My best compliments to the Dean,(233) and Corbet.  I have not heard from you, nor do I expect it.  Mrs. Smith says, that sometimes you do not return till 8 in the evening.  Then I suppose que vous mangez de gran appetit, et que vous dormez apres; so how, and when, am I to expect a letter?  Write or not write, I am satisfied that you are well, and be you, that I am most truly and affectionately yours.

I shall keep this half sheet for the news I may hear in Town, and as this letter is not to go till to-morrow.

Thursday m., Cleveland Court.—­I met no news in Town when I came, but the Princess Amelia has at present, in Dr. Warren’s(234) estimation, but a few days to live.  If her own wishes were completed in this respect she must have died yesterday, being on the same day in October that the late King died.  It is a pity that she should not have been gratified.  But she still hopes it will be in this month, that she may lose no reputation in point of prevoyance, which would be a pity.

It is not an unnatural thing, with our German family, to make a rendezvous as to death, and it has in more instances than one been kept.  K(ing) G(eorge) 1st took a final leave of the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, the night before he went to Hanover for the last time; and the Queen afterwards prophesied that she should not outlive the year in which she happened to die.

But her R. H. is firm and resigned, and, as Dr. Warren says, declares herself ready.  She flaps her sides as she sits up in her bed, as a turtle does with its fins, and says, “I am ready, I am ready.”

I heard yesterday that I have lost two other friends, whom I valued as much, and for the same reason, that their faces were familiar to me for above five and forty years.  I mean little Compton, Bully’s friend and minister, and Sturt of Dorsetshire, both victims to the gout.  I am also told that Sir G. Metham is dying. . . .

Harry Fox is to have a tolerable good fortune with his wife, which I am glad of.  But that she could like his person would amaze me, if I did not know that, for particular reasons, women will like anything.

(230) Frederick North, afterward fifth Earl of Guildford (1766-1827), the famous Greek scholar.  He was Lord North’s third and youngest son.

(231) Princess Amelia (1783-1810) was the youngest and most beloved of the children of George iii.  Always delrcate, the King was constantly concerned about her, and her dying gift of a ring with a lock of her hair is said to have helped to bring on his last mental illness.

(232) Queensberry Villa, which stood by the riverside, was purchased by the Duke of Queensberry in 1780.  It was built by the third Earl of Cholmondely in 1708, and subsequently became the property of the Earl of Brooke and Warwick, and then of Sir Richard Lyttleton.  It was purchased by John Earl Spencer for his mother, the Countess Cowper, on whose death, in 1780, it was sold.  The Duke of Queensberry bequeathed the house to Maria Fagniani (Mie Mie).  In 1831 it became the property of and was rebuilt by Sir William Dundas.  The old house was of red brick with a balcony running round it above the first floor windows. ("The History and Antiquities of Richmond,” by E. B. Chancellor, p. 160.)