570 Letter 266 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Dec. 2, 1748.

Our King is returned and our parliament met:  we expected nothing but harmony and tranquillity, and love of the peace; but the very first day opened with a black cloud, that threatens a stormy session.  To the great surprise of the ministry, the Tories appear in intimate league with the Prince’s party, and both agreed in warm and passionate expressions on the treaty:  we shall not have the discussion till after Christmas.  My uncle, who is extremely mended by soap, and the hopes of a peerage is come up, and the very first day broke out in a volley of treaties:  though he is altered, you would be astonished at his spirits.

We talk much of the Chancellor’s(1479) resigning the seals, from weariness of the fatigue, and being made president of the council, with other consequent changes, which I will write you if they happen; but as this has already been a discourse of six months, I don’t give it you for certain.

Mr. Chute, to whom alone I communicated Niccolini’s banishment, though it is now talked of from the Duke of Bedford’s office, says “he is sorry the Abb`e is banished for the only thing which he ever saw to commend in him,-his abusing the Tuscan ministry.”  I must tell you another admirable bon mot of Mr. Chute, now I am mentioning him.  Passing by the door of Mrs. Edwards, who died of drams, be saw the motto which the undertakers had placed to her escutcheon, Mors janua vitae, he said “it ought to have been Mors aqua vita.”

The burlettas are begun; I think, not decisively liked or condemned yet:  their success is certainly not rapid, though Pertici is excessively admired.  Garrick says he is the best comedian he ever saw:  but the women are execrable, not a pleasing note amongst them.  Lord Middlesex has stood a trial with Monticelli for arrears of salary, in Westminster-hall, and even let his own handwriting be proved against him!  You may imagine he was cast.  Hume Campbell, lord Marchmont’s brother, a favourite advocate, and whom the ministry have pensioned out of the Opposition into silence, was his council, and protested, striking his breast, that he had never set his foot but once into an opera-house in his life.  This affectation ’of British patriotism is excellently ridiculous in a man so known:  I have often heard my father say, that of all the men he ever ](new, Lord Marchmont and Hume Campbell were the most abandoned in their professions to him on their coming into the world:  he was hindered from accepting their services by the present Duke of Argyll, of whose faction they were not.  They then flung themselves into the Opposition, where they both have made great figures, till the elder was shut out of Parliament by his father’s death, and the younger being very foolishly dismissed from being solicitor to the Prince, in favour of Mr. Bathurst, accepted a pension from the court, and seldom comes into the House, and