next to being disagreeable, there is nothing so shocking as being too agreeable. However, as I am a true philosopher, and can resist any thing I like better, I declare, that if you don't coin the vast ingot of colours and cloth that I have sent you, I will burn your letters unopened.

Thank you for all your concern about my gout, but I shall not mind you; it shall appear in my stomach before I attempt to keep it out of it by a fortification of wine: I only drank a little two days after being very much fatigued in the House, and the worthy pioneer began to cry swear from my foot the next day. However, though I am determined to feel young still, I grow to take the hints age gives me; I come hither oftener, I leave the town to the young; and though the busy turn that the world has taken draws me back into it, I excuse it to myself, and call it retiring into politics. From hence I must retire, or I shall be drowned; my cellars are four feet under water, the Thames gives itself Rhone airs, and the meadows are more flooded than when you first saw this place and thought it so dreary. We seem to have taken out our earthquake in rain: since the third week in June, there have not been five days together of dry weather. They tell us that at Colnbrook and Stains they are forced to live in the first floor. Mr. Chute is at the Vine, but I don't expect to hear from him: no post but a dove can get from thence. Every post brings new earthquakes; they have felt them in France, Sweden, and Germany: what a convulsion there has been in nature! Sir Isaac Newton, somewhere in his works, has this beautiful expression, "The globe will want manum emendatricem."

I have been here this week with only Mr. Mantz; from whence you may conclude I have been employed-Memoirs thrive apace. He seems to wonder (for he has not a little of your indolence, I am not surprised you took to him) that I am continually occupied every minute of the day, reading, writing, forming plans: in short, you know me. He is an inoffensive, good creature, but had rather ponder over a foreign gazette than a pallet.

I expect to find George Montagu in town to-morrow: his brother has at last got a regiment. Not content with having deserved it, before he got it, by distinguished bravery and indefatigable duty, he persists in meriting it still. He immediately, unasked, gave the chaplainship (which others always sell advantageously) to his brother's parson at Greatworth. I am almost afraid it will make my commendation of this really handsome action look interested, when I add, that he has obliged me in the same way by making Mr. Mann his clothier, before I had time to apply for it. Adieu! I find no news in town.

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.a

Arlington Street, Jan. 22, 1756. As my Lady Ailesbury is so taken up with turnpike-bills, Popish recusants, and Irish politics, and you are the only idle person in the family (for Missy I find is engaged too), I must return to correspond with you. But my letters will not be quite so lively as they have been: the Opposition, like schoolboys, don't know how to settle to their books again after the holidays. We have not had a division: nay, not a debate. Those that like it, are amusing themselves with the Appleby election. Now and then we draggle on a little militia. The recess has not produced even a pamphlet. In short, there are none but great outlines of politics: a memorial in French Billingsgate has been transmitted hither, which has been answered very laconically. More agreeable is the guarantee signed with Prussia: M. Michel is as fashionable as ever General Wall was. The Duke of Cumberland has kept his bed with a sore leg, but is better. Oh! I forgot, Sir Harry Erskine is dismissed from the army, and if you will suffer so low a pun as upon his face, is a rubric martyr for his country: bad as it is, this is the best bon-mot I have to send you: Ireland, which one did not suspect, is become the staple of wit, and, I find, coins bons-mots for our greatest men. I might well not send you Mr. Fox's repartee, for I never heard it, nor has any body here: as you have, pray send it me. Charles Townshend t'other night hearing somebody say, that my Lady Falmouth, who had a great many diamonds on, had a very fine stomach, replied, " By God! my lord has a better." You will be entertained with the riot Charles makes in the sober house of Argyle: t'other night, on the Duchess's bawling to my Lady Suffolk, he in the very same tone cried out, "Large stewing oysters!" When he takes such liberties with his new parent, you may judge how little decency he observes with his wife: last week at dinner at Lord Strafford's, on my Lady Dalkeith's mentioning some dish that she loved, he replied before all the servants, "Yes, my Lady Dalkeith, you love it better than any thing but one!"

We were to have had a masquerade to-night, but the Bishops, who you know have always persisted in God's hating dominos, have made an earthquake point of it, and postponed it till after the fast.

