“Your other allies, whom I have found very agreeable personages, are Milor B——­ and epouse, travelling with a very handsome companion, in the shape of a ‘French Count’ (to use Farquhar’s phrase in the Beaux Stratagem), who has all the air of a Cupidon dechaine, and is one of the few specimens I have seen of our ideal of a Frenchman before the Revolution—­an old friend with a new face, upon whose like I never thought that we should look again.  Miladi seems highly literary,—­to which, and your honour’s acquaintance with the family, I attribute the pleasure of having seen them.  She is also very pretty, even in a morning,—­a species of beauty on which the sun of Italy does not shine so frequently as the chandelier.  Certainly, English-women wear better than their continental neighbours of the same sex.  M——­ seems very good-natured, but is much tamed, since I recollect him in all the glory of gems and snuff-boxes, and uniforms, and theatricals, and speeches in our house—­’I mean, of peers,’—­(I must refer you to Pope—­who you don’t read and won’t appreciate—­for that quotation, which you must allow to be poetical,) and sitting to Stroeling, the painter, (do you remember our visit, with Leckie, to the German?) to be depicted as one of the heroes of Agincourt, ’with his long sword, saddle, bridle, Whack fal de, &c. &c.’

“I have been unwell—­caught a cold and inflammation, which menaced a conflagration, after dining with our ambassador, Monsieur Hill,—­not owing to the dinner, but my carriage broke down in the way home, and I had to walk some miles, up hill partly, after hot rooms, in a very bleak, windy evening, and over-hotted, or over-colded myself.  I have not been so robustious as formerly, ever since the last summer, when I fell ill after a long swim in the Mediterranean, and have never been quite right up to this present writing.  I am thin,—­perhaps thinner than you saw me, when I was nearly transparent, in 1812,—­and am obliged to be moderate of my mouth; which, nevertheless, won’t prevent me (the gods willing) from dining with your friends the day after to-morrow.

“They give me a very good account of you, and of your nearly ‘Emprisoned Angels.’  But why did you change your title?—­you will regret this some day.  The bigots are not to be conciliated; and, if they were—­are they worth it?  I suspect that I am a more orthodox Christian than you are; and, whenever I see a real Christian, either in practice or in theory, (for I never yet found the man who could produce either, when put to the proof,) I am his disciple.  But, till then, I cannot truckle to tithe-mongers,—­nor can I imagine what has made you circumcise your Seraphs.