We are expecting another battle, and a congress at the same time.  Ministers seem to be flocking to Aix la Chapelle:  and, what will much surprise you, unless you have lived long enough not to be surprised, is, that Lord Bolingbroke has hobbled the same way too—­you will suppose, as a minister for France; I tell you, no.  My uncle [old Horace], who is here, was yesterday stumping along the gallery with a very political march:  my Lord asked him whither he was going.  Oh, said I, to Aix la Chapelle.

You ask me about the marrying Princesses.  I know not a tittle.  Princess Louisa seems to be going, her clothes are bought; but marrying our daughters makes no conversation.  For either of the other two, all thoughts seem to be dropped of it.  The Senate of Sweden design themselves to choose a wife for their man of Lubeck.

The City, and our supreme governors, the mob, are very angry that there is a troop of French players at Clifden.  One of them was lately impertinent to a countryman, who thrashed him.  His Royal Highness sent angrily to know the cause.  The fellow replied, “he thought to have pleased his Highness in beating one of them, who had tried to kill his father and had wounded his brother.”  This was not easy to answer.

I delight in Prince Craon’s exact intelligence!  For his satisfaction, I can tell him that numbers, even here, would believe any story full as absurd as that of the King and my Lord Stair; or that very one, if anybody will write it over.  Our faith in politics will match any Neapolitan’s in religion.  A political missionary will make more converts in a county progress than a Jesuit in the whole empire of China, and will produce more preposterous miracles.  Sir Watkin Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the whole principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the King was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen.  We are not good at hitting off anti-miracles, the only way of defending one’s own religion.  I have read an admirable story of the Duke of Buckingham, who, when James II. sent a priest to him to persuade him to turn Papist, and was plied by him with miracles, told the doctor, that if miracles were proofs of a religion, the Protestant cause was as well supplied as theirs.  We have lately had a very extraordinary one near my estate in the country.  A very holy man, as you might be, Doctor, was travelling on foot, and was benighted.  He came to the cottage of a poor dowager, who had nothing in the house for herself and daughter but a couple of eggs and a slice of bacon.  However, as she was a pious widow, she made the good man welcome.  In the morning, at taking leave, the saint made her over to God for payment, and prayed that whatever she should do as soon as he was gone she might continue to do all day.  This was a very unlimited request, and, unless the saint was a prophet too, might not have been very pleasant retribution.  The good woman, who minded her affairs, and was not to be put