My inquietude, that presented so many alarms to me before you set out, has, I find, and am grieved for it, not been quite in the Wrong.  Some inconveniences I am persuaded you have sunk:  yet the difficulty of landing at Dieppe, and the ransack of your poor harmless trunks at Bourgoin, and the wretched lodgings with which you were forced to take up at Turin, count deeply with me:  and I had much rather have lost all credit as a prophet, since I could not prevent your journey.  May it answer for your healths!  I doubt it will not in any other respect, as you have already found by the voiturins.  In point of pleasure, is it possible to divest myself so radically of all self-love as to wish you may find Italy as agreeable as you di formerly?  In all other lights, I do most fervently hope there will he no drawbacks on your plan.  Should you be disappointed in any way, you know what a warm heart is open to receive you back; and so will your own Cliveden(714) be too.

I am glad you met the Bishop of Arras,(715) and am much pleased that he remembers me.  I saw him very frequently at my dear old friend’s,.(716) and liked him the best of all Frenchmen I ever knew.  He is extremely sensible, easy, lively, and void of prejudices.  Should he fall in your way again, I beg you will tell him how sincere a regard I have for him.  He lived in the strictest union with his brother, the Archbishop of Tours, whom I was much less acquainted with, nor know if he be living.

I have heard nothing since my Tuesday’s letter.  As I still hope its predecessors will reach you, I will not repeat the trifling scraps of news I have sent you in them.  In fact, this is only a trial whether par Paris is a better passport than a direction without it; but I am grievously sorry to find difficulty of correspondence superadded to the vexation of losing you.  Writing to you was grown my chief occupation.  I wish.  Europe and its broils were in the East Indies, if they embarrass us quiet folks, who have nothing to do with their squabbles.  The Duchess of Gloucester, who called on me yesterday, charged me to give her compliments to you both.  Miss Foldson(717) has not yet sent me your pictures:  I was in town on Monday, and sent to reproach her with having twice broken her promise; her mother told my servant that Miss was at Windsor, drawing the Queen and Princesses.  That is not the work of a Moment.  I am glad all the Princes are not on the spot.

I think of continuing here till the weather grows very bad; which it has not been at all yet, though not equal to what I am rejoiced you have found.  I have no Somerset or Audley-street to receive me:  Mrs. Damer is gone too.  The Conways remain at Park-place till after Christmas; It is entirely out of fashion for women to grow old and stay at home in an evening.  They invite you, indeed, now and then, but do not expect to see you till near midnight; which is rather too late to begin the day, unless one was born but twenty years ago.  I do not condemn any fashions, which the young ought to set, for the old certainly ought not; but an oak that has been going on in its old way for an hundred years, cannot shoot into a May-pole in three years, because it is the mode to plant Lombardy poplars.