defensive alliances with those two Empresses, I did not see of what use his accession to this treaty, if merely a defensive one, could be, either to himself or the other contracting parties; but that, however, if it was only desired as an indication of the King’s good will, I would give him an act by which his Majesty should accede to that treaty, as far, but no further, as at present he stood engaged to the respective Empresses by the defensive alliances subsisting with each.  This offer by no means satisfied him; which was a plain proof of the secret articles now brought to light, and into which the court of Vienna hoped to draw us.  I told Wassenaer so, and after that I heard no more of his invitation.

I am still bewildered in the changes at Court, of which I find that all the particulars are not yet fixed.  Who would have thought, a year ago, that Mr. Fox, the Chancellor, and the Duke of Newcastle, should all three have quitted together?  Nor can I yet account for it; explain it to me if you can.  I cannot see, neither, what the Duke of Devonshire and Fox, whom I looked upon as intimately united, can have quarreled about, with relation to the Treasury; inform me, if you know.  I never doubted of the prudent versatility of your Vicar of Bray:  But I am surprised at O’Brien Windham’s going out of the Treasury, where I should have thought that the interest of his brother-in-law, George Grenville, would have kept him.

Having found myself rather worse, these two or three last days, I was obliged to take some ipecacuanha last night; and, what you will think odd, for a vomit, I brought it all up again in about an hour, to my great satisfaction and emolument, which is seldom the case in restitutions.

You did well to go to the Duke of Newcastle, who, I suppose, will have no more levees; however, go from time to time, and leave your name at his door, for you have obligations to him.  Adieu.

LETTER CCIV

Bath, December 14, 1756.

My dear friend:  What can I say to you from this place, where every day is still but as the first, though by no means so agreeably passed, as Anthony describes his to have been?  The same nothings succeed one another every day with me, as, regularly and uniformly as the hours of the day.  You will think this tiresome, and so it is; but how can I help it?  Cut off from society by my deafness, and dispirited by my ill health, where could I be better?  You will say, perhaps, where could you be worse?  Only in prison, or the galleys, I confess.  However, I see a period to my stay here; and I have fixed, in my own mind, a time for my return to London; not invited there by either politics or pleasures, to both which I am equally a stranger, but merely to be at home; which, after all, according to the vulgar saying, is home, be it ever so homely.