have you no tongue, or the French no eyes? or are her eyes employed in nothing but seeing?  What a vulgar employment for a fine woman’s eyes after she is risen from her toilet?  I declare I will ask no more questions—­what is it to me, whether she is admired or not?  I should know how charming she is, though all Europe were blind.  I hope I am not to be told by any barbarous nation upon earth what beauty and grace are!

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Conway and Lady Aylesbury were now at Paris together.—­WALPOLE.]

For myself, I am guilty of the gout in my elbow; the left—­witness my handwriting.  Whether I caught cold by the deluge in the night, or whether the bootikins, like the water of Styx, can only preserve the parts they surround, I doubt they have saved me but three weeks, for so long my reckoning has been out.  However, as I feel nothing in my feet, I flatter myself that this Pindaric transition will not be a regular ode, but a fragment, the more valuable for being imperfect.

Now for my Gazette.—­Marriages—­Nothing done.  Intrigues—­More in the political than civil way.  Births—­Under par since Lady Berkeley left off breeding.  Gaming—­Low water.  Deaths—­Lord Morton, Lord Wentworth, Duchess Douglas.  Election stock—­More buyers than sellers.  Promotions—­Mr. Wilkes as high as he can go.—­Apropos, he was told the Lord Chancellor intended to signify to him, that the King did not approve the City’s choice:  he replied, “Then I shall signify to his lordship, that I am at least as fit to be Lord Mayor as he is to be Lord Chancellor.”  This being more Gospel than everything Mr. Wilkes says, the formal approbation was given.

Mr. Burke has succeeded in Bristol, and Sir James Peachey will miscarry in Sussex.  But what care you, Madam, about our Parliament?  You will see the rentree of the old one, with songs and epigrams into the bargain.  We do not shift our Parliaments with so much gaiety.  Money in one hand, and abuse in t’other—­those are all the arts we know. Wit and a gamut[1] I don’t believe ever signified a Parliament, whatever the glossaries may say; for they never produce pleasantry and harmony.  Perhaps you may not taste this Saxon pun, but I know it will make the Antiquarian Society die with laughing.

[Footnote 1:  Walpole is punning on the old Saxon name of the National Council, Witangemot.]

Expectation hangs on America.  The result of the general assembly is expected in four or five days.  If one may believe the papers, which one should not believe, the other side of the waterists are not doux comme des moutons, and yet we do intend to eat them.  I was in town on Monday; the Duchess of Beaufort graced our loo, and made it as rantipole as a Quaker’s meeting. Loois Quinze,[1] I believe, is arrived by this time, but I fear without quinze louis.

[Footnote 1:  This was a cant name given to a lady [Lady Powis], who was very fond of loo, and who had lost much money at that game.]