Domestic news are scanty, but dismal, and you have seen them anticipated; as the loss of the young Lord Montague(867) and Mr. Burdett,(868) drowned in a cataract in Switzerland by their own obstinate folly.(869) Mr. Tickell’s death was a determined measure, and more shocking than the usual mode by a pistol.  He threw himself from one of the uppermost windows of the palace at Hampton Court, into the garden -an immense height!  Some attribute his despair to debts; some to a breach with his political friends.  I am not acquainted with, but am sorry for him, as I liked his writings.(870)

Our weather remains unparagoned; Mrs. Hastings is not more brilliant:  the elms are evergreens.  I a little regret your not seeing how beautiful Cliveden can be on the 7th of November; ay, and how warm.  Then the pheasants, partridges, and hares from Houghton, that you lose:  they would have exceeded Camacho’s wedding, and Sancho Panza would have talked chapters about them.  I am forced to send them about the neighbourhood, as if I were making interest to be chosen for the united royal burghs of Richmond and Hampton Court.  But all this is not worth sending:  I must wait for a better bouche.  I want Wurmser to be Caesar, and send me more Commentaries de Bello Gallico.  What do you say to those wretches who have created Death an endless Sleep,(871) that nobody may boggle at any crime for fear of hell?  Methinks they have no reason to dread the terrors of conscience in any Frenchman!

November 10th.

Hiatus non deflendus; for I have neither heard a word, nor had a word to say these three days.  Victories do not come every tide, like mackerel, or prizes in the Irish lottery.  Yesterday’s paper discounted a little of Neapolitan valour; but, as even the Dutch sometimes fight upon recollection, and as there was no account yet of O’Hara’s arrival at Toulon, I hope he will laugh or example lor’ Signori into spirit.

You Will Wonder at my resuming my letter, when I profess having nothing to add to it; but yours of the 7th is just arrived, and I could not make this commenced sheet lie quiet in my writing-box:  it would begin gossiping with your letter, though I vowed it shall not Set out till to-morrow.  “Why, you empty thing,” said I, “how do you know but there may have been a Gazette last night, crammed With vast news, which, as no paper comes out on Sundays, we shall not learn here; and would you be such a goose as to creep through Brentford and Hammersmith and Kensington, where the bells may be drinking some general’s health, and will scoff you for asking whose?  Indeed you Shall not stir before to-morrow.  Lysons is returned from Gloucestershire, and is to dine here to-day; and he will at least bring us a brick, like Harlequin, as a pattern of any town that we may have taken.  Moreover, no Post sets out from London on Sunday nights, and you would only sit guzzling—­I don’t mean you, Miss Berry, but you, my letter-with the clerks of the post-office.  Patience till tomorrow.”