O yes! here are flat-bottom boats to be sold,
And soldiers to let-rather hungry than bold: 
Here are ministers richly deserving to swing,
And commanders whose recompense should be a string. 
O France! still your fate you may lay at Pitt’s door;
You were saved by a Maid, and undone by a * * *

People again believe the invasion; and I don’t wonder, considering how great a militia we have, with such a boy as you mention.  I own, before I begin to be afraid, I have a little curiosity to see the militia tried.  I think one shall at least laugh before one cries.  Adieu! what time have you fixed for looking southwards?

P. S. Your pictures you may have when you please; I think you had better stay and take them with you, than risk the rubbing them by the wagon.  Mr. M`untz has not been lately in town—­ that is, Hannah has drawn no bill on him lately—­so he knows nothing of your snuff-box.  This it is to trust to my vivacity, when it is past Its bloom.  Lord!  I am a mere antiquarian, a mere painstaking mortal.  Mr. Bentley says, that if all antiquarians were like me, there would be no such thing as an antiquarian, for I set down every thing, so circumstantially that I leave them nothing to find out.

513 Letter 336 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.(1071) Strawberry Hill, October 14th, 1759.

If Strawberry Hill was not so barren of events as Chatham, I would have writ to you again; nay, if it did not produce the very same events.  Your own Light Horse are here, and commit the only vivacities of the place—­two or three of them are in the cage every day for some mischief or other.  Indeed, they seem to have been taken from school too soon, and, as Rigby said of some others of these new troops, the moment their exercise is over, they all go a bird’s-nesting.  If the French load their flat-bottom boats with rods instead of muskets, I fear all our young heroes will run away.  The invasion seems again come into fashion:  I wish it would come, that one might hear no more of it—­nay, I wish it for two or three reasons.  If they don’t come, we shall still be fatigued with the militia, who will never go to plough again till they see an enemy:  if there is a peace before the militia runs away, one shall be robbed every day by a constitutional force.  I want the French too, to have come, that you may be released; but that will not be soon enough for me, who am going to Park-place.  I came from Chaffont to-day, and I cannot let the winter appear without making my Lady Ailesbury a visit.  Hitherto my impediments may have looked like excuses, though they were nothing less.  Lady Lyttelton goes on Wednesday:  I propose to follow her on Monday; but I won’t announce myself, that I may not be disappointed, and be a little more welcome by the surprise; though I should be very ungrateful, if I affected to think that I wanted that.

I cannot say I have read the second letter on Lord George:  but I have done what will satisfy the booksellers more; I have bought nine or ten pamphlets:  my library shall be au fait about him, but I have an aversion to paper wars, and I must be a little more interested than I am about him, before I can attend to them:  my head is to be filled with more sacred trash.