At that instant, who do you think presented himself as Lord Bute’s guardian angel? only one of his bitterest enemies:  a milk-white angel [Duke of York], white even to his eyes and eyelashes, very purblind, and whose tongue runs like a fiddlestick.  You have seen this divinity, and have prayed to it for a Riband.  Well, this god of love became the god of politics, and contrived meetings between Bute, Grenville, and Bedford; but, what happens to highwaymen after a robbery, happened to them before; they quarrelled about the division of the plunder, before they had made the capture—­and thus, when the last letters came away, the repeal was likely to pass in both houses, and tyranny once more despairs.

This is the quintessence of the present situation in England.  To how many North Britons, No. 45, will that wretched Scot furnish matter?  But let us talk of your Cardinal Duke of York[1]:  so his folly has left his brother in a worse situation than he took him up! York seems a title fated to sit on silly heads—­or don’t let us talk of him; he is not worth it.

[Footnote 1:  Cardinal York was the younger brother of Charles Edward.  He lived in Italy; and, after the death of his brother, assumed the title of King of England as Henry IX.  After the confiscation of the greater part of the Papal revenues by Napoleon, his chief means of livelihood was a pension of L4,000 a year allowed him by George IV. out of his private purse.]

I am so sorry for the death of Lady Hillsborough, as I suppose Mr. Skreene is glad of his consort’s departure.  She was a common creature, bestowed on the public by Lord Sandwich.  Lady Hillsborough had sense and merit, and is a great loss to her family.  By letters hither, we hear miserable accounts of poor Sir James Macdonald; pray let him know that I have written to him, and how much I am concerned for his situation.

This Court is plunged into another deep mourning for the death of old Stanislaus,[1] who fell into the fire; it caught his night-gown and burnt him terribly before he got assistance.  His subjects are in despair, for he was a model of goodness and humanity; uniting or rather creating, generosity from economy.  The Poles had not the sense to re-elect him, after his virtues were proved, they who had chosen him before they knew him.  I am told such was the old man’s affection for his country, and persuasion that he ought to do all the good he could, that he would have gone to Poland if they had offered him the crown.  He has left six hundred thousand livres, and a rente viagere of forty thousand crowns to the Queen, saved from the sale of his Polish estates, from his pension of two millions, and from his own liberality.  His buildings, his employment of the poor, his magnificence, and his economy, were constant topics of admiration.  Not only the court-tables were regularly and nobly served, but he treated, and defrayed his old enemy’s