Though your lordship’s partiality extends even to my letters, you must perceive that they grow as antiquated as the writer.  News are the soul of letters:  when we give them a body of our own invention, it is as unlike to life as a statue.  I have withdrawn so much from the -world, that the newspapers know every thing before me, especially since they have usurped the province of telling every thing, private as -well as public:  and consequently, a great deal more than I should -wish to know, or like to report.  When I do hear the transactions of much younger people, they do not pass from my ears into my memory; nor does your lordship interest yourself more about them than I do.  Yet still, when one reduces one’s departments to such narrow limits, one’s correspondence suffers by it.  However, as I desire to show only my gratitude and attachment, not my wit, I shall certainly obey your lordship as long as you are content to read my letters, after I have told you fairly how little they can entertain you.

For imports of French, I believe we shall have few more.  They have not ruined us so totally by the war, much less enriched themselves so much by it, but that they who have been here, complained so piteously of the expensiveness of England, that probably they will deter others from a similar jaunt; nor, such is their fickleness, are the French Constant to any thing but admiration of themselves.  Their Anglomanie I hear has mounted, or descended, from our customs to our persons.  English people are in fashion at Versailles.  A Mr. Ellis,(496) who wrote some pretty verses at Bath two or three years ago, is a favourite there.  One who was so, or may be still, the Beau Dillon, came upon a very different errand; in short, to purchase at any price a book written by Linguet, which was just coming out, called “Antoinette.”  That will tell your lordship why the Beau Dillon(497) was the messenger.

Monsieur de Guignes and his daughters came hither; but it was at eight o’clock at night in the height of the deluge.  You may be sure I was much flattered by such a visit!  I was forced to light candles to show them any thing; and must have lighted the moon to show them the views.  If this is their way of seeing England, they might as well look at it with an opera-glass from the shores of Calais.

Mr. Mason is to come to me on Sunday, and will find me mighty busy in making my lock of hay, which is not Yet cut.  I don’t know why, but people are always more anxious about their hay than their corn, or twenty other things that cost them more.  I suppose my Lord Chesterfield, or some such dictator, made it fashionable to care about one’s hay.  Nobody betrays solicitude about getting in his rents.