e secret articles now brought to light, and
into which the court of Vienna hoped to draw us. I told Wassenaer so, and
after that I heard no more of his invitation.

I am still bewildered in the changes at Court, of which I find that all
the particulars are not yet fixed. Who would have thought, a year ago,
that Mr. Fox, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Newcastle, should all three
have quitted together? Nor can I yet account for it; explain it to me if
you can. I cannot see, neither, what the Duke of Devonshire and Fox, whom
I looked upon as intimately united, can have quarreled about, with
relation to the Treasury; inform me, if you know. I never doubted of the
prudent versatility of your Vicar of Bray: But I am surprised at O'Brien
Windham's going out of the Treasury, where I should have thought that the
interest of his brother-in-law, George Grenville, would have kept him.

Having found myself rather worse, these two or three last days, I was
obliged to take some ipecacuanha last night; and, what you will think
odd, for a vomit, I brought it all up again in about an hour, to my great
satisfaction and emolument, which is seldom the case in restitutions.

You did well to go to the Duke of Newcastle, who, I suppose, will have no
more levees; however, go from time to time, and leave your name at his
door, for you have obligations to him. Adieu.

LETTER CCIV

BATH, December 14, 1756.

MY DEAR FRIEND: What can I say to you from this place, where EVERY DAY IS
STILL BUT AS THE FIRST, though by no means so agreeably passed, as
Anthony describes his to have been? The same nothings succeed one another
every day with me, as, regularly and uniformly as the hours of the day.
You will think this tiresome, and so it is; but how can I help it? Cut
off from society by my deafness, and dispirited by my ill health, where
could I be better? You will say, perhaps, where could you be worse? Only
in prison, or the galleys, I confess. However, I see a period to my stay
here; and I have fixed, in my own mind, a time for my return to London;
not invited there by either politics or pleasures, to both which I am
equally a stranger, but merely to be at home; which, after all, according
to the vulgar saying, is home, be it ever so homely.

The political settlement, as it is called, is, I find, by no means
settled; Mr. Fox, who took this place in his way to his brother's, where
he intended to pass a month, was stopped short by an express,