Hor.  Walpole.

Though far unworthy to enter into so learned and political a correspondence, I am employed pour barbouiller une page de 7 pounces et demie en hauteur, et `a en largeur; and to inform you that we are at Florence, a city of Italy, and the capital of Tuscany:  the latitude I cannot justly tell, but it is governed by a prince called Great Duke; an excellent place to employ all one’s animal sensations in, but utterly contrary to one’s rational powers.  I have struck a medal upon myself:  the device is thus 0, and the motto Nihilissimo, which I take in the most concise manner to contain a full account of my person, sentiments, occupations, and late glorious successes.  If you choose to be annihilated too, you cannot do better than undertake this journey.  Here you shall get up at twelve o’clock, breakfast till three, dine till five, sleep till six, drink cooling liquors till eight, go to the bridge till ten, sup till two, and so sleep till twelve again.

Lahore fessi venimus ad larem nostrum,
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto;
Hoc est, quod unum est, pro laborious tantis. 
O quid solutis est beatius curis?

We shall never come home again; a universal war is just upon the point of breaking out; all outlets will be shut up.  I shall be secure in my nothingness, while you, that will be so absurd as to exist, will envy me.  You don’t tell me what proficiency you make in the noble science of defence.  Don’t you start still at the sound of a gun?  Have you learned to say ha! ha! and is your neck clothed with thunder?  Are your whiskers of a tolerable length?  And have you got drunk yet with brandy and gunpowders?  Adieu, noble captain!  T. Gray.

(209) On the 24th March, 1740, the Spaniards hung out a white flag, and the place was surrendered by capitulation to Admiral Vernon.-E.

(210) The Duke of Cumberland had resolved to accompany Sir John Norris as a volunteer, and sailed with him from St. Helens on the 10th June; but on the 17th a gale arising drove them into Torbay, Where Sir John continued until the 29th, when he again put to sea; but the wind once more becoming contrary, and blowing very hard, he was constrained to return to Spithead, and on the following day his royal highness returned to London.-E.

161 Letter 26 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Florence, September 25, 1740, N. S.

My dear Hal, I begin to answer your letter the moment I have read it, because you bid me; but I grow so unfit for a correspondence with any body in England, that I have almost left it off.  ’Tis so long since I was there, and I am so utterly a stranger to every thing that passes there, that I must talk vastly in the dark to those I write:  and having in a manner settled myself here, where there can be no news, I am void of all matter for filling up a letter.  As, by the absence of the Great Duke, Florence is become in a manner a country town, you