of body, which should be treated in a very different manner from the gout; and, as I pretend to be a very good quack at least, I would prescribe to you a strict milk diet, with the seeds, such as rice, sago, barley, millet, etc., for the three summer months at least, and without ever tasting wine.  If climate signifies anything (in which, by the way, I have very little faith), you are, in my mind, in the finest climate in the world; neither too hot nor too cold, and always clear; you are with the gayest people living; be gay with them, and do not wear out your eyes with reading at home.  ‘L’ennui’ is the English distemper:  and a very bad one it is, as I find by every day’s experience; for my deafness deprives me of the only rational pleasure that I can have at my age, which is society; so that I read my eyes out every day, that I may not hang myself.

You will not be in this parliament, at least not at the beginning of it. 
I relied too much upon Lord C-----’s promise above a year ago at Bath.  He
desired that I would leave it to him; that he would make it his own
affair, and give it in charge to the Duke of G——­, whose province it was
to make the parliamentary arrangement.  This I depended upon, and I think
with reason; but, since that, Lord C has neither seen nor spoken to
anybody, and has been in the oddest way in the world.  I have sent to the
D-----of G------, to know if L-----C----had either spoken or sent to him
about it; but he assured me that he had done neither; that all was full,
or rather running over, at present; but that, if he could crowd you in
upon a vacancy, he would do it with great pleasure.  I am extremely sorry
for this accident; for I am of a very different opinion from you, about
being in parliament, as no man can be of consequence in this country, who
is not in it; and, though one may not speak like a Lord Mansfield or a
Lord Chatham, one may make a very good figure in a second rank.  ’Locus
est et pluribus umbris’.  I do not pretend to give you any account of the
present state of this country, or Ministry, not knowing nor guessing it
myself.

God bless you, and send you health, which is the first and greatest of all blessings!

LETTER CCCVIII

London, March 15, 1768.

My dear friend:  This letter is supplemental to my, last.  This morning Lord Weymouth very civilly sent Mr. Wood, his first ‘commis’, to tell me that the King very willingly gave you leave of absence from your post for a year, for the recovery of your health; but then added, that as the Court of Vienna was tampering with that of Saxony, which it seems our Court is desirous to ‘contrequarrer’, it might be necessary to have in the interim a ‘Charge d’Affaires’ at Dresden, with a defalcation out of your appointments of forty shillings a-day, till your return, if I would agree to it.  I told him that I consented to both the proposals, upon condition