two or three thousand pounds.  After that, while people are preparing to come to town for the winter, the Ministry is suddenly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened, a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that the new arrangement cannot last a month.  The Parliament opens; everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to be composed of adamant.  November passes, with two or three self-murders, and a new play.  Christmas arrives; everybody goes out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres.  The Parliament meets again; taxes are warmly opposed; and some citizen makes his fortune by a subscription.  The opposition languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peerage or two.  Ranelagh opens and Vauxhall; one produces scandal, and t’other a drunken quarrel.  People separate, some to Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and so the year comes again to October.  I dare to prophesy, that if you keep this letter, you will find that my future correspondence will be but an illustration of this text; at least, it is an excuse for my having very little to tell you at present, and was the reason of my not writing to you last week.

[Illustration:  HORACE WALPOLE.

From a picture in the National Portrait Gallery, by Nathaniel Hone, R.A.]

Before the Parliament adjourned, there was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the Ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes:[1] it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing Mr. Charles Townshend, who, having sat silent through the question of privilege, found himself interested in the defence of Dr. Brocklesby![2] Charles ridiculed Lord North extremely, and had warm words with George Grenville.  I do not look upon this as productive of consequential speaking for the opposition; on the contrary, I should expect him sooner in place, if the Ministry could be fools enough to restore weight to him, and could be ignorant that he can never hurt them so much as by being with them.  Wilkes refused to see Heberden and Hawkins, whom the House commissioned to visit him; and to laugh at us more, sent for two Scotchmen, Duncan and Middleton.  Well! but since that, he is gone off himself:  however, as I did in D’Eon’s case, I can now only ask news of him from you, not tell you any; for you have got him.  I do not believe you will invite him, and make so much of him, as the Duke of Bedford did.  Both sides pretend joy at his being gone; and for once I can believe both.  You will be diverted, as I was, at the cordial esteem the ministers have for one another; Lord Waldegrave told my niece [Lady Waldegrave], this morning, that he had offered a shilling, to receive a hundred pounds when Sandwich shall lose his head! what a good opinion they have of one another! apropos to losing heads, is Lally[3] beheaded?