We have been this evening with Duchess Hamilton,(690) who is arrived from Scotland, visibly promising another Lord Campbell.  I shall take this opportunity of seeing M. de Guerchy, and that opportunity, of sending this letter, and one from your brother.  Our politics are all at a stand.  The Duke of Devonshire’s death, I concluded, would make the ministry all powerful, all triumphant, and all insolent.  It does not appear to have done so.  They are, I believe, extremely ill among themselves, and not better in their affairs foreign or domestic.  The cider counties have instructed their members to join the minority.  The house of Yorke seems to have laid aside their coldness and irresolution, and to look towards opposition.  The unpopularity of the court is very great indeed—­still I shall not be surprised if they maintain their ground a little longer.

There is nothing new in the way of publication:  the town itself’ is still a desert.  I have twice passed by Arthur’s(691) to-day, and not seen a chariot.

Hogarth is dead, and Mrs. Spence, who lived with the Duchess of Newcastle.(692) She had saved 20,000 pounds which she leaves to her sister for life, and after her, to Tommy Pelham.  Ned Finch(693) has got an estate from an old Mrs. Hatton of 1500 pounds a year, and takes her name.

Adieu! my lord and lady, and your whole et cetera.

(679) Lady Dorothy married, in 1766, the Duke of Portland.-E.

(680) A celebrated surgeon of the day.  He was serjeant-surgeon to the King, and F. R. S.-E.

(681) Lady Henrietta Alicia Wentworth, born in 1737; married Mr. William Surgeon.-E.

(682) Lord Hertford was an Irish peer; he had besides so large a fortune there, and paid so much attention to the interests of that country,, that Mr. Walpole calls him Irish.-C.

(683) Lord Mansfield had married Lady Harriot’s aunt.-E.

(684) Lady Isibella Finch, lady of the bedchamber to Princess Amelia, was Lady Harriot’s aunt.  The Mr. Milbank here mentioned had married Lady Mary Wentworth, the elder sister of Lady Harriot.-C.

(685) From being housekeeper at Kensington Palace, to the same office at Windsor Castle; but Mr. Walpole is mistaken as to the name of her successor:  it was Miss Roche loyd.-C.

(686) It is due to the character of the King and the ministers, whom Mr. Walpole so often and so wantonly depreciates, to solicit the reader’s attention to such passages as this, in which he imputes to others, and therefore implies in himself, an unfair disposition to criticise and censure.-C.

(687) He was member for Thetford.-E.

(688) Of the Grafton family.-E.

(689) Colonel Charles Fitzroy.  See ant`e, p. 261, Letter 185.-E.

(690) Elizabeth Gunning, widow of James, sixth Duke of Hamilton, and wife, in 1759, of John, fifth Duke of Argyle.-E.

(691) The fashionable club in St. James’s Street.-E.