If a sovereign should, by great accident, deviate into moderation, justice, and clemency, what a contemptible figure would he make in the catalogue of princes!  I have always owned a great regard for King Log.  From the interview at Torgaw, between the two monarchs, they will be either a great deal better or worse together; but I think rather the latter; for our namesake, Philip de Co mines, observes, that he never knew any good come from l’abouchement des Rois.  The King of Prussia will exert all his perspicacity to analyze his Imperial Majesty; and I would bet upon the one head of his black eagle, against the two heads of the Austrian eagle; though two heads are said, proverbially, to be better than one.  I wish I had the direction of both the monarchs, and they should, together with some of their allies, take Lorraine and Alsace from France.  You will call me ‘l’Abbe de St. Pierre’; but I only say what I wish; whereas he thought everything that he wished practicable.

Now to come home.  Here are great bustles at Court, and a great change of persons is certainly very near.  You will ask me, perhaps, who is to be out, and who is to be in?  To which I answer, I do not know.  My conjecture is that, be the new settlement what it will, Mr. Pitt will be at the head of it.  If he is, I presume, ’qu’il aura mis de l’eau dans son vin par rapport a Mylord B-----; when that shall come to be known, as known it certainly will soon be, he may bid adieu to his popularity.  A minister, as minister, is very apt to be the object of public dislike; and a favorite, as favorite, still more so.  If any event of this kind happens, which (if it happens at all) I conjecture will be some time next week, you shall hear further from me.

I will follow your advice, and be as well as I can next winter, though I know I shall never be free from my flying rheumatic pains, as long as I live; but whether that will be more or less, is extremely indifferent to me; in either case, God bless you!

LETTER CCLXXXVIII

Blackheath, August 1, 1766.

My Dear friend:  The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors, together with some of the old ones.  I do not name them to you, because to-morrow’s Gazette will do it full as well as I could.  Mr. Pitt, who had carte blanche given him, named everyone of them:  but what would you think he named himself for?  Lord Privy Seal; and (what will astonish you, as it does every mortal here) Earl of Chatham.  The joke here is, that he has had A Fall up stairs, and has done himself so much hurt, that he will never be able to stand upon his leg’s again.  Everybody is puzzled how to account for this step; though it would not be the first time that great abilities have been duped by low cunning.  But be it what it will, he is now certainly only Earl of Chatham; and no longer Mr. Pitt, in any respect