abbey should be removed, and begging, if it was removed, that he would bestow it on me, who would erect and preserve it here.  After a fortnight’s deliberation, the bishop sent me an answer, civil indeed, and commending my zeal for antiquity! but avowing the story under his own hand.  He said, that at first they had taken Pembroke’s tomb for a knight templar’s.  Observe, that not only the man who shows the tombs names it every day, but that there is a draught of it at large in Dart’s Westminster; that upon discovering whose it was, he had been very unwilling to consent to the removal, and at last had obliged Wilton to engage to set it up within ten feet of where it stands at present.  His lordship concluded with congratulating me on publishing learned authors at my press. don’t wonder that a man who thinks Lucan a learned author, should mistake a tomb in his own cathedral.  If I had a mind to be angry, I could complain with reason; as, having paid forty pounds for ground for my mother’s tomb, that the Chapter of Westminster sell their church over and over again; the ancient monuments tumble upon one’s head through their neglect, as one of them did, and killed a man at Lady Elizabeth Percy’s funeral; and they erect new waxen dolls of Queen Elizabeth, etc. to draw visits and money from the mob.  I hope all this history is applicable to some part or other of my letter; but letters you will have, and so I send you one, very like your own stories that you tell your daughter-.  There was a King, and he had three daughters, and they all went to see the tombs; and the youngest, -who was in love with Aylmer de Valence, etc.

Thank you for your account of the battle; thank Prince Ferdinand for giving you a very Honourable post, which, in spite of his teeth and yours, proved a very safe one; and above all, thank Prince Soubise, whom I love better than all the German Princes in the universe.  Peace, I think, we must have at last, if you beat the French, or at least hinder them from beating you, and afterwards starve them.  Bussy’s last last courier is expected; but as he may have a last last last courier, I trust more to this than to all the others.  He was complaining t’other day to Mr. Pitt of our haughtiness, and said it would drive the French to some desperate effort, “Thirty thousand men,” continued he, “would embarrass you a little, I believe!” “Yes,” replied Pitt, “for I am so embarrassed with those we have already, I don’t know what to do with them.”

Adieu!  Don’t fancy that the more you scold, the more I will write:  it has answered three times, but the next cross word you give me shall put an end to our correspondence.  Sir Horace Mann’s father used to say, “Talk, Horace, you have been abroad:"- -You cry, “Write, Horace, you are at home.”  No, Sir. you can beat an hundred and twenty thousand French, but you cannot get the better of me.  I will not write such foolish letters as this every day, when I have nothing to say.  Yours as you behave.