I hope the new year will end as quietly as it begins, for I have not a syllable to tell you.  No letters are come from France since Friday morning, and this is Tuesday noon.  As we had full time to reason—­in the dark, the general persuasion is, that the French Revolution will produce peace—­I mean in Europe—­not amongst themselves.  Probably I have been sending you little but what you will have heard long before you receive my letter; but no matter; if we did not chat about our neighbour Kings, I don’t know how we should keep up our correspondence, for we are better acquainted with King Louis, King Carlos, and Empresses Katharine and Teresa, than you with the English that I live amongst, or I with your Florentines.  Adieu!

PEACE WITH SPAIN—­BANISHMENT OF THE FRENCH PARLIAMENT—­MRS. CORNELYS’S ESTABLISHMENT—­THE QUEEN OF DENMARK.

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

ARLINGTON STREET, Feb. 22, 1771.

Two days ago there began to be an alarm at the delay of the Spanish courier, and people were persuaded that the King of Spain had refused to ratify his ambassador’s declaration; who, on the warrant of the French King, had ventured to sign it, though expecting every hour to be recalled, as he actually was two days afterwards.  However, the night before last, to the great comfort of Prince Masserano and our Ministers, the ratification arrived; and, after so many delays and untoward accidents, Fortune has interposed (for there has been great luck, too, in the affair), and peace is again established.  With you, I am not at all clear that Choiseul was in earnest to make it.  If he was, it was entirely owing to his own ticklish situation.  Other people think, that this very situation had made him desperate; and that he was on the point of striking a hardy stroke indeed; and meditated sending a strong army into Holland, to oblige the Dutch to lend twelve men-of-war to invade us.  Count Welderen,[1] who is totally an anti-Gaul, assured me he did not believe this project.  Still I am very glad such a boute-feu is removed.

[Footnote 1:  The Dutch Minister in England.  He married a sister of Sir John Griffin, Maid of Honour to Anne Princess of Orange.—­WALPOLE.]

This treaty is an epoch; and puts a total end to all our preceding histories.  Long quiet is never probable, nor shall I guess who will disturb it; but, whatever happens, must be thoroughly new matter, though some of the actors perhaps may not be so.  Both Lord Chatham and Wilkes are at the end of their reckoning, and the Opposition can do nothing without fresh fuel.

The scene that is closed here seems to be but opening in France.  The Parliament of Paris banished; a new one arbitrarily appointed;[1] the Princes of the Blood refractory and disobedient; the other Parliament as mutinous; and distress everywhere:  if the army catches the infection, what may not happen, when the King is despised, his agents detested, and no Ministry settled?  Some say the mistress and her faction keep him hourly diverted or drunk; others, that he has got a new passion:  how creditable at sixty!  Still I think it is the crisis of their constitution.  If the Monarch prevails, he becomes absolute as a Czar; if he is forced to bend, will the Parliament stop there?