[Footnote 2:  “Vice-Chamberlain Smith.” An allusion to a gossiping story of King William’s time, that when Queen Mary came back to England she asked one of her ladies what a squeeze of the hand was supposed to intimate; and when the reply was, “Love,” “Then,” said Her Majesty, “my Vice-Chancellor must be in love with me; for he always squeezes my hand.”]

You will have stared, as I did, at the Elector of Hanover deserting his ally the King of Great Britain, and making peace with the monsters.  But Mr. Fawkener, whom I saw at my sister’s [Churchill’s] on Sunday, laughs at the article in the newspapers, and says it is not an unknown practice for stock-jobbers to hire an emissary at the rate of five hundred pounds, and dispatch to Franckfort, whence he brings forged attestations of some marvellous political event, and spreads it on ’Change, which produces such a fluctuation in the stocks as amply overpays the expense of his mission.

This was all I learnt in the single night I was in town.  I have not read the new French constitution, which seems longer than probably its reign will be.  The five sovereigns will, I suppose, be the first guillotined.  Adieu!  Yours ever.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.