than to most people.  I heartily condole with you, and yet I must make you smile.  The second Miss Jefferies was to go to a ball yesterday at Hampton-court with Lady Sophia Thomas’s daughters.  The news came, and your aunt Cosby said the girl must not go to it.  The poor child then cried in earnest.  Lady Sophia went to intercede for her, and found her grandmother at backgammon, who would hear no entreaties.  Lady Sophia represented that Miss Jefferies was but a second cousin, and could not have been acquainted.  “Oh!  Madam, if there is no tenderness left in the world-cinq ace—­Sir, you are to throw.”

We have a strange story come from London.  Lord Fortescue was dead suddenly; there was a great mob about his house in Grosvenor-square, and a buzz that my lady had thrown up the sash and cried murder, and that he then shot himself.  How true all this I don’t know:  at least it is not so false as if it was in the newspapers.  However, these sultry summers do not suit English heads:  this last month puts even the month of November’s nose out of joint for self-murders.  If it was not for the Queen the peerage would be extinct:  she has given us another Duke.(855)

My two months are up, and yet I recover my feet very slowly.  I have crawled once round my garden; but it sent me to my couch for the rest of the day.  This duration of weakness makes me very impatient, as I wish much to be at Paris before the fine season is quite gone.  This will probably be the last time I shall travel to finish my education, and I should be glad to look once more at their gardens and villas:  nay, churches and palaces are but uncomfortable sights in cold weather, and I have much more curiosity for their habitations than their company.  They have scarce a man or a woman of note that one wants to see; and, for their authors, their style is grown so dull in imitation of us, they are si philosophes, si g`eom`etres, si moraux, that I certainly should not cross the sea in search of ennui, that I can have in such perfection at home.  However, the change of scene is my chief inducement, and to get out of politics.  There is no going through another course of patriotism in your cousin Sandwich and George Grenville.  I think of setting out by the middle of September; have I any chance of seeing you here before that?  Won’t you come and commission me to offer up your devotions to Notre Dame de Livry?(8 or chez nos filles de Sainte Marie.  If I don’t make haste, the reformation in France will demolish half that I want to see.  I tremble for the Val de Grace and St. Cyr.  The devil take Luther for putting it into the heads of his methodists to pull down the churches!  I believe in twenty years there Will not be a convent left in Europe but this at Strawberry.  I wished for you to-day; Mr. Chute and Cowslade dined here; the day was divine:  the sun gleamed down into the chapel in all the glory of popery; the gallery was all radiance; we drank