perienced, my Lord, that one does more for friends than one would do for oneself; and, in fact, it is doing a prodigious deal, when one asks a favour without the least right or pretension to expect one. However your Lordship determines, you may be assured that I shall equally remain your Lordship's very humble servant, E. MOIRA.

"Your Lordship I know will have pleasure to learn that our dear friend (for such she is throughout this house) Mrs. Stewart is perfectly recovered. I intended to have sent the Northumberland Household Book with this, had not Lord Moira taken the keys of the case it is in."

Earl of MOIRA to Bishop PERCY.

"MY LORD, Dublin, April 2, 1785. "There has been for some time an idea of instituting a society in this kingdom similar to the Royal Society in London, also intending to include the Antiquarians. They are to be elected by ballot, and to have a President and Council, &c. and to subscribe two guineas a year, or to fine it down by paying twenty guineas. The President and Council are to be elected the 1st of May. I am desired to write to your Lordship, to know whether you would do them the honour to become one of the original members and patrons of this institution. I hear Lord Charlemont is to be proposed as President.

"Sheridan has published a 'Life of Swift;' I think a poor performance. He has treated the Duchess of Somerset, I presume, impertinently. Of this you will be a better judge when you see it. It is printed here.

"I hear from London that the Propositions will come back here, but exceedingly altered; if so, the Duke of Rutland will leave us; he is now extremely popular and much beloved.

"I beg leave to present my respects to Mrs. and Miss Percy, and remain, with great regard, your Lordship's most obedient humble servant, MOIRA."

Countess of MOIRA to Bishop PERCY.

"Montalto, Monday evening. "Lady Moira feels ashamed that she has not before this returned Lord Moira's thanks and her own to the Bishop of Dromore, for his book of Royal Cookery. *The Royal Irish Academy.

Lord Moira indeed has not studied that work as much as his Lordship's other friend has done, who is one of those infected with the strange curiosity of feeling interested about every trifle in a stronger degree for every century removed in which they were transacted. She has found out a most incomparable bread sauce in a list of curry, to be eaten either hot or cold. It is to be adopted into the Moira cookery, and styled sauce royal. There also seems a method of dressing roast pork, which is to be tried.

"Lady Moira would have returned the set of the Byzantine Historians before this, but gave them a second reading, esteeming them excessively curious in themselves, both as historical relations, and giving an insight into the manners and opinions of the times they were written in, and also as a proper preparation for the latter part of Gibbon's History, which she supposes is to follow what he has already bestowed upon the public. One point likewise interested Lady Moira to carefully peruse them, which was to endeavour to find out who was the first possessor of Clarence,' a part of the ancient territories of the Lacedemonians, and which is the spot that gave the title of Duke to three Plantagenet princes, falsely supposed to have taken their title from Clare, which never was erected into a duchy.* It was by Philippa of Hainault that the English made a claim to that territory. But Lady Moira cannot find how Ville-Hardouin, styled Prince of Achaia, became possessed of it. She has met with but one paragraph in the Byzantine Historians relative to Clarence, and that noways informing concerning its possessors. Lady Moira will take care to bring up the books she has of the Bishop's to Dublin (unless he wishes to have them before), because she will then be able to have the pleasure of conversing them over with the Bishop. Lady Moira is more grieved than surprised at the effects of the damp of this northern climate on his family; those who have been long accustomed to it, as her family have been, have found it very trying, and all were indisposed at different times. Lady Moira does not doubt but that the Bishop laments the appearances of dissension which

*This hypothesis, it is believed, is without foundation. Lionel of Antwerp, younger son of King Edward the Third, had given him in marriage the heiress of the Clares, Earls of Hertford and Gloucester, and thus the title of Clarence came to the royal family. See Nicolas's Synopsis of the Peerage, tit. Clare and Clarence.

now revel in England; many were persuaded that, when that abated, Lord Percy would come over Viceroy to this kingdom; his Lordship's military knowledge, as well as political abilities, causing him to be esteemed as the most probable person to fill that dignity.

"Lord Moira, Lady Anne, and Lady Charlotte Rawdon request that their best compliments may be made acceptable to the Bishop of Dromore and Mrs. and Miss Percys, and Lady Moira intreats the ladies to accept of hers.

"MY LORD,

Montalto, March 31, 1786.

