s to contract friendships with them, or desires it, or
thinks one can become the same follies, or expects that they should do
more than bear one for one's good-humour. In short, they are a pleasant
medicine, that one should take care not to grow fond of. Medicines hurt
when habit has annihilated their force; but you see I am in no danger. I
intend by degrees to decrease my opium, instead of augmenting the dose.
Good night! You see I never let our long-lived friendship drop, though
you give it so few opportunities of breathing.

_THE PRINCESS OF WALES IS GONE TO GERMANY--TERRIBLE ACCIDENT IN PARIS._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, _June_ 15, 1770.

I have no public event to tell you, though I write again sooner than I
purposed. The journey of the Princess Dowager to Germany is indeed an
extraordinary circumstance, but besides its being a week old, as I do
not know the motives, I have nothing to say upon it. It is much
canvassed and sifted, and yet perhaps she was only in search of a little
repose from the torrents of abuse that have been poured upon her for
some years. Yesterday they publicly sung about the streets a ballad, the
burthen of which was, _the cow has left her calf_. With all this we are
grown very quiet, and Lord North's behaviour is so sensible and moderate
that he offends nobody.

Our family has lost a branch, but I cannot call it a misfortune. Lord
Cholmondeley died last Saturday. He was seventy, and had a constitution
to have carried him to a hundred, if he had not destroyed it by an
intemperance, especially in drinking, that would have killed anybody
else in half the time. As it was, he had outlived by fifteen years all
his set, who have reeled into the ferry-boat so long before him. His
grandson seems good and amiable, and though he comes into but a small
fortune for an earl, five-and-twenty hundred a-year, his uncle the
general may re-establish him upon a great footing--but it will not be in
his life, and the general does not sail after his brother on a sea of
claret.

You have heard details, to be sure, of the horrible catastrophe at the
fireworks at Paris.[1] Francees, the French minister, told me the other
night that the number of the killed is so great that they now try to
stifle it; my letters say between five and six hundred! I think there
were not fewer than ten coach-horses trodden to death. The mob had
poured down from the _Etoile_ by thousands and ten thousands to see the
il