—­no wonder he is honest.  You will now conceive that a letter I have given Mr. Pitt is not a mere matter of form, but an earnest suit to you to know one you will like so much.  I should indeed have given it him, were it only to furnish you with an opportunity of ingratiating yourself with Mr. Pitt’s nephew:  but I address him to your heart.  Well! but I have heard of another honest lawyer!  The famous Polly, Duchess of Bolton,(32) is dead, having, after a life of merit, relapsed into her Pollyhood.  Two years ago, at Tunbridge, she picked up an Irish surgeon.  When she was dying, this fellow sent for a lawyer to make her will, but the man, finding who was to be her heir, instead of her children, refused to draw it.  The Court of Chancery did furnish one other, not quite so scrupulous, and her three sons have but a thousand pounds apiece; the surgeon about nine thousand.

I think there is some glimmering of peace!  God send the world some repose from its woes!  The King of Prussia has writ to Belleisle to desire the King of France will make peace for him:  no injudicious step, as the distress of France will make them glad to oblige him.  We have no other news, but that Lord George Sackville has at last obtained a court-martial.  I doubt much whether he will find his account in it.  One thing I know I dislike-a German aide-de-camp is to be an evidence!  Lord George has paid the highest compliment to Mr. Conway’s virtue.  Being told, as an unlucky circumstance for him, that Mr. Conway was to be one of his judges, (but It is not so,) he replied, there was no man in England he should so soon desire of that number.  And it is no mere compliment, for Lord George has excepted against another of them—­but he knew whatever provocation he may have given to Mr. Conway, whatever rivalship there has been between them, nothing could bias the integrity of the latter.  There is going to be another court-martial on a mad Lord Charles Hay,(33) who has foolishly demanded it; but it will not occupy the attention of the world like Lord George’s.  There will soon be another trial of another sort on another madman, an Earl Ferrers, who has murdered his steward.  He was separated by Parliament from his wife, a very pretty woman, whom he married with no fortune, for the most groundless barbarity, and now killed his steward for having been evidence for her; but his story and person are too wretched and despicable to give you the detail.  He will be dignified by a solemn trial in Westminster-hall.

Don’t you like the impertinence of the Dutch?  They have lately had a mudquake, and giving themselves terrafirma airs, call it an earthquake!  Don’t you like much more our noble national charity?  Above two thousand pounds has been raised in London alone, besides what is collected in the country, for the French prisoners, abandoned by their monarch.  Must not it make the Romans blush in their Appian-way, who dragged their prisoners in triumph?  What