Your brother has got a sixth infanta; at the christening t'other night, Mr. Trail had got through two prayers before any body found out that the child was not brought down stairs. You see by my pauvreté how little I have to say. Do accept the enclosed World" in part of payment for the remainder of a letter. I must conclude this with telling you, that though I know her but little, I admire my Lady Kildare as much as you do. She has writ volumes to Lady Caroline

Now first printed.

b The Prussian chargé d'affaires.

The Countess of Suffolk was very deaf.-E. No. 160. On attacks upon Licentiousness.-Story of Sir Eustace Drawbridge-court; written by Walpole.

Fox in praise of you and your Countess: you are a good soul-I can't say so much for Lady Ailesbury. As to Missy, I am afraid I must resign my claim: I never was very proper to contest with an Hibernian hero; and I don't know how, but I think my merit does not improve, Adieu!

TO THE HON. H. S. CONWAY.

Arlington Street, Jan. 24, 1756.

OH! Sir, I shall take care how I ever ask favours of you again! It was with great reluctance that I brought myself to ask this: you took no notice of my request; and I flattered myself that I was punished for having applied to you so much against my inclination. Just as I grew confirmed in the pride of being mortified, I hear that you have outgone my application, and in the kindest manner in the world have given the young man a pair of colours. It would have been unpleasant enough to be refused; but to obtain more than one asked is the most provoking thing in the world! I was prepared to be very grateful if you had done just what I desired; but I declare I have no thanks ready for a work of supererogation. If there ever was a saint that went to heaven for mere gratitude, which I am persuaded is a much more uncommon qualification than martyrdom, I must draw upon his hoard of merit to acquit myself. You will at least get thus much by this charming manner of obliging me: I look upon myself as double obliged; and when it cost me so much to ask one favour, and I find myself in debt for two, I shall scarce run in tick for a third.

What adds to my vexation is, that I wrote to you but the night before last. Unless I could return your kindness with equal grace, it would be not very decent to imitate you by beginning to take no notice of it; and therefore you must away with this letter upon the back of the former.

We had yesterday some history in the House: Beckford produced an accusation in form against Admiral Knowles on his way to an impeachment. Governor Verres was a puny culprit in comparison! Jamaica indeed has not quite so many costly temples and ivory statues, &c. as Sicily had: but what Knowles could not or had not a propensity to commit in rapine and petty larceny, he has made up in tyranny. The papers are granted, and we are all going to turn jurymen. The rest of the day was spent in a kind of avoirdupois war. Our friend Sir George Lyttelton opened the budget; well enough in general, but was strangely bewildered in the figures: he stumbled over millions, and dwelt pompously upon farthings. Pitt attacked him pretty warmly on mortgaging the sinking fund: Sir George kept up his spirit, and returned the attack on his eloquence. It was entertaining enough, but ended in high compliments; and the division was 231 to 56.

Your friend Lady Petersham, not to let the town quite lapse into politics, has entertained it with a new scene. She was t'other night at the play with her court; viz. Miss Ashe, Lord Barnard, M. St. Simon, and her favourite footman Richard, whom, under pretence of keeping places, she always keeps in her box the whole time to see the play at his ease. Mr. Stanley, Colonel Vernon, and Mr. Vaughan arrived at the very end of the farce, and could find no room, but a row and a half in Lady Caroline's box. Richard denied them entrance very impertinently. Mr. Stanley took him by the hair of his head, dragged him into the passage, and thrashed him. The heroine was outrageous-the heroes not at all so. She sent Richard to Fielding for a warrant. He would not grant it—and so it endedAnd so must I, for here is company. Adieu!

My letter would have been much cleverer, but George Montagu has been chattering by me the whole time, and insists on my making you his compliments.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Arlington Street, Jan. 25, 1756.

