Saturday, Dec. 14, 1793.

I am glad this is to be the last of my gazettes.  I am tired of notifying and recalling the articles of news:  not that I am going to dislaurel the Duke of Brunswick; but not a sprig is yet come in confirmation.  Military critics even conjecture, by the journals from Manheim and Frankfort, that the German victories have not been much more than repulses of the French, and have been bought dearly.  I have inclined to believe the best from Wurmser; but I confess my best hopes are from the factions of Paris.  If the gangrene does not gain the core, how calculate the duration?  It has already baffled all computation, all conjecture.  One wonders now that France, in its totality, was not more fatal to Europe than even it was.  Is not it astonishing, that after five years of such havoc, such emigrations, expulsions, massacres, annihilation of commerce, evanition Of specie, and real or impending famine, they can still furnish and support armies against us and the Austrians in Flanders, against the Duke of Brunswick and Wurmser, against us at Toulon, against the King of Sardinia, against Spain, against the Royalists in La Vend`ee, and along the coast against our expedition under Lord Moira; and though we have got fifteen of their men-of-war at Toulon, they have sixteen, or more, at Brest, and are still impertinent with a fry of privateers?  Consider, too, that all this spirit is kept up by the most extravagant lies, delusions, rhodomontade; by the extirpation of the usual root of enthusiasm, religion; and by the terror of murder, that ought to revolt all mankind.  If such a system of destruction does not destroy itself, there is an end of that ignis fatuus, human reason; and French policy must govern, or exterminate mankind.

I this moment received Your Thursday’s note, with that for your housekeeper, who is in town, and with those sweet words, “You need not leave a card; we shall be at home.”  I do not believe I shall send you an excuse.  Marshal Conway has stopped in to tell me, he has Just met with his nephew, Lord Yarmouth,(886) who has received a letter from a foreign minister at Manheim, who asserts all the Duke of Brunswick’s victories, and the destruction or dispersion of the French army in that quarter.  The Earl maintains, that the King of Prussia’s politics are totally changed to the right, and that eighteen thousand more of his troops have joined the allies.  I should like to know, and to have the Convention know, that the murder of the Queen of France has operated this revulsion.

I hope I send you no more falsehoods-at least, you must allow, that it is not on bad authority.  If Lord Howe has disappointed you, you will accept the prowess of the virago his sister, Mrs. Howe.(887) As soon as it was known that her brother had failed, a Jacobin mob broke her windows, mistaking them for his.  She lifted up the sash, and harangued them; told them, that was not the house of her brother, Who lives in the other part of Grafton-street, and that she herself is a widow, and that that house is hers.  She stilled the waves, and they dispersed quietly.