On my coming to the town I did myself the honour of waiting on you and lady Hesther Pitt, and though I think myself extremely distinguished by your obliging note, I should be sorry for having given you the trouble of writing it, if it did not lend me a very pardonable opportunity of saying what I much wished to express, but thought myself too private a person, and of too little consequence to take the liberty to say. In short, sir, I was eager to congratulate you on the lustre you have thrown on this country; I wished to thank you for the security you have fixed to me of enjoying the happiness I do enjoy. You have placed England in a situation in which it never saw itself--a task the more difficult, as you had not to improve, but recover. In a trifling book written two or three years ago, I said (speaking of the name in the world the most venerable to me), "Sixteen unfortunate and inglorious years since his removal have already written his eulogium" [in the account of Sir Robert Walpole in the _Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors_]. It is but justice to you, sir, to add that that period ended when your administration began. II. CHARACTER OF WILLIAM PITT, DESCRIBED BY WALPOLE IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. +Source.+--_Memoirs of the Reign of George II._, 1847. Vol. iii., pp. 84, 85, 86, 176. Pitt was now arrived at undisturbed possession of that influence in affairs at which his ambition had aimed, and which his presumption had made him flatter himself he could exert like those men of superior genius, whose talents have been called forth by some crisis to retrieve a sinking nation. He had said the last year to the Duke of Devonshire. "My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can." It were ingratitude to him to say that he did not give such a reverberation to our stagnating Councils, as exceedingly altered the appearance of our fortune. He warded off the evil hour that seemed approaching; he infused vigour into our arms; he taught the nation to speak again as England used to speak to Foreign Powers; and so far from dreading invasions from France, he affected to turn us into invaders. Indeed, these efforts were so puny, so ill-concerted, so ineffectual to any essential purpose, that France looked down with scorn on such boyish flippancies, which Pitt deemed heroic, which Europe thought ridiculous, and which humanity saw were only wasteful of lives, and precedents of a more barbarous warfare than France had hitherto been authorized to carry on. In fact, Pitt had neither all the talents he supposed in himself, nor which he seemed to possess from the vacancy of great men around him....