507 Letter 331 To Sir Horace Mann.  Strawberry Hill, August 29, 1759.

Truly I don’t know whether one is to be rejoicing or lamenting!  Every good heart is a bonfire for Prince Ferdinand’s success, and a funeral pile for the King of Prussia’s defeat.(1060) Mr. Yorke, who every week,” “lays himself most humbly at the King’s feet” with some false piece of news, has almost ruined us in illuminations for defeated victories—­we were singing Te Deums for the King of Prussia, when he was actually reduced to be King of Custrin, for he has not only lost his neighbour’s capital, but his own too.  Mr. Bentley has long said, that we should see him at Somerset House next winter; and really I begin to be afraid that he will not live to write the history of the war himself-I shall be content, if he is forced to do it even by subscription.  Oh, that Daun! how he sits silent on his drum, and shoves the King a little and a little farther out of the world!  The most provoking part of all is, (for I am mighty soon comforted when a hero tumbles from the top of Fame’s steeple and breaks his neck,) that that tawdry toad, Bruhl(1061) Will make a triumphant entry into the ruins of Dresden, and rebuild all his palaces with what little money remains in the country!

The mob, to comfort themselves under these mishaps, and for the disappointment of a complete victory, that might have been more compleater, are new grinding their teeth and nails, to tear Lord George(1062) to pieces the instant he lands.  If he finds more powerful friends than poor Admiral Byng, assure yourself he has ten thousand times the number of personal enemies; I was going to say real, but Mr. Byng’s were real enough, with no reason to be personal.  I don’t talk of the event itself’, for I suppose all Europe knows just as much as we know here.  I suspend my opinion till Lord George speaks himself—­but I pity his father, who has been so unhappy in his sons, who loved this so much, and who had such fair prospects for him.  Lord George’s fall is prodigious; nobody stood higher, nobody has more ambition or more sense.

You, I suppose, are taking leave of your new King of Spain,(1064)—­what a bloody war is saved by this death, by its happening in the midst of one that cannot be more bloody!  I detest a correspondence now; it lives like a vampire upon dead bodies!  Adieu!  I have nothing to write about.

P. S. I forgot to ask you if you are not shocked with Bellisle’s letter to Contades?  The French ought to behave with more spirit than they do, before they give out such sanguinary orders—­@,iii(I if they did, I should think they would not give such orders.  And did not you laugh at the enormous folly of Bellisle’s conclusion?  It is so foolish, that I think he might fairly disavow it.  It puts me in mind of a ridiculous passage in Racine’s Bajazet, ——­“et s’il faut que je meure, Mourons, moi, cher Osmin, comme un Visir; et toi Comme le favori d’un homme tel que moi.”