491 Letter 316 To Sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, June 1, 1759.

I have not announced to you in form the invasion from France, of which all our newspapers have been so full, nor do I tell you every time the clock strikes.  An invasion frightens one but once.  I am grown to fear no invasions but those we make.  Yet I believe there are people really afraid of this—­I mean the new militia, who have received orders to march.  The war in general seems languishing:  Prince Henry of Prussia is the only one who keeps it up with any spirit.  The Parliament goes into the country to-morrow.

One of your last friends, Lord Northampton,(1035) is going to marry Lady Anne Somerset, the Duke of Beaufort’s sister.  She is rather handsome.  He seems to have too much of the coldness and dignity of the Comptons.

Have you had the comet in Italy?  It has made more noise here than it deserved, because Sir Isaac Newton foretold it, and it came very near disappointing him.  Indeed, I have a notion that it is not the right, but a little one- that they put up as they were hunting the true—­in short, I suppose, like pine-apples and gold pheasants, comets will grow so common as to be sold at Covent-garden market.

I am glad you approve the marriage of my charming niece—­she is now Lady Waldegrave in all the forms.

I envy you who can make out whole letters to me—­I find it grow every day more difficult, we are so far and have been so long removed from little events in common that serve to fill up a correspondence, that though my heart is willing, my hand is slow.  Europe is a dull magnificent subject to one who cares little and thinks still les about Europe.  Even the King of Prussia, except on post-days don’t occupy a quarter of an inch in my memory.  He must kill a hundred thousand men once a fortnight to Put me in mind of him.  Heroes that do so much in a book, and seem so active to posterity, lie fallow a vast while to their contemporaries—­and how it would humble a vast Prince who expects to occupy the whole attention of an age, to hear an idle man in his easy chair cry “Well! why don’t the King of Prussia do something?” If one means to make a lasting bustle, one should contrive to be the hero of a village; I have known a country rake talked of for a riot, whole years after the battle of Blenheim has grown obsolete.  Fame, like an essence, the farther it is diffused, the sooner it vanishes.  The million in London devour an event and demand another to-morrow.  Three or four families in a hamlet twist and turn it, examine, discuss, mistake, repeat their mistake, remember their mistake, and teach it to their children.  Adieu!

(1035) Charles Compton, seventh Earl of Northampton, married Lady Anne Somerset, daughter of Charles, fourth Duke of beaufort; by whom he had an only Child, Lady Elizabeth Compton, married to Lord George Henry Cavendish, now Earl of Burlington.  Lord Northampton died in 1763.-D.