can it be conceived by those not conversant in one. I remember hearing
what diverted me then; a young gentlewoman, a native of our rock, St.
Helena, and who had never stirred beyond it, being struck with the
emotion occasioned there by the arrival of one or two of our China
ships, said to the captain, "There must be a great solitude in London as
often as the China ships come away!" Her imagination could not have
compassed the idea, if she had been told that six years of war, the
absence of an army of fifty or sixty thousand men of all our squadrons,
and a new debt of many, many millions, would not make an alteration in
the receipts at the door of a single theatre in London. I do not boast
of, or applaud, this profligate apathy. When pleasure is our business,
our business is never pleasure; and, if four wars cannot awaken us, we
shall die in a dream!

_NAVAL MOVEMENTS--SIEGE OF GIBRALTAR--FEMALE FASHIONS._

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

BERKELEY SQUARE, _Sept._ 7, 1781.

The combined fleets, to the amount of forty-seven or forty-nine sail,
brought news of their own arrival at the mouth of the Channel a day or
two before your letter, of August the 18th, brought an account of that
probability, and of the detachment for Minorca. Admiral Darby, on a
false alarm, or perhaps, a true one, had returned to Torbay a week ago,
where he is waiting for reinforcements. This is the fourth or fifth day
since the appearance of the enemy off Scilly. It is thought, I find here
(whither I came to-day), that the great object is our Jamaica fleet; but
that a detachment is gone to Ireland to do what mischief they can on the
coast before our ally, the Equinox, will beseech them to retire. Much
less force than this Armada would have done more harm two years ago,
when they left a card at Plymouth, than this can do; as Plymouth is now
very strong, and that there are great disciplined armies now in both
islands. Of Gibraltar we have no apprehensions.[1] I know less of
Minorca.

[Footnote 1: The Spaniards and French had been blockading Gibraltar for
more than two years, and continued the siege till the autumn of 1782,
when the blockading fleet was totally destroyed by the Governor, General
Eliot, who was created Lord Heathfield for the achievement.]

Lord George Gordon is standing candidate for the City of London on an
accidental vacancy; but his premature alarm last year has had a sinister
effect. In short, those riots have made mankind sick of th