measures.
Lord Bute's being established Groom of the Stole has satisfied. They
seem more occupied in disobliging all their new court than in disturbing
the King's. Lord Huntingdon, the new Master of the Horse to the Prince,
and Lord Pembroke, one of his Lords, have not been spoken to. Alas! if
the present storms should blow over, what seeds for new! You must guess
at the sense of this paragraph, which it is difficult, at least
improper, to explain to you; though you could not go into a coffee-house
here where it would not be interpreted to you. One would think all those
little politicians had been reading the Memoirs of the minority of Louis
XIV.

[Footnote 1: Leicester House was the London residence of the young
Prince of Wales.]

There has been another great difficulty: the season obliging all camps
to break up, the poor Hanoverians have been forced to continue soaking
in theirs. The county magistrates have been advised that they are not
obliged by law to billet foreigners on public-houses, and have refused.
Transports were yesterday ordered to carry away the Hanoverians! There
are eight thousand men taken from America; for I am sure we can spare
none from hence. The negligence and dilatoriness of the ministers at
home, the wickedness of our West Indian governors, and the little-minded
quarrels of the regulars and irregular forces, have reduced our affairs
in that part of the world to a most deplorable state. Oswego, of ten
times more importance even than Minorca, is so annihilated that we
cannot learn the particulars.

My dear Sir, what a present and future picture have I given you! The
details are infinite, and what I have neither time, nor, for many
reasons, the imprudence to send by the post: your good sense will but
too well lead you to develop them. The crisis is most melancholy and
alarming. I remember two or three years ago I wished for more active
times, and for events to furnish our correspondence. I think I could
write you a letter almost as big as my Lord Clarendon's History. What a
bold man is he who shall undertake the administration! How much shall we
be obliged to him! How mad is he, whoever is ambitious of it! Adieu!

_THE KING OF PRUSSIA'S VICTORIES--VOLTAIRE'S "UNIVERSAL HISTORY."_

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

STRAWBERRY HILL, _July_ 4, 1757.

My Dear Lord,--It is well I have not obeyed you sooner, as I have often
been going to do: what a heap of lies and contradictions I should have
sent