I will hear of it?  Should I be a friend at all, if I wished you, for my sake, to travel in winter over mountains, or risk the storms at sea, that I have not forgotten when you went away?  Can I desire you to derange a reasonable plan of economy, that would put you quite at your ease at your return?  Have I any pretensions for expecting, still less for asking, such or any sacrifices?  Have I interested myself in your affairs only to embarrass them?

I do, in the most.  Positive and solemn manner, refuse to accept the smallest Sacrifice of any part of your plan, but the single point that would be so hard on me.  I will not say a word more on your return, and beg your pardon for having been so selfish as to desire it:  my only request now is, that we may say no more about it.  I am grieved that the great distance we are at must make me still receive letters about it for some weeks.  I shall not forget how very unreasonable I have been myself; nor shall I try to forget it, lest I should be silly again:  but I earnestly desire to be totally silent on a subject that I have totally abandoned, and which it is not at all improbable I may never have occasion to renew.

I knew the Comte de Coigny(731) in the year 1766:  he was then lively and jovial.  I did not think he would turn out a writer, or even reader; but he was agreeable.  I say nothing on France-you must know as much as I do, and probably sooner.  I will only tell you, that my opinion is not altered in a tittle.  What will happen I do not pretend to guess; but am thoroughly persuaded that the present system, if it can be called so, cannot take root.  The flirts towards anarchy here have no effect at all.  Horne Tooke before Christmas presented a saucy libel to the House of Commons, as a petition on his election.  The House contemptuously voted it only frivolous and vexatious, and disappointed him of a ray of martyrdom; but his fees, etc. will cost him three or four hundred pounds, which never go into a mob’s calculation of the ingredients of martyrdom.(732)

Monday morning, 14th.

I have a story to tell you, much too long to add to this; which I will send next post, unless I have leisure enough to-day, from people that call on me to finish it to-day, having begun it last night; and in that case I will direct it to Miss Agnes.  Mr. Lysons the clergyman has just been here, and told me of a Welsh sportsman, a Jacobite, I suppose, who has very recently had his daughter christened Louisa Victoria Maria Sobieski Foxhunter Moll Boycot.  The curate of the minister who baptized her confirmed the truth of it to Mr. Lysons.  When Belgiojoso, the Austrian minister, was here, and thought he could write English, he sent a letter to Miss Kennedy, a woman of the town, that began, “My Kennedy Polly dear girl.”  Apropos—­and not much—­pray tell me whether the Cardinal of York calls himself King; and whether James the Eighth, Charles the Fourth, or what?