AFFAIRS IN AMERICA—­THE CZARINA AND THE EMPEROR OF CHINA.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, Oct. 26, 1777.

It is past my usual period of writing to you; which would not have happened but from an uncommon, and indeed, considering the moment, an extraordinary dearth of matter.  I could have done nothing but describe suspense, and every newspaper told you that.  Still we know nothing certain of the state of affairs in America; the very existence where, of the Howes, is a mystery.  The General is said to have beaten Washington, Clinton to have repulsed three attacks, and Burgoyne[1] to be beaten.  The second alone is credited.  Impatience is very high, and uneasiness increases with every day.  There is no sanguine face anywhere, but many alarmed ones.  The pains taken, by circulating false reports, to keep up some confidence, only increase the dissatisfaction by disappointing.  Some advantage gained may put off clamour for some months:  but I think, the longer it is suspended, the more terrible it will be; and how the war should end but in ruin, I am not wise enough to conjecture.  France suspends the blow, to make it more inevitable.  She has suffered us to undo ourselves:  will she allow us time to recover?  We have begged her indulgence in the first:  will she grant the second prayer?...

[Footnote 1:  In June and July General Burgoyne, a man of some literary as well as military celebrity, achieved some trifling successes over the colonial army, alternating, however, with some defeats.  He took Ticonderoga, but one of his divisions was defeated with heavy loss at Bennington—­a disaster which, Lord Stanhope says, exercised a fatal influence over the rest of the campaign; and finally, a week before this letter was written, he and all his army were so hemmed in at Saratoga, that they were compelled to lay down their arms—­a disgrace which was the turning-point of the war, and which is compared by Lord Stanhope to the capitulation of his own ancestor at Brihuega in the war of the Spanish Succession.  The surrender of Saratoga was the event which determined the French and Spaniards to recognise the independence of the colonies, and consequently to unite with them in the war against England.]

You have heard of the inundation at Petersburg.  That ill wind produced luck to somebody.  As the Empress had not distressed objects enough among her own people to gratify her humanity, she turned the torrent of her bounty towards that unhappy relict the Duchess of Kingston, and ordered her Admiralty to take particular care of the marvellous yacht that bore Messalina and her fortune.  Pray mind that I bestow the latter Empress’s name on the Duchess, only because she married a second husband in the lifetime of the first.  Amongst other benevolences, the Czarina lent her Grace a courier to despatch to England—­I suppose to acquaint Lord Bristol that he is not a widower.  That courier brought a letter from a