The Duke of Buccleugh is very soon to be married to Lady Betty Montague.  Lord Essex was married yesterday, to Harriet Bladen; and Lord Strathmore, last week, to Miss Bowes; both couples went directly from the church to consummation in the country, from an unnecessary fear that they should not be tired of each other if they stayed in town.  And now ‘dixi’; God bless you!

You are in the right to go to see the assembly of the states of, Languedoc, though they are but the shadow of the original Etats, while there was some liberty subsisting in France.

LETTER CCXCVII

London, April 6, 1767.

My dear friend:  Yesterday I received your letter from Nimes, by which I find that several of our letters have reciprocally miscarried.  This may probably have the same fate; however, if it reaches Monsieur Sarrazin, I presume he will know where to take his aim at you; for I find you are in motion, and with a polarity to Dresden.  I am very glad to find by it, that your meridional journey has perfectly recovered you, as to your general state of health; for as to your legs and thighs, you must never expect that they will be restored to their original strength and activity, after so many rheumatic attacks as you have had.  I know that my limbs, besides the natural debility of old age, have never recovered the severe attack of rheumatism that plagued me five or six years ago.  I cannot now walk above half an hour at a time and even that in a hobbling kind of way.

I can give you no account of our political world, which is in a situation that I never saw in my whole life.  Lord Chatham has been so ill, these last two months, that he has not been able (some say not willing) to do or hear of any business, and for his ‘sous Ministres’, they either cannot, or dare not, do any, without his directions; so everything is now at a stand.  This situation, I think, cannot last much longer, and if Lord Chatham should either quit his post, or the world, neither of which is very improbable, I conjecture, that which is called the Rockingham Connection stands the fairest for the Ministry.  But this is merely my conjecture, for I have neither ‘data’ nor ‘postulata’ enough to reason upon.

When you get to Dresden, which I hope you will not do till next month, our correspondence will be more regular.  God bless you!

LETTER CCXCVIII

London, May 5, 1767,

My dear friend:  By your letter of the 25th past, from Basle, I presume this will find you at Dresden, and accordingly I direct to you there.  When you write me word that you are at Dresden, I will return you an answer, with something better than the answer itself.

If you complain of the weather, north of Besancon, what would you say to the weather that we have had here for these last two months, uninterruptedly?  Snow often, northeast wind constantly, and extreme cold.  I write this by the side of a good fire; and at this moment it snows very hard.  All my promised fruit at Blackheath is quite destroyed; and, what is worse, many of my trees.