I have thus in six words told you the matter of volumes.  You must analyse them yourself, unless you have patience to wait till the consequences are the comment.  Don’t you recollect very similar passages in the time of Mr. Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Granville, and Mr. Fox?  But those wounds did not penetrate so deep as these!  Here are all the great, and opulent noble families engaged on one side or the other.  Here is the King insulted and prisoner, his Mother stigmatised, his Uncle affronted, his Favourite persecuted.  It is again a scene of Bohuns, Montforts, and Plantagenets.

While I am writing, I received yours of the 4th, containing the revolutions in the fabric and pictures of the palace Pitti.  My dear sir, make no excuse; we each write what we have to write; and if our letters remain, posterity will read the catastrophes of St. James’s and the Palace Pitti with equal indifference, however differently they affect you and me now.  For my part, though agitated like Ludlow or my Lord Clarendon on the events of the day, I have more curiosity about Havering in the Bower, the jointure house of ancient royal dowagers, than about Queen Isabella herself.  Mr. Wilkes, whom you mention, will be still more interested, when he hears that his friend Lord Temple has shaken hands with his foes Halifax and Sandwich; and I don’t believe that any amnesty is stipulated for the exile.  Churchill, Wilkes’s poet, used to wish that he was at liberty to attack Mr. Pitt and Charles Townshend,—­the moment is come, but Churchill is gone!  Charles Townshend has got Lord Holland’s place—­and yet the people will again and again believe that nothing is intended but their interest.

When I recollect all I have seen and known, I seem to be as old as Methuselah:  indeed I was born in politics,—­but I hope not to die in them.  With all my experience, these last five weeks have taught me more than any other ten years; accordingly, a retreat is the whole scope of my wishes; but not yet arrived.

Your amiable sister, Mrs. Foote, is settled in town; I saw her last night at the Opera with Lady Ailesbury.  She is enchanted with Manzuoli—­and you know her approbation is a test, who has heard all the great singers, learnt of all, and sings with as much taste as any of them.  Adieu!

PROSPECTS OF OLD AGE WHEN JOINED TO GOUT.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

STRAWBERRY HILL, July 28, 1765.

The less one is disposed, if one has any sense, to talk of oneself to people that inquire only out of compliment, and do not listen to the answer, the more satisfaction one feels in indulging a self-complacency, by sighing to those that really sympathise with our griefs.  Do not think it is pain that makes me give this low-spirited air to my letter.  No, it is the prospect of what is to come, not the sensation of what is passing, that affects me.  The loss of youth is melancholy enough; but to enter into old