It is an age, I own, since I wrote to you:  but except politics, what was there to send you? and for politics, the present are too contemptible to be recorded by anybody but journalists, gazetteers, and such historians!  The ordinary of Newgate, or Mr. ——­, who write for their monthly half-crown, and who are indifferent whether Lord Bute, Lord Melcombe, or Maclean [the highwayman], is their hero, may swear they find diamonds on dunghills; but you will excuse me, if I let our correspondence lie dormant rather than deal in such trash.  I am forced to send Lord Hertford and Sir Horace Mann such garbage, because they are out of England, and the sea softens and makes palatable any potion, as it does claret; but unless I can divert you, I had rather wait till we can laugh together; the best employment for friends, who do not mean to pick one another’s pocket, nor make a property of either’s frankness.  Instead of politics, therefore, I shall amuse you to-day with a fairy tale.

I was desired to be at my Lady Suffolk’s on New-year’s morn, where I found Lady Temple and others.  On the toilet Miss Hotham spied a small round box.  She seized it with all the eagerness and curiosity of eleven years.  In it was wrapped up a heart-diamond ring, and a paper in which, in a hand as small as Buckinger’s[1] who used to write the Lord’s Prayer in the compass of a silver penny, were the following lines:—­

    Sent by a sylph, unheard, unseen,
    A new-year’s gift from Mab our queen: 
    But tell it not, for if you do,
    You will be pinch’d all black and blue. 
    Consider well, what a disgrace,
    To show abroad your mottled face: 
    Then seal your lips, put on the ring,
    And sometimes think of Ob. the king.

[Footnote 1:  Buckinger was a dwarf born without hands or feet.]

You will eagerly guess that Lady Temple was the poetess, and that we were delighted with the gentleness of the thought and execution.  The child, you may imagine, was less transported with the poetry than the present.  Her attention, however, was hurried backwards and forwards from the ring to a new coat, that she had been trying on when sent for down; impatient to revisit her coat, and to show the ring to her maid, she whisked upstairs; when she came down again, she found a letter sealed, and lying on the floor—­new exclamations!  Lady Suffolk bade her open it:  here it is:—­

    Your tongue, too nimble for your sense,
    Is guilty of a high offence;
    Hath introduced unkind debate,
    And topsy-turvy turn’d our state. 
    In gallantry I sent the ring,
    The token of a love-sick king: 
    Under fair Mab’s auspicious name
    From me the trifling present came. 
    You blabb’d the news in Suffolk’s ear;
    The tattling zephyrs brought it here;
    As Mab was indolently laid
    Under a poppy’s spreading shade. 
    The jealous queen started