You do nothing but reproach me; I declare I will bear it no longer, though you should beat forty more Marshals of France.  I have already writ you two letters that would fully justify me if you receive them; if you do not, it is not I that am in fault for not writing, but the post-offices for reading my letters, content if they would forward them when they have done with them.  They seem to think, like you that I know more news than any body.  What is to be known in the dead of summer, when all the world is dispersed?  Would you know who won the sweepstakes at Huntingdon? what parties are at Woburn? what officers upon guard in Betty’s fruit-shop? whether the peeresses are to wear long, or short tresses at the coronation? how many jewels Lady Harrington borrows of actresses?  All this is your light summer wear for conversation; and if my memory were as much stuffed with it as my ears, I might have sent you Volumes last week.  My nieces, Lady Waldegrave and Mrs. Keppel, were here five days, and discussed the claim or disappointment of every miss in the kingdom for maid of honour.  Unfortunately this new generation is not at all my affair.  I cannot attend to what Concerns them.  Not that their trifles are less important than those of one’s own time, but my mould has taken all its impressions, and can receive no more.  I must grow old upon the stock I have.  I, that was so impatient at all their chat, the moment they were gone, flew to my Lady Suffolk, and heard her talk with great satisfaction of the late Queen’s coronation-petticoat.  The preceding age always appears respectable to us (I mean as one advances in years), one’s own age interesting, the coming age neither one nor t’other.

You may judge by this account that I have writ all my letters, or ought to have written them; and yet, for occasion to blame Me, you draw a very pretty picture of my situation:  all which tends to prove that I ought to write to you every day, whether I have any thing to say or not.  I am writing, I am building—­both works that will outlast the memory of battles and heroes!  Truly, I believe, the one will as much as t’other.  My buildings are paper, like my writings, and both will be blown away in ten years after I am dead; if they had not the substantial use of amusing me while I live, they would be worth little indeed.  I will give you one instance that will sum up the vanity of great men, learned men, and buildings altogether.  I heard lately, that Dr. Pearce, a very learned personage, had consented to let the tomb of Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, a very great personage, be removed for Wolfe’s monument; that at first he had objected, but was wrought upon by being told that hight Aylmer was a knight templar, a very wicked set of people, as his lordship had heard, though he knew nothing of them, as they are not mentioned by Longinus.  I own I thought this a made story, and wrote to his lordship, expressing my concern that one of the finest and most ancient monuments in the