to wit in that too, why then in that case, you know, he did not write the 45, and then he is as white as milk, and as free as air, and as good a member of Parliament as if he had never been expelled.  In short, my dear Sir, I am trying to explain to you what I literally do not understand; all I do know is, that Mr. Cooke, the other member for Middlesex, is just dead, and that we are going to have another Middlesex election, which is very unpleasant to me, who hate mobs so near as Brentford.  Sergeant Glynn, Wilkes’s counsel, is the candidate, and I suppose the only one in the present humour of the people, who will care to have his brains dashed out, in order to sit in Parliament.  In truth, this enthusiasm is confined to the very mob or little higher, and does not extend beyond the County.  All other riots are ceased, except the little civil war between the sailors and coal-heavers, in which two or three lives are lost every week.

[Footnote 1:  “The 45” here serves for the Scotch rebellion of 1745, and for No. 45 of the North Briton.]

What is most disagreeable, even the Emperor of Morocco has taken courage on these tumults, and has dared to mutiny for increase of wages, like our journeymen tailors.  France is pert too, and gives herself airs in the Mediterranean.  Our Paolists were violent for support of Corsica, but I think they are a little startled on a report that the hero Paoli is like other patriots, and is gone to Versailles, for a peerage and pension.  I was told to-day that at London there are murmurs of a war.  I shall be sorry if it prove so.  Deaths! suspense, say victory;—­how end all our victories?  In debts and a wretched peace!  Mad world, in the individual or the aggregate!

Well! say I to myself, and what is all this to me?  Have not I done with that world?  Am not I here at peace, unconnected with Courts and Ministries, and indifferent who is Minister?  What is a war in Europe to me more than a war between the Turkish and Persian Emperors?  True; yet self-love makes one love the nation one belongs to, and vanity makes one wish to have that nation glorious.  Well!  I have seen it so; I have seen its conquests spread farther than Roman eagles thought there was land.  I have seen too the Pretender at Derby; and, therefore, you must know that I am content with historic seeing, and wish Fame and History would be quiet and content without entertaining me with any more sights.  We were down at Derby, we were up at both Indies; I have no curiosity for any intermediate sights.

Your brother was with me just before I came out of town, and spoke of you with great kindness, and accused himself of not writing to you, but protested it was from not knowing what to say to you about the Riband.  I engaged to write for him, so you must take this letter as from him too.

I hope there will be no war for some hero to take your honours out of your mouth, sword in hand.  The first question I shall ask when I go to town will be, how my Lord Chatham does?  I shall mind his health more than the stocks.  The least symptom of a war will certainly cure him.  Adieu! my dear Sir.