only for a fortnight in the opening of Spring; and this continued till I left the country.  My residence was eight miles east of Canterbury, in a little quiet valley on the skirts of Barham Down; in these parts the whole soil is chalk, and whenever it holds up, in half an hour it is dry enough to walk out.  I took the opportunity of three or four days fine weather to go into the Isle of Thanet, saw Margate (which is Bartholomew Fair by the seaside), Ramsgate, and other places there; and so came by Sandwich, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, and Hythe, back again.  The coast is not like Hartlepool, there are no rocks, but only chalky cliffs, of no great height, till you come to Dover.  There indeed they are noble and picturesque, and the opposite coasts of France begin to bound your view, which was left before to range unlimited by anything but the horizon; yet it is by no means a shipless sea, but everywhere peopled with white sails and vessels of all sizes in motion; and take notice (except in the Isle, which is all corn fields, and has very little enclosure), there are in all places hedgerows and tall trees, even within a few yards of the beach, particularly Hythe stands on an eminence covered with wood.  I shall confess we had fires of a night (aye and a day too) several times even in June:  but don’t go too far and take advantage of this, for it was the most untoward year that ever I remember.

Your friend Rousseau (I doubt) grows tired of Mr. Davenport and Derbyshire; he has picked a quarrel with David Hume, and writes him letters of fourteen pages folio, upbraiding him with all his noirceurs; take one only as a specimen.  He says, that at Calais they chanced to sleep in the same room together, and that he overheard David talking in his sleep, and saying, ’Ah! je le tiens, ce Jean-Jacques la.’  In short (I fear), for want of persecution and admiration (for these are his real complaints), he will go back to the Continent.

What shall I say to you about the ministry?  I am as angry as a common council man of London about my Lord Chatham; but a little more patient, and will hold my tongue till the end of the year.  In the meantime I do mutter in secret, and to you, that to quit the House of Commons, his natural strength, to sap his own popularity and grandeur (which no one but himself could have done) by assuming a foolish title; and to hope that he could win by it, and attach to him a court that hate him, and will dismiss him as soon as ever they dare, was the weakest thing that ever was done by so great a man.  Had it not been for this, I should have rejoiced at the breach between him and Lord Temple, and at the union between him and the Duke of Grafton and Mr. Conway:  but patience! we shall see!  Stonehewer perhaps is in the country (for he hoped for a month’s leave of absence), and if you see him you will learn more than I can tell you.

HORACE WALPOLE