My dear Sir, what a present and future picture have I given you!  The details are infinite, and what I have neither time, nor, for many reasons, the imprudence to send by the post:  your good sense will but too well lead you to develop them.  The crisis is most melancholy and alarming.  I remember two or three years ago I wished for more active times, and for events to furnish our correspondence.  I think I could write you a letter almost as big as my Lord Clarendon’s History.  What a bold man is he who shall undertake the administration!  How much shall we be obliged to him!  How mad is he, whoever is ambitious of it!  Adieu!

THE KING OF PRUSSIA’S VICTORIES—­VOLTAIRE’S “UNIVERSAL HISTORY."

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD.

STRAWBERRY HILL, July 4, 1757.

My Dear Lord,—­It is well I have not obeyed you sooner, as I have often been going to do:  what a heap of lies and contradictions I should have sent you!  What joint ministries and sole ministries!  What acceptances and resignations!—­Viziers and bowstrings never succeeded one another quicker.  Luckily I have stayed till we have got an administration that will last a little more than for ever.  There is such content and harmony in it, that I don’t know whether it is not as perfect as a plan which I formed for Charles Stanhope, after he had plagued me for two days for news.  I told him the Duke of Newcastle was to take orders, and have the reversion of the bishopric of Winchester; that Mr. Pitt was to have a regiment, and go over to the Duke; and Mr. Fox to be chamberlain to the Princess, in the room of Sir William Irby.  Of all the new system I believe the happiest is Offley; though in great humility he says he only takes the bedchamber to accommodate.  Next to him in joy is the Earl of Holdernesse—­who has not got the garter.  My Lord Waldegrave has; and the garter by this time I believe has got fifty spots.

Had I written sooner, I should have told your lordship, too, of the King of Prussia’s triumphs[1]—­but they are addled too!  I hoped to have had a few bricks from Prague to send you towards building Mr. Bentley’s design, but I fear none will come from thence this summer.  Thank God, the happiness of the menagerie does not depend upon administrations or victories!  The happiest of beings in this part of the world is my Lady Suffolk:  I really think her acquisition and conclusion of her law-suit will lengthen her life ten years.  You may be sure I am not so satisfied, as Lady Mary [Coke] has left Sudbroke.

[Footnote 1:  On the 6th of May Frederic defeated the Austrian army under Prince Charles of Lorraine and Marshal Brown in the battle of Prague.  Brown was killed, as also was the Prussian Marshal, Schwerin; indeed, the King lost eighteen thousand men—­nearly as many as had fallen on the side of the enemy; and the Austrian disaster was more than retrieved by the great victory of Kolin, gained by Marshal Daun, June 18th, to which Walpole probably alludes when he says Frederic’s “triumphs are addled.”]