There is a new Institution that begins to make, and if it proceeds, will make a considerable noise.  It is a club of both sexes to be erected at Almack’s, on the model of that of the men of White’s.  Mrs. Fitzroy, Lady Pembroke, Mrs. Meynell, Lady Molyneux, Miss Pelham, and Miss Loyd, are the foundresses.  I am ashamed to say I am of so young and fashionable a society; but as they are people I live with, I choose to be idle rather than morose.  I can go to a young supper, without forgetting how much sand is run out of the hour-glass.  Yet I shall never pass a triste old age in turning the Psalms into Latin or English verse.  My plan is to pass away calmly; cheerfully if I can; sometimes to amuse myself with the rising generation, but to take care not to fatigue them, nor weary them with old stories, which will not interest them, as their adventures do not interest me.  Age would indulge prejudices if it did not sometimes polish itself against younger acquaintance; but it must be the work of folly if one hopes to contract friendships with them, or desires it, or thinks one can become the same follies, or expects that they should do more than bear one for one’s good-humour.  In short, they are a pleasant medicine, that one should take care not to grow fond of.  Medicines hurt when habit has annihilated their force; but you see I am in no danger.  I intend by degrees to decrease my opium, instead of augmenting the dose.  Good night!  You see I never let our long-lived friendship drop, though you give it so few opportunities of breathing.

THE PRINCESS OF WALES IS GONE TO GERMANY—­TERRIBLE ACCIDENT IN PARIS.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, June 15, 1770.

I have no public event to tell you, though I write again sooner than I purposed.  The journey of the Princess Dowager to Germany is indeed an extraordinary circumstance, but besides its being a week old, as I do not know the motives, I have nothing to say upon it.  It is much canvassed and sifted, and yet perhaps she was only in search of a little repose from the torrents of abuse that have been poured upon her for some years.  Yesterday they publicly sung about the streets a ballad, the burthen of which was, the cow has left her calf.  With all this we are grown very quiet, and Lord North’s behaviour is so sensible and moderate that he offends nobody.

Our family has lost a branch, but I cannot call it a misfortune.  Lord Cholmondeley died last Saturday.  He was seventy, and had a constitution to have carried him to a hundred, if he had not destroyed it by an intemperance, especially in drinking, that would have killed anybody else in half the time.  As it was, he had outlived by fifteen years all his set, who have reeled into the ferry-boat so long before him.  His grandson seems good and amiable, and though he comes into but a small fortune for an earl, five-and-twenty hundred a-year, his uncle the general may re-establish him upon a great footing—­but it will not be in his life, and the general does not sail after his brother on a sea of claret.