter, Mrs. Phipps, afterwards Lady Mulgrave, and probably on others of her children. Lady Hervey writes to the Rev. E. Morris, 24th of October, 1747:"Poor Mrs. Phipps, that young, abstemious, careful woman, has had a tedious rheumatism, which at last terminated in a severe fit of the gout. She is now well of both; but what must that poor dear creature expect, who at four-and-twenty is wrapped up in flannel with the gout!"-Lady Hervey's Letters, p. 107. she expired, she wrote to her son, the Earl of Bristol,-"I feel my dissolution coming on; but I have no pain: what can an old woman desire more?" Walpole, in recording this anecdote, observes," This was consonant to her usual propriety :—yes, propriety is grace, and thus everybody may be graceful, when other graces are fled."* It is to be feared, however, that the exemplary patience which Lady Hervey displayed during her repeated illnesses, originated in no degree from any consolation which she derived from her religious faith. The example of infidelity set her by her husband, and apparently the pernicious sophistry of their mutual friend, Dr. Middleton,† produced an unfortunate effect on her otherwise strong mind; and though she refrained from obtruding her peculiar tenets on others, her own confidence in the truth of revealed religion was unquestionably weakened, if not entirely destroyed. Posterity, of late years, has acquired an interesting memento of Lady Hervey, in the form * Walpole's Letters, vol. iv. p. 335, vol. v. p. 226. + Dr. Conyers Middleton,-a sceptical divine, and the wellknown author of the Life of Cicero,-was the son of a clergyman, and was born at York in 1683. His "Discourse on the Miraculous Powers" supposed to have been vested in the early Christian Church, led the world to believe that he was a freethinker; and his letters to Lord Hervey have since substantiated the fact. As a divine, a moralist, and a philosopher, he should have taken especial care to maintain his private character in good repute and yet the same man,—who pro VOL. II. 2 D of a volume of her epistolary correspondence. To the general reader, indeed, the letters in question will convey a feeling of disappointment, for we search in vain for that playful wit and fascinating vivacity for which her contemporaries have so universally given her credit. The whole of these letters, however, were written after she had completed her forty-second year; at a period when the hey-day of life had passed away; and, moreover, when misfortune had quenched the buoyancy of her spirits, and thrown its shadows over her brow. But, on the other hand, they portray the character of Lady Hervey in its best light; they afford valuable evidence of her strong sense, her refined taste, and real goodness of heart; and are equally interesting as a memorial of a courtly beauty of the last age, and as affording a faithful and pleasing picture of an amiable and highly-cultivated mind. fessed that "Providence had placed him beyond the temptation of sacrificing philosophic freedom to the servilities of dependence,”—is known, in the most shameless manner, to have subscribed the thirty-nine articles for the mere purpose of enjoying the living of Hascombe. "Though there are many things in the Church," he says, "which I wholly dislike, yet, while I am content to acquiesce in the ill, I should be glad to taste a little of the good." The apology was worthy of his principles. Dr. Middleton died on the 28th of July, 1750, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. |