After all the fears and hopes, occasioned severally by the meeting of the parliament, in my opinion, it will prove a very easy session.  Mr. Wilkes is universally given up; and if the ministers themselves do not wantonly raise difficulties, I think they will meet with none.  A majority of two hundred is a great anodyne.  Adieu!  God bless you!

LETTER CCLXIII

Bath, December 3, 1763.

My dear friend:  Last post brought me your letter of the 29th past.  I
suppose C-----T-----let off his speech upon the Princess’s portion,
chiefly to show that he was of the opposition; for otherwise, the point
was not debatable, unless as to the quantum, against which something
might be said; for the late Princess of Orange (who was the eldest
daughter of a king) had no more, and her two sisters but half, if I am
not mistaken.

It is a great mercy that Mr. Wilkes, the intrepid defender of our rights and liberties, is out of danger, and may live to fight and write again in support of them; and it is no less a mercy, that God hath raised up the Earl of S------to vindicate and promote true religion and morality.  These two blessings will justly make an epoch in the annals of this country.

I have delivered your message to Harte, who waits with impatience for your letter.  He is very happy now in having free access to all Lord Craven’s papers, which, he says, give him great lights into the ’bellum tricenale’; the old Lord Craven having been the professed and valorous knight-errant, and perhaps something more, to the Queen of Bohemia; at least, like Sir Peter Pride, he had the honor of spending great part of his estate in her royal cause: 

I am by no means right yet; I am very weak and flimsy still; but the doctor assures me that strength and spirits will return; if they do, ‘lucro apponam’, I will make the best of them; if they do not, I will not make their want still worse by grieving and regretting them.  I have lived long enough, and observed enough, to estimate most things at their intrinsic, and not their imaginary value; and, at seventy, I find nothing much worth either desiring or fearing.  But these reflections, which suit with seventy, would be greatly premature at two-and-thirty.  So make the best of your time; enjoy the present hour, but ‘memor ultimae’.  God bless you!

LETTER CCLXIV

Bath, December 18, 1763

My dear friend:  I received your letter this morning, in which you reproach me with not having written to you this week.  The reason was, that I did not know what to write.  There is that sameness in my life here, that every day is still but as the first. I see very few people; and, in the literal sense of the word, I hear nothing.