ted in four or five days. If one may believe the papers, which one
should not believe, the other side of the waterists are not _doux comme
des moutons_, and yet we do intend to eat them. I was in town on Monday;
the Duchess of Beaufort graced our loo, and made it as rantipole as a
Quaker's meeting. _Loois Quinze_,[1] I believe, is arrived by this time,
but I fear without _quinze louis_.

[Footnote 1: This was a cant name given to a lady [Lady Powis], who was
very fond of loo, and who had lost much money at that game.]

Your herb-snuff and the four glasses are lying in my warehouse, but I
can hear of no ship going to Paris. You are now at Fontainbleau, but not
thinking of Francis I., the Queen of Sweden, and Monaldelschi. It is
terrible that one cannot go to Courts that are gone! You have supped
with the Chevalier de Boufflers: did he act everything in the world and
sing everything in the world? Has Madame de Cambis sung to you "_Sans
depit, sans legerete_?"[1] Has Lord Cholmondeley delivered my pacquet? I
hear I have hopes of Madame d'Olonne. Gout or no gout, I shall be little
in town till after Christmas. My elbow makes me bless myself that I am
not in Paris. Old age is no such uncomfortable thing, if one gives
oneself up to it with a good grace, and don't drag it about

To midnight dances and the public show.

[Footnote 1: The first words of a favourite French air.--WALPOLE.]

If one stays quietly in one's own house in the country, and cares for
nothing but oneself, scolds one's servants, condemns everything that is
new, and recollects how charming a thousand things were formerly that
were very disagreeable, one gets over the winters very well, and the
summers get over themselves.

_DEATH OF LORD CLIVE--RESTORATION OF THE FRENCH PARLIAMENT--PREDICTION
OF GREAT MEN TO ARISE IN AMERICA--THE KING'S SPEECH._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _Nov._ 24, 1774.

... A great event happened two days ago--a political and moral event;
the sudden death of that second Kouli Khan, Lord Clive.[1] There was
certainly illness in the case; the world thinks more than illness. His
constitution was exceedingly broken and disordered, and grown subject to
violent pains and convulsions. He came unexpectedly to town last Monday,
and they say, ill. On Tuesday his physician gave him a dose of laudanum,
which had not the desired effect. On the rest, there are two stories;
one, that the physician repeated the dose; the other,