Was ever so agreeable a man as King George the Second, to die the very day it was necessary to save me from a ridicule?  I was to have kissed hands to-morrow-but you will not care a farthing about that now; so I must tell you all I know of departed majesty.  He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate.  A little after seven, he went into the water-closet; the German valet de chambre heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor, with a gash on his right temple, by falling against the corner of a bureau.  He tried to speak, could not, and expired.  Princess Emily was called, found him dead, and wrote to the Prince.  I know not a syllable, but am come to see and hear as much as I can.  I fear you will cry and roar all night, but one could not keep it from you.  For my part, like a new courtier, I comfort myself, considering what a gracious Prince comes next.  Behold my luck.  I wrote to Lord Bute, just in all the unexpecteds, want Of ambition, disinteresteds, etc. that I could amass, gilded with as much duty affection, zeal, etc. as possible, received a very gracious and sensible answer, and was to have been presented to-morrow, and the talk of the few people, that are in town, for a week.  Now I shall be lost in the crowd, shall be as well there as I desire to be, have done what was right, they know I want nothing, may be civil to me very cheaply, and I can go and see the puppet-show for this next month at my ease:  but perhaps you will think all this a piece of art; to be sure, I have timed my court, as luckily as possible, and contrived to be the last person in England that made interest with the successor.  You see virtue and philosophy always prone to know the world and their own interest.  However, I am not so abandoned a patriot yet, as to desert my friends immediately; you shall hear now and then the events of this new reign—­if I am not made secretary of state—­if I am, I shall certainly take care to let you know it.

I had really begun to think that the lawyers for once talked sense, when they said the King never dies.  He probably cot his death, as he liked to have done two years ago, by viewing the troops for the expedition from the wall of Kensington Garden.  My Lady Suffolk told me about a month ago that he had often told her, speaking of the dampness of Kensington, that he would never die there.  For my part, my man Harry will always be a favourite:  he tells me all the amusing news; he first told me of the late Prince of Wales’s death, and to-day of the King’s.

Thank you, Mr. Chute is as well as can be expected—­in this national affliction.  Sir Robert Brown has left every thing to my Lady—­aye, every thing, I believe his very avarice.