Wilkes arrived here two days ago, and announced that he was going minister to Constantinople.(893) To-day I hear he has lowered his credentials, and talks of going to England, if he can make his peace.(894) I thought by the manner in which this was mentioned to me, that the person meant to Sound me:  but I made no answer:  for, having given up politics in England, I certainly did not come to transact them here.  He has not been to make me the first visit, which, as the last arrived, depends on him:  so, never having spoken to him in my life, I have no call to seek him.  I avoid all politics so much, that I had not heard one word here about Spain.  I suppose my silence passes for very artful mystery, and puzzles the ministers who keep spies on the most insignificant foreigner.  It would have been lucky if I had been as watchful.  At Chantilly I lost my portmanteau with half my linen; and the night before last I was robbed of a new frock, waistcoat, and breeches, laced with gold, a white and silver waistcoat, black velvet breeches, a knife, and a book.  These are expenses I did not expect, and by no means entering into my system of extravagance.

I am very sorry for the death of Lord Ophaly, and for his family.  I knew the poor young man himself but little, but he seemed extremely good-natured.  What the Duke of Richmond will do for a hotel, I cannot conceive.  Adieu!

(883) See M`emoires de Madame de Staal (the first authoress of that name) published with the rest of her works, in three small volumes.-E.

(884) Mr. Conway was now secretary of state for the foreign department.-E.

(885) Louis xv.-E.

(886) Le Pr`esident Hainault, surintendant de la maison de Mademoiselle la Dauphine, membre de l’Acad`emie Fran`caise et de l’Acad`emie des Inscriptions, known by his celebrated work, the Abr`eg`e Chronologique de l’Histoire, de France, and from the excellent table which he kept, and which was the resort of all the wits and savans of the day.  His cook was considered the best in Paris, and the master was worthy of his cook; a fact which Voltaire celebrates in the opening lines of the epitaph which he wrote for him—­

“Hainault, fameux par vos soupers,
Et votre Chronologic,” etc.-E.

(887) Sir James Macdonald of Macdonald, the eighth baronet, who died at Rome on the 26th of July 1766, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, regretted by all who knew him.  In the inscription on his monument, executed at Rome and erected in the church of Slate, his character is thus drawn by his friend Lord Lyttelton:—­“He had attained to so eminent a degree of knowledge in mathematics, philosophy, languages, and in every branch of useful and polite learning, as few have acquired in a long life wholly devoted to study; yet to this erudition he joined, what can rarely be found with it, great talents for business, great propriety of behaviour, great politeness of manners:  his eloquence was