I have exhausted my gazette; and this being both Easter and Newmarket week, I may possibly have nothing to tell you by to-morrow se’nnight’s post, and may wait till Friday se’nnight:  of which I give you notice, lest you should think I have had a fall, and hurt my nose which I know gives one’s friend a dreadful alarm.  Good night!

P. S. I never saw such a blotted letter:  I don’t know how you will read it.  I am so earnest when writing to you two, that I omit half the words, and write too small; but I will try to mend.

(779) Francis Godolphin Osborne, fifth Duke of Leeds.  In 1776, he was appointed a lord of the bedchamber, and in 1783, secretary of state for foreign affairs.  He was succeeded in the office by Lord Grenville.-E.

(780) The numbers on the division were, for the abolition 88, against it 163.-E.

(781) In a letter written on this day, Miss More says,—­“My time has been literally passed with thief takers, officers of justice, and such pretty kind of people.”  The young lady, who was an heiress and only fourteen years of age, had been trepanned away from school.  All the efforts to discover the victim proved fruitless; the poor girl having been betrayed into a marriage and carried to the Continent.-E.

(782) The Earl of Bristol; for an account of whom, see ante, p. 236, letter 182.-E.

(783) A natural daughter of Lord Cholmondeley.

(784) Armand-Emanuel du Plessis, Duc do Richelieu.  He had just succeeded to the title, by the death of his father.  In the preceding year, he had entered a volunteer into the service of Catherine the Second, and distinguished himself at the siege of Ismael, not more by his bravery than his humanity; as appears by the following anecdote recorded in the “Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie,” tom. iii. p. 217:—­“Je sauvai la vie `a une fille de dix ans, dont l’innocence et la candeur formaient un contraste bien frappant avec la rage de tout ce qui mlenvironnait.  En arrivant sur le bastion o`u commen`ca le carnage, j’apperus un groupe de quatre femmes `egorg`ees, entre lesquelles cet enfant, d’une figure charmante, cherchait un asile contre la fureur de deux Kosaks qui `etaient sur le point de la massacrer:  ce spectacle m’attira bient`ot, et je n’h`esitai pas, comme on peut le croire, prendre entre mes bras cette infortun`ee, que les barbares voulaient y poursuivre encore.”  Lord Byron has paraphrased the affecting incident in the eighth canto of Don Juan:—­

“Upon a taken bastion, where there lay
Thousands of slaughter’d men, a yet warm group
Of murder’d women, who had found their way
To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop
And shudder;—­while, as beautiful as May,
A female child of ten years tried to stoop
And hide her little palpitating breast
Amidst the bodies lull’d in bloody rest. 
Two villainous Cossacques pursued the child
With flashing eyes, and weapons. * * *
Don Juan raised his little captive from
The heap, a moment more had made her tomb.”