or Baker, would think it begins well, that is, begins ill; it has rained without intermission, and yesterday there came a cargo of bad news, all which, you know, are similar omens to a man who writes history upon the information of the clouds.  Berlin is taken by the Prussians, the hereditary Prince beaten by the French.  Poor Lord Downe has had three wounds.  He and your brother’s Billy Pitt are prisoners.  Johnny Waldegrave was shot through the hat and through the coat; and would have been shot through the body, if he had had any.  Irish Johnson is wounded in the hand; Ned Harvey somewhere; and Prince Ferdinand mortally in his reputation for sending this wild detachment.  Mr. Pitt has another reign to set to rights.  The Duke of Cumberland has taken Lord Sandwich’s, in Pall-mall; Lord Chesterfield has offered his house to Princess Emily; and if they live at Hampton-court, as I suppose his court will, I may as well offer Strawberry for a royal nursery; for at best it will become a cakehouse; ’tis such a convenient airing for the maids of honour.  If I was not forced in conscience to own to you, that my own curiosity is exhausted, I would ask you, if you would not come and look at this new world; but a new world only reacted by old players is not much worth seeing; I shall return on Saturday.  The Parliament is prorogued till the day it was to have met; the will is not opened; what can I tell you more?  Would it be news that all is hopes and fears, and that great lords look as if they dreaded wanting bread? would this be news? believe me, it all grows stale soon.  I had not seen such a sight these three-and-thirty years:  I came eagerly to town; I laughed for three days-.  I am tired already.  Good night!

P. S. I smiled to myself last night.  Out of excess of attention, which costs me nothing, when I mean it should cost nobody else any thing, I went last night to Kensington to inquire after Princess Emily and Lady Yarmouth:  nobody knew me, they asked my name.  When they heard it, they did not seem ever to have heard it before, even in that house.  I waited half an hour in a lodge with a footman of Lady Yarmouth’s; I would not have waited so long in her room a week ago; now it only diverted me.  Even moralizing is entertaining, when one laughs at the same time; but I pity those who don’t moralize till they cry.

Letter 52 To Sir Horace Mann.

Arlington Street, Oct. 28, 1760. (page 98)

The deaths of kings travel so much faster than any post, that I cannot expect to tell you news, when I say your old master is dead.  But I can pretty well tell you what I like best to be able to say to you on this occasion, that you are in no danger.  Change Will scarce reach to Florence when its hand is checked even in the capital.  But I will move a little regularly, and then you will form your judgment more easily—­This is Tuesday; on Friday night the King went to bed in perfect health, and