old friend of your father."

The town is empty, but is coming to dress itself for Saturday. My Lady
Coventry showed George Selwyn her clothes; they are blue, with spots of
silver, of the size of a shilling, and a silver trimming, and cost--my
lord will know what. She asked George how he liked them; he replied,
"Why, you will be change for a guinea."

I find nothing talked of but the French bankruptcy;[1] Sir Robert Brown,
I hear--and am glad to hear--will be a great sufferer. They put gravely
into the article of bankrupts in the newspaper, "Louis le Petit, of the
city of Paris, peace-breaker, dealer, and chapman;" it would have been
still better if they had said, "Louis Bourbon of petty France." We don't
know what is become of their Monsieur Thurot, of whom we had still a
little mind to be afraid. I should think he would do like Sir Thomas
Hanmer, make a faint effort, beg pardon of the Scotch for their
disappointment, and retire. Here are some pretty verses just arrived.

Pourquoi le baton a Soubise,
Puisque Chevert est le vainqueur?[2]
C'est de la cour une meprise,
Ou bien le but de la faveur.
Je ne vois rien la qui m'etonne,
Repond aussitot un railleur;
C'est a l'aveugle qu'on le donne,
Et non pas au conducteur.

[Footnote 1: In 1759 M. Bertin was Finance Minister--the fourth who had
held that office in four years; and among his expedients for raising
money he had been compelled to have recourse to the measure of stopping
the payment of the interest on a large portion of the National Debt.]

[Footnote 2: "_Chevert est le vainqueur._" He was one of the most
brilliant officers in the French army. It was he who, under the orders
of Saxe, surprised Prague in 1744, and it was to him that Marechal
d'Estrees was principally indebted for his victory of Hastenbeck.]

Lady Meadows has left nine thousand pounds in reversion after her
husband to Lord Sandwich's daughter. _Apropos_ to my Lady Meadows's
maiden name, a name I believe you have sometimes heard; I was diverted
t'other day with a story of a lady of that name,[1] and a lord, whose
initial is no farther from hers than he himself is sometimes supposed to
be. Her postillion, a lad of sixteen, said, "I am not such a child but I
can guess something: whenever my Lord Lyttelton comes to my lady, she
orders the porter to let in nobody else, and then they call for a pen
and ink, and say they are going to write history." Is not this _finess