I have no news to send you:  if I had any, I would not conclude, as all correspondents do, that Lady Ailesbury left nothing Untold.  Lady Powis is gone to hold mobs at Ludlow, where there is actual war, and where a knight, I forget his name, one of their friends, has been almost cut in two with a scythe.  When you have seen all the armies in Europe, you will be just in time for many election-battles—­perhaps, for a war in America, whither more troops are going.  Many of those already sent have deserted; and to be sure the- prospect there is not smiling.  Apropos, Lord Mahon,(127) whom Lord Stanhope, his father, will not suffer to wear powder because wheat is so dear, was presented t’other day in coal-black hair and a white feather:  they said, “he had been tarred and feathered.”

In France you will find a new scene.(128) The Chancellor is sent, a little before his time, to the devil.  The old Parliament is expected back.  I am sorry to say I shall not meet you there.  It will be too late in the year for me to venture, especially as I now live in dread of my biennial gout, and should die of it in an h`otel garni, and forced to receive all comers—­I, who you know lock myself up when I am ill as if I had the plague.

I wish I could fill my sheet, in return for your five pages.  The only thing-you will care for knowing is, that I never saw Mrs. Damer better in her life, nor look so well.  You may trust me, who am so apt to be frightened about her.

(125) Mr. Conway had gone to see the gold and silver mines of cremnitz, in the neighbourhood of Grau, in Hungary.

(126) Mr. Hans Stanley.

(127) Charles Viscount Mahon, born on the 3d of August 1753.  In the following December, he married Lady Hester Pitt, eldest daughter of the Earl of Chatham.  He succeeded his father, as third Earl Stanhope, in March 1786, and died in 1816.-E.

(128) In Consequence of the death of Louis xv. on the 10th of May.-E.

Letter 73 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Strawberry Hill, Sept. 27, 1774. (page 101)

I should be very ungrateful indeed if I thought of complaining of you, who are goodness itself to me:  and when I did not receive letters from ’you, I concluded it happened from your eccentric positions.  I am amazed, that hurried as you have been, and your eyes and thoughts- crowded with objects, you have been able to find time to write me so many and such long letters, over and above all those to Lady, Ailesbury, your daughter, brother, and other friends.  Even Lord Strafford brags of your frequent remembrance.  That your superabundance of royal beams would dazzle you, I never suspected.  Even I enjoy for you the distinctions you have received—­though I should hate such things for myself, as they are particularly troublesome to me,’and I am particularly awkward under them, and as I abhor the King of Prussia, and if I passed through Berlin, should have no joy