(1051) The Duke of Newcastle died on the 17th.-E.

(1052) Lady Hervey died on the 2d of September, in the sixty-eighth year of her age.-E.

Letter 356 To George Montagu, Esq.  Arlington Street, Dec. 1, 1768. (page 536)

I like your letter, and have been looking at my next door but one.  The ground-story is built, and the side walls will certainly be raised another floor, before you think of arriving.  I fear nothing for you but the noise of workmen, and of this street in front and Picadilly on the other side.  If you can bear such a constant hammering and hurricane, it will rejoice me to have you so near me; and then I think I must see you oftener than I have done these ten years.  Nothing can be more dignified than this position.  From my earliest memory Arlington-street has been the ministerial street.  The Duke of Grafton is actually coming into the house of Mr. Pelham, which my Lord president is quitting, and which occupies too the ground on which my father lived; and Lord Weymouth has just taken the Duke of Dorset’s; yet you and I, I doubt, shall always live on the wrong side of the way.

Lord Chatham is reconciled to Lord Temple and George Grenville.(1053) The second is in great spirits on the occasion; and yet gives out that Lord Chatham earnestly solicited it.  The insignificant Lepidus patronizes Antony, and is sued to by Augustus!  Still do I doubt whether Augustus will ever come forth again.  Is this a peace patched up by Livia for the sake of her children, seeing the imbecility of her husband? or is Augustus to own he has been acting changeling, like the first Brutus, for near two years?  I do not know, I remain in doubt.

Wilkes has struck an artful stroke.(1054) The ministers, devoid of all management in the House of Commons, consented that he should be heard at the bar of the House, and appointed to-morrow, forgetting the election for Middlesex is to come on next Thursday:  one would think they were impatient to advance riots.  Last Monday Wilkes demanded to examine Lord Temple:  when that was granted, he asked for Lord Sandwich and Lord March.  As the first had not been refused, the others could not.  The Lords were adjourned till to-day @ , and, I suppose, are now sitting on this perplexing demand.  If Lord Temple desires to go to the bar of the Commons, and the others desire to be excused, it will be difficult for the Lords to know what to do.  Sandwich is frightened out of his senses,(1055) and March does not like it.  Well! this will cure ministers and great lords of being flippant in dirty tyranny, when they see they may be worried for it four years afterwards.

The Commons, I suppose, are at this minute as hotly engaged on the Cumberland election between Sir James Lowther and the Duke of Portland.  Oh! how delightful and comfortable to be sitting quietly here a scribbling to you, perfectly indifferent about both houses!  You will Just escape having your brains beaten out, by not coming this fortnight.  The Middlesex election will be over.  Adieu!  Yours ever.