I beg you will let me know whether the peace has arrived in Italy, or if you have heard any thing of it; for in this part of the world nobody can tell what has become of it.  They say the Empress Queen has stopped it; that she will not take back the towns in Flanders, which she says she knows are very convenient for us, but of no kind of use to her, and that she chooses to keep what she has got in Italy.  However, we are determined to have peace at any rate, and the conditions must jumble themselves together as they can.  These are the politics of Twickenham, my metropolis; and, to tell you the truth, I believe pretty near as good as you can have any where.

As to my own history, the scene is at present a little gloomy:  my Lord Orford is in an extreme bad state of health, not to say a dangerous state:  my uncle(1445) ’ is going off in the same way my father did.  I don’t pretend to any great feelings of affection for two men, because they are dying, for whom it is known I had little before, my brother especially having been as much my enemy as it was in his power to be; but I cannot with indifference see the family torn to pieces, and falling into such ruin as I foresee; for should my brother die soon, leaving so great a debt, so small an estate to pay it off, two great places(1446) sinking, and a wild boy of nineteen to succeed, there would be an end to the glory of Houghton, which had my father proportioned more to his fortune, would probably have a longer duration.  This is an unpleasant topic to you who feel for us-however, I should not talk of it to one who would not feel.  Your brother Gal. and I had a very grave conversation yesterday morning on this head; he thinks so like you, so reasonably and with so much good nature, that I seem to be only finishing a discourse that I have already had with you.  As my fears about Houghton are great, I am a little pleased to have finished a slight memorial(1447) of It, a description of the pictures, of which I have just printed an hundred, to give to particular people:  I will send you one, and shall beg Dr. Cocchi to accept another.

If I could let myself wish to see you in England, it would be to see you here:  the little improvements I am making have really turned Strawberry Hill into a charming villa:  Mr. Chute, I hope, will tell you how pleasant it is; I mean literally tell you, for we have a glimmering of’ a Venetian prospect; he is just going from hence to town by water, down our Brenta.

You never say a word to me from the Princess, nor any of my old friends:  I keep up our intimacy in my own mind; for I will not part with the idea of seeing Florence again.  Whenever I am displeased here, the thoughts of that journey are my resource; just as cross would-be devout people, when they have quarrelled with this world, begin packing up for the other.  Adieu!

(1445) Lord Orford did not die till 1751, and old Horace Walpole not till 1757.-D.