I AM troubled to think what anxiety you have undergone! yet your brother Gal. assures me that he has never missed writing one week since he began to be ill. Indeed, had I in the least foreseen that his disorder would have lasted a quarter of the time it has, I should have given you an account of it; but the distance between us is so great, that I could not endure to make you begin to be uneasy, when, in all probability, the cause would be removed before my letter reached you. This tenderness for you has deceived me: your brother, as his complaint is of the asthmatic kind, has continued all the time at Richmond. Our attendance in Parliament has been so unrelaxed, the weather has been so bad, and the roads so impracticable by astonishing and continued deluges of rain, that, as I heard from him constantly three or four times a week, and saw your brother James, who went to him every week, I went to see him but twice; and the last time, about a fortnight ago, I thought him extremely mended: he wrote me two very comfortable notes this week of his mending, and this morning Mr. Chute and I went to see him, and to scold him for not having writ oftener to you, which he protests he has done constantly. cannot flatter you, my dear child, as much as to say I think him mended; his shortness of breath continues to be very uneasy to him, and his long confinement has wasted him a good deal. I fear his case is more consumptive than asthmatic; he begins a course of

a Lady Hervey, in a letter of the 23d of March, thus alludes to this story :-"This is the time of year you used to come to town. Come and hear a little what is going for. ward: you will be alarmed with invasions which are never intended; you will hear of ladies of quality who uphold footmen insulting gentlemen; nay, you will hear of ladies who steal not only hearts, but gold boxes."-E.

quicksilver to-morrow for the obstruction in his breast. I shall go to him again the day after to-morrow, and pray as fervently as you yourself do, my dear Sir, for his recovery. You have not more obligations to him, nor adore him more than I do. As my tenderness and friendship is so strong for you both, you may depend on hearing from me constantly; but a declining constitution, you know, will not admit of a very rapid recovery. Though he is fallen away, he looks well in the face, and his eyes are very lively: the weather is very warm, he wants no advice, and I assure you no solicitude for his health; no man ever was so beloved, and so deservingly! Besides Dr. Baker, the physician of Richmond, who is so much esteemed, he has consulted Dr. Pringle, who is in the first repute, and who is strongly for the quicksilver. I enter into these particulars, because, when one is anxious, one loves to know the most minute. Nothing is capable of making me so happy, as being able soon to send you a better

account.

Our politics wear a serener face than they have done of late: you will have heard that our nephew of Prussia-I was going to say, has asked blessing-begging our dignity's pardon, I fear he has given blessing! In short, he guarantees the empire with us from all foreign troops. It is pleasant to think, that at least we shall be to fight for ourselves. Fight we must, France says: but when she said so last, she knew nothing of our cordiality with the court of Berlin. Monsieur Rouillé very lately wrote to Mr. Fox, by way of Monsieur Bonac in Holland, to say his master ordered the accompanying Mémoire to be transmitted to his Britannic Majesty in person; it is addressed to nobody, but after professing great disposition to peace, and complaining in harsh terms of our brigandages and pirateries, it says, that if we will restore their ships, goods, &c. they shall then be ready to treat. We have returned a squab answer, retorting the infraction of treaties, professing a desire of peace too, but declare we cannot determine upon restitution comme préliminaire. If we do not, the Mémoire says, they shall look upon it comme déclaration de guerre la plus authentique. Yet, in my own opinion, they will not declare it; especially since the King of Prussia has been Russianed out of their alliance. They will probably attempt some stroke; I think not succeed in it, and then lie by for an opportunity when they shall be stronger. They can only go to Holland, attempt these islands, or some great coup in America. Holland they may swallow when they will; yet, why should they, when we don't attempt to hinder them? and it would be madness if we did. For coming hither,

a "A formal declaration of war from France," writes Lord Chesterfield to Mr. Dayrolles on the 23d, "seems to be the natural consequence of M. Rouille's memorial. I am not so fond of war as I find many people are. Mark the end on't. Our treaty lately concluded with Russia is a fortunate event, and secures the peace of the empire; and is it possible that France can invade the Low Countries, which are the dominions of the Empress Queen, only because Admiral Boscawen has taken two of their ships in America? I see but two places where France can annoy us; in America, by slipping over in single ships a considerable number of troops, and next by keeping us in a state of fear and expense at home, with the threats and appearances of an intended invasion."-E.