I guess, my dear lord, and only guess, that you are arrived at Wentworth Castle.  If you are not, my letter will lose none of its bloom by waiting for you; for I have nothing fresh to tell you, and only write because you enjoined it.  I settled in my Lilliputian towers but this morning.  I wish people would come into the country on May-day, and fix in town on the first of November.  But as they will not, I have made up my mind; and having so little time left, I prefer London, when my friends and society are in it, to living here alone, or with the weird sisters of Richmond and Hampton.  I had additional reason now, for the streets are as green as the fields:  we are burnt to the bone, and have not a lock of bay to cover our nakedness:  oats are so dear, that I suppose they will soon be eaten at Brooks’s and fashionable tables as a rarity.  The drought has lasted so long, that for this fortnight I have been foretelling haymaking and winter, which June generally produces; but to-day is sultry, and I am not a prophet worth a straw.  Though not resident till now, I have flitted backwards and forwards, and last Friday came hither to look for a minute at a ball at Mrs. Walsingham’s at Ditton which would have been pretty, for she had stuck coloured lamps in the hair of all her trees and bushes, if the east wind had not danced a reel all the time by the side of the river.  Mr. Conway’s play,(613) of which your lordship has seen some account in the papers, has succeeded delightfully, both in representation and applause.  The language is most genteel, though translated from verse; and both prologue and epilogue are charming.  The former was delivered most Justly and admirably by Lord Derby, and the latter with inimitable spirit and grace by Mrs. Damer.  Mr. Merry and Mrs. Bruce played excellently too.  But General Conway, Mrs. Damer, and every body else are drowned by Mr. Sheridan, whose renown has engrossed all Fame’s tongues and trumpets.  Lord Townshend said he should be sorry were he forced to give a vote directly on Hastings, before he had time to cool; and one of the peers saying the speech had not made the same impression on him, the Marquis replied, a seal might be finely cut, and yet not be in fault for making a bad impression.

I have, you see, been forced to send your lordship what scraps I brought from town:  the next four months, I doubt will reduce me to my old sterility; for I cannot retail French gazettes, though as a good Englishman bound to hope they will contain a civil war.  I care still less about the double imperial campaign, only hoping that the poor dear Turks will heartily beat both Emperor and Empress.  If the first Ottomans could be punished, they deserved it, but present possessors have as good a prescription ’on their side as any People in Europe.  We ourselves are Saxons, Danes, Normans; our neighbours are Franks, not Gauls; who the rest are, Goths, Gepidae, Heruli, Mr. Gibbon knows; and the Dutch usurped the