You have heard details, to be sure, of the horrible catastrophe at the fireworks at Paris.[1] Francees, the French minister, told me the other night that the number of the killed is so great that they now try to stifle it; my letters say between five and six hundred!  I think there were not fewer than ten coach-horses trodden to death.  The mob had poured down from the Etoile by thousands and ten thousands to see the illuminations, and did not know the havoc they were occasioning.  The impulse drove great numbers into the Seine, and those met with the most favourable deaths.

[Footnote 1:  The Dauphin had been married to the Archduchess Marie Antoinette on May 16th, and on May 30th the city of Paris closed a succession of balls and banquets with which they had celebrated the marriage of the heir of the monarchy by a display of fireworks in the Place Louis XV., in which the ingenuity of the most fashionable pyrotechnists had been exhausted to outshine all previous displays of the sort.  But towards the end of the exhibition one of the explosives set fire to a portion of the platforms on which the different figures were constructed, and in a moment the whole woodwork was in a flame.  Three sides of the Place were enclosed, and the fourth was so blocked up with carriages, that the spectators, who saw themselves surrounded with flames, had no way to escape open.  The carriage-horses, too, became terrified and unmanageable.  In their panic-stricken flight the spectators trampled one another down; hundreds fell, and were crushed to death by their companions; hundreds were pushed into the river and drowned.  The number of killed could never be precisely ascertained; but it was never estimated below six hundred, and was commonly believed to have greatly exceeded that number, as many of the victims were of the poorer class—­many, too, the bread-winners of their families.  The Dauphin and Dauphiness devoted the whole of their month’s income to the relief of the sufferers; and Marie Antoinette herself visited many of the families whose loss seemed to have been the most severe:  this personal interest in their affliction which she thus displayed making a deep impression on the citizens.]

This is a slight summer letter, but you will not be sorry it is so short, when the dearth of events is the cause.  Last year I did not know but we might have a battle of Edgehill[1] by this time.  At present, my Lord Chatham could as soon raise money as raise the people; and Wilkes will not much longer have more power of doing either.  If you were not busy in burning Constantinople, you could not have a better opportunity for taking a trip to England.  Have you never a wish this way?  Think what satisfaction it would be to me?—­but I never advise; nor let my own inclinations judge for my friends.  I had rather suffer their absence, than have to reproach myself with having given them bad counsel.  I therefore say no more on what would make me so happy.  Adieu!