His

"I take the liberty of making you a request, in consequence of your Lordship's sway over the territory of Dromore. Mr. Claggett (though I allow him a salary for accompanying Lady Charlotte with the violin sufficient to have supported him genteelly) has had the misfortune, like many other worthy personages, not to have practised strict economy, and came to me much in debt. creditors applying to me, I, at his desire, agreed to the two-thirds of what I paid monthly to him going towards the discharge of what he owed. This diminution of his income obliges him to an exertion of some further industry to maintain his wife and child; and, though he teaches the harpsichord, violin, guitar, and flute, he meets with no musical souls in his present circle who wish for such instruction. He therefore intends to re-assume the profession he was bred to, and which has proved at other times of like distress a lucrative source. In short, he wishes to attend at Dromore to teach dancing, if your Lordship has no objection to his exercising his talents in that way in your Lordship's town, and that your Lordship will permit him to hold his school in the Markethouse of the said city. Whether he can lead the inhabitants thereof to sacrifice to the Graces I shall not pretend to determine, as it depends on the consent of mutual abilities. If excellence in the performance of a hornpipe is an offering to be placed on their altar, Mr. Claggett may introduce some personages to the shrine of these deities. This I assert merely from report, for I own myself ignorant as to the merits of his feet, he only having been employed beneath my roof to teach the guitar and accompany on the violin. His prices for dancing are better calculated to gain emolument than fame, from their mode

ration; but his skill in instruction being offered at so cheap a rate he has found encouragement, if your Lordship gives permission. His great-uncle was a Bishop of Exeter (I think, at least, an English Bishop), and his father a clergyman, who was ruined by his passion for music, and left nothing to his children except that science to gain their bread by. Mr. Claggett is the bearer of this letter to your Lordship, and will, with some degree of tremour, await, my Lord, your decision. He had got about fourteen scholars at Saintfield, which had placed him at the pinnacle of felicity; but Mr. Price would not allow his teaching in that town.

"We have been all in this house enraged, though not surprised, at Fitz-Gibbon's † treatment of Bishop Law.‡ I wish I had been a Member of the House on that occasion, how aptly could I have introduced the Persian story of Well! everything partakes of its origin.' Such abuse and scurrility against a person who, from profession and station, could not duly resent it, is so flagrant a proof of a mean, base heart and soul, that it must produce ideas in every individual's mind that will not fail to amply gratify the insulted prelate.

"We have expected Mrs. Stewart with us all this week, but flatter ourselves, though she has been prevented by indisposition, that we shall see her this day. Lady Charlotte and my cousins intend themselves the pleasure of waiting on the Misses Percy after our amiable guest shall have left us, for we now reckon on fine weather. A good deal of summer sun must have shone before I venture into the open air, and hope, therefore, Mrs. Percy will, for some time, excuse me.

"I shall return your Lordship's books by Lady Charlotte. Folios, from the complaint in my eyes, are tedious reading to me; and I also have made some memorandums from them. I find that the Hastings of Worcestershire appears to be of the line of the whole blood of my brother's family; and consequently, that Governor Hastings, whose family is of Worcestershire, is related to us. Lord Moira has not been well, having had a bad cold for some time

* Nicholas Clagett, Dean of Rochester, elected Bishop of St. David's 1731, translated to Exeter 1743, died 1746. See Literary Anecdotes, vol. I. p. 338; vol. VII. pp. 79, 536.

+ John Fitzgibbon, Esq. M.P. for the University of Dublin, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and created Earl of Clare in 1795.

Dr. John Law. See vol. VII. p. 703.

past. He is gone out an airing, and Charlotte with him, and her cousins also, which only permits my presenting my best compliments to Mrs. Percy and the Misses Percy, and entreat your Lordship to believe me, your very faithful and obedient humble servant, E. MOIRA."

"Moira House, Sunday evening. "Lord and Lady Moira's compliments to the Bishop of Dromore, and learn with much concern by his Lordship's note that his Lordship has been ill; as also that he so immediately sets out for their part of Ireland which sounds better than the mountains they inhabit in their country residence. They both have been very ill with the influenza, and are prisoners with it still. Lord Moira ventured out to take the air to-day, but Lady Moira is totally confined, and is far from being sensible that the complaint abates. They are apprehensive that his Lordship's stay will be short in the North, and that it is the road he intends taking to England; and they are such invalids that they are quite uncertain when their health will permit them to leave town. An unaired house, with scarcely any servants, is an offer that could not promise acceptance; and therefore Lord Moira must confine his request, that his Lordship will remember his agreement of spending his leisure time with them at Montalto, if Lord Moira can get down before the Bishop leaves Ireland."

"Moira House, July 12, 1788. "From that honour to which your Lordship makes appeal, I certainly feel myself engaged to answer your letter, my Lord, in the most explicit manner I am able. But that must lead me to desire your Lordship to recollect, that your Lordship never having favoured me with the slightest discourse upon the point in question, all that I can assert respecting what passed in Ireland I learnt from incidental hearsay; from which I understand that upon your Lordship's being applied to for Tullylish for Lord Moira's chaplain, the answer was that you were engaged for the first vacancy to Mr. Williams; but that if an exchange of ecclesiastical preferment could be obtained for that gentleman in England, you could, by his relinquishing the promise, become at liberty to indulge Lord Moira's wishes. I also understood, that, to effect