(120) The first dismemberment of Poland had taken place in the preceding year, by which a third of her territory was ceded to Russia, Austria, and Prussia.-E.

(121) To see the review of the French regiment of Carabineers, then commanded by Monsieur de Guisnes.

(122) Alluding to the Letter to Rousseau in the name of the King of Prussia.

(123) Percy Wyndham Obrien.  He was the second son of Sir Charles Wyndham, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Anne; and took the name of Obrien, pursuant to the Earl of Thomond in Ireland.

(124) The Countess of Albany.-E.

Letter 72 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, Sept. 7, 1774. (page 99)

I did not think you had been so like the rest of the world, as, when you pretended to be visiting armies, to go in search of gold and silver mines!(125) The favours of courts and the smiles of emperors and kings, I see, have corrupted even you, and perverted you to a nabob.  Have you brought away an ingot in the calf of your leg?  What abomination have you committed?  All the gazettes in Europe have sent you on different negotiations:  instead of returning With a treaty in your pocket, you will only come back with bills of exchange.  I don’t envy your subterraneous travels, nor the hospitality of the Hungarians.  Where did you find a spoonful of Latin about you?  I have not attempted to speak Latin these thirty years, without perceiving I was talking Italian thickened with terminations in us and orum.  I should have as little expected to find an Ovid in those regions; but I suppose the gentry of Presburg read him for a fashionable author, as our squires and their wives do the last collections of ballads that have been sung at Vauxhall and Marybone.  I wish you may have brought away some sketches of Duke Albert’s architecture.  You know I deal in the works of royal authors, though I have never admired any of their own buildings, not excepting King Solomon’s temple.  Stanley(126) and Edmondson in Hungary!  What carried them thither?  The chase of mines too?  The first, perhaps, waddled thither obliquely, as a parrot would have done whose direction was to Naples.

Well, I am glad you have been entertained, and seen such a variety of sights.  You don’t mind fatigues and hardships, and hospitality, the two extremes that to me poison travelling.  I shall never see any thing more, unless I meet with a ring that renders one invisible.  It was but the other day that, being with George Selwyn at Gloucester, I Went to view Berkeley Castle, knowing the Earl was to dine with the mayor of Gloucester.  Alas! when I arrived, he had put off the party to enjoy his militia a day longer, and the house was full of officers.  They might be in the Hungarian dress, for aught I knew; for I was so dismayed, that I would"fain have persuaded the housekeeper that she could not show me the apartments; and when she opened the hall, and I saw it full of captains, I hid myself in a dark passage, and nothing could persuade me to enter, till they had the civility to quit the place.  When I was forced at last to go over the castle, I ran through it without seeing any thing, as if I had been afraid of being detained prisoner.