not but wonder to find in it that my cousin Franklin should want a true friend when ’tis thought she has the best husband in the world; he was so passionate for her before he had her, and so pleased with her since, that, in earnest, I did not think it possible she could have anything left to wish for that she had not already in such a husband with such a fortune.  But she can best tell whether she is happy or not; only if she be not, I do not see how anybody else can hope it.  I know her the least of all the sisters, and perhaps ’tis to my advantage that she knows me no more, since she speaks so obligingly of me.  But do you think it was altogether without design she spoke it to you?  When I remember she is Tom Cheeke’s sister, I am apt to think she might have heard his news, and meant to try whether there was anything of truth in’t.  My cousin Molle, I think, means to end the summer there.  They say, indeed, ’tis a very fine seat, but if I did not mistake Sir Thomas Cheeke, he told me there was never a good room in the house.  I was wondering how you came by an acquaintance there, because I had never heard you speak that you knew them.  I never saw him in my life, but he is famous for a kind husband.  Only ’twas found fault with that he could not forbear kissing his wife before company, a foolish trick that young married men are apt to; he has left it long since, I suppose.  But, seriously, ’tis as ill a sight as one would wish to see, and appears very rude, methinks, to the company.

What a strange fellow this goldsmith is, he has a head fit for nothing but horns.  I chid him once for a seal he set me just of this fashion and the same colours.  If he were to make twenty they should be all so, his invention can stretch no further than blue and red.  It makes me think of the fellow that could paint nothing but a flower-de-luce, who, when he met with one that was so firmly resolved to have a lion for his sign that there was no persuading him out on’t, “Well,” says the painter, “let it be a lion then, but it shall be as like a flower-de-luce as e’er you saw.”  So, because you would have it a dolphin, he consented to it, but it is like an ill-favoured knot of ribbon.  I did not say anything of my father’s being ill of late; I think I told you before, he kept his chamber ever since his last sickness, and so he does still.  Yet I cannot say that he is at all sick, but has so general a weakness upon him that I am much afraid their opinion of him has too much of truth in it, and do extremely apprehend how the winter may work upon him.  Will you pardon this strange scribbled letter, and the disorderliness on’t?  I know you would, though I should not tell you that I am not so much at leisure as I used to be.  You can forgive your friends anything, and when I am not the faithfullest of those, never forgive me.  You may direct your letters how you please, here will be nobody to receive it but

Your.

Letter 27.—­Althorp, in Northamptonshire, was the seat of Lady Sunderland’s first husband, Robert Lord Spencer.