But mes jeremiades ne sont pas encore finies.  The Castle air, by which I find the health of the children must be in some measure affected, and your own to be made a sacrifice to I do not know what, is to me a great grievance, and one to which I know as yet no remedy.  The only one is to return here, and the sooner you do the better, and the happier we shall both be, I am sure.

Ce retardement de la poste, aussi, si cela n’est pas un malheur excessif, il ne laisse pas d’etre un tres grand inconvenient; and I have only to comfort myself that when it was the most necessary to the ease of your life to have my letters come to you more exactly, that is, when the poor boy was so il|, that then they came with more expedition, et qu’alors et les courriers et les vents aient eu egalement compassion de ce que vous avez senti a cette occasion. . . .

Gregg is to go to Neasdon to-morrow from Mitcham; he has dined here once; when his business will permit it I shall see him again.  I have already hinted to him what you have desired as to his account.  He desires it as a satisfaction to himself as well as to you.  Delme does not please him by his conduct in any manner, and I think that he will, if he undertakes anything for him, do it more to oblige you than for any other reason.

I am very sorry to hear such an account of the affairs of that family, and of so little disposition to do what is necessary to set them to rights.  If the estate and the resources were forty times what they are, such dissipation and want of management must undo them.

I am very glad that Storer is coming, and when he does I hope that he will come and attend with better grace that that has been done, which has been done (sic) for him.  But the point of the cause to which he is to advert, and the only one, is the part which you have acted by him, and the benefit which will accrue to him from it.  He has, when he reflects, a great deal of sense, and his heart is very good; therefore I look upon his present humour to be rather un effervescence than the result of much reflection.

The town is at this moment, as much as I can judge of it, as great a solitude as it has been at any time these two months past.  But we are at the even of beaucoup de tintarparre, comme de nouvelles.  Lord Cornwallis’s situation is as critical, both for himself and for this country, as any can possibly be; and if George, in his History of Greece, and of Nicaeas in the expedition to Syracuse, can find a parallel for it, I cannot; no more than a remedy, or a reparation for all the losses which we have and must sustain, if we are not successful.  Till I see the issue of this cast, I will not conclude, what the Duc de Chatelet told me to be true, that it is une cause perdue.

I will take the first opportunity of speaking to Gregg about your not writing to him, for he has been waiting for a letter from you, with unusual impatience, and I will write to Boothby if he does not in a few days return to town.  I was with Ekins last night, and I stayed with him till ten.  He is more crippled than I ever knew him to be.  He is going to change his house, from which change, as of posture, he derives some comfort.  It matters little from what hope(s) we derive comfort while we hope them.