My poor niece [Lady Waldegrave] does not forget her Lord, though by this time I suppose the world has.  She has taken a house here, at Twickenham, to be near me.  Madame de Boufflers has heard so much of her beauty, that she told me she should be glad to peep through a grate anywhere to get a glimpse of her,—­but at present it would not answer.  I never saw so great an alteration in so short a period; but she is too young not to recover her beauty, only dimmed by grief that must be temporary.  Adieu! my dear Sir.

Monday, May 2nd, ARLINGTON STREET.

The plot thickens:  Mr. Wilkes is sent to the Tower for the last North Briton;[1] a paper whose fame must have reached you.  It said Lord Bute had made the King utter a gross falsehood in his last speech.  This hero is as bad a fellow as ever hero was, abominable in private life, dull in Parliament, but, they say, very entertaining in a room, and certainly no bad writer, besides having had the honour of contributing a great deal to Lord Bute’s fall.  Wilkes fought Lord Talbot in the autumn, whom he had abused; and lately in Calais, when the Prince de Croy, the Governor, asked how far the liberty of the press extended in England, replied, I cannot tell, but I am trying to know.  I don’t believe this will be the only paragraph I shall send you on this affair.

[Footnote 1:  The celebrated No. 45 which attacked the speech with which the King had opened Parliament; asserting that it was the speech not of the King, but of the Ministers; and that as such he had a right to criticise it, and to denounce its panegyric of the late speech as founded on falsehood.]

A PARTY AT “STRABERRI”—­WORK OF HIS PRINTING PRESS—­EPIGRAMS—­A GARDEN PARTY AT ESHER.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

STRAWBERRY HILL, May 17, 1763.

“On vient de nous donner une tres jolie fete au chateau de Straberri:  tout etoit tapisse de narcisses, de tulipes, et de lilacs; des cors de chasse, des clarionettes; des petits vers galants faits par des fees, et qui se trouvoient sous la presse; des fruits a la glace, du the, du caffe, des biscuits, et force hot-rolls.”—­This is not the beginning of a letter to you, but of one that I might suppose sets out to-night for Paris, or rather, which I do not suppose will set out thither; for though the narrative is circumstantially true, I don’t believe the actors were pleased enough with the scene, to give so favourable an account of it.

The French do not come hither to see. A l’Anglaise happened to be the word in fashion; and half a dozen of the most fashionable people have been the dupes of it.  I take for granted that their next mode will be a l’Iroquaise, that they may be under no obligation of realising their pretensions.  Madame de Boufflers[1] I think will die a martyr to a taste, which she fancied she had, and finds she has not.  Never having stirred ten miles from Paris, and having only rolled in an easy coach from