I wish you would (while you have so good an opportunity as you have at Hamburg) make yourself perfectly master of that dull but very useful knowledge, the course of exchange, and the causes of its almost perpetual variations; the value and relation of different coins, the specie, the banco, usances, agio, and a thousand other particulars.  You may with ease learn, and you will be very glad when you have learned them; for, in your business, that sort of knowledge will often prove necessary.

I hear nothing more of Prince Ferdinand’s garter:  that he will have one is very certain; but when, I believe, is very uncertain; all the other postulants wanting to be dubbed at the same time, which cannot be, as there is not ribband enough for them.

If the Russians move in time, and in earnest, there will be an end of our hopes and of our armies in Germany:  three such mill-stones as Russia, France, and Austria, must, sooner or later, in the course of the year, grind his Prussian Majesty down to a mere margrave of Brandenburg.  But I have always some hopes of a change under a ’Gunarchy’—­[Derived from the Greek word ‘Iuvn’ a woman, and means female government]—­where whim and humor commonly prevail, reason very seldom, and then only by a lucky mistake.

I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart.  If she is as well ‘etrennee’ as you say she shall, you will be soon out of her chains; for I have, by long experience, found women to be like Telephus’s spear, if one end kills, the other cures.

There never was so quiet, nor so silent a session of parliament as the present; Mr. Pitt declares only what he would have them do, and they do it ‘nemine contradicente’, Mr. Viner only expected.

Duchess Hamilton is to be married, to-morrow, to Colonel Campbell, the son of General Campbell, who will some day or other be Duke of Argyle, and have the estate.  She refused the Duke of B-----r for him.

Here is a report, but I believe a very groundless one, that your old
acquaintance, the fair Madame C------e, is run away from her husband,
with a jeweler, that ‘etrennes’ her, and is come over here; but I dare
say it is some mistake, or perhaps a lie.  Adieu!  God bless you!

LETTER CCXXXIX

London, February 27, 1759

My dear friend:  In your last letter, of the 7th, you accuse me, most unjustly, of being in arrears in my correspondence; whereas, if our epistolary accounts were fairly liquidated, I believe you would be brought in considerably debtor.  I do not see how any of my letters to you can miscarry, unless your office-packet miscarries too, for I always send them to the office.  Moreover, I might have a justifiable excuse for writing to you seldomer than usual, for to be sure there never was a period of time, in the middle of a winter, and the parliament sitting, that supplied so little matter for a letter.  Near twelve millions have been granted this year, not only ‘nemine contradicente’, but, ’nemine quicquid dicente’.  The proper officers bring in the estimates; it is taken for granted that they are necessary and frugal; the members go to dinner; and leave Mr. West and Mr. Martin to do the rest.