As to your embroil with Richcourt, I condemn you excessively:  not that you was originally in fault, but by seeming to own yourself so.  He is an impertinent fellow, and will be so if you’ll let him.  My dear child, act with the spirit of your friends here; show we have lost no credit by losing power, and that a little Italian minister must not dare to insult you.  Publish the accounts I send you; which I give you my honour are authentic.  If they are not, let Cytheris, your Antony’s travelling concubine, contradict them.

You tell me the St. Quintin is arrived at Genoa:  I see by the prints of to-day that it is got to leghorn:  I am extremely glad, for I feared for it, for the poor boy, and for the things.  Tell me how you like your secretary.  I shall be quite happy, if I have placed one with you that you like.

I laughed much at the family of cats I am to receive.  I believe they will be extremely welcome to Lord Islay now:  for he appears little, lives more darkly and more like a wizard than ever.  These huge cats will figure prodigiously in his cell:  he is of’ the mysterious, dingy nature of Stosch.

As words is what I have not rhetoric to find out to thank you, for sending me this paragraph of Madame Goldsworthy, I can only tell you that I have laughed for an hour at it.  This was one of my Lady Pomfret’s correspondents.

There seems to be a little stop in our embarkations:  since the first, they have discovered that the horse must not go till all the hay is provided.  Three thousand men will make a fine figure towards supporting the balance of power!  Our whole number was to be but sixteen; and if all these cannot be assembled before the end of July, what will be said of it?

The Secret Committee go on very pitifully:  they are now inquiring about some customhouse officers that were turned out at Weymouth for voting wrong at elections.  Don’t you think these articles will prove to the world what they have been saying of Sir Robert for these twenty years?  The House still sits in observance to them; which is pleasant to me, for it keeps people in town.  We have operas too; but they are almost over, and if it were not for a daily east wind, they would give way to Vauxhall and Chelsea.  The new directors have agreed with the Fumagalli for next year, but she is to be second woman:  they keep the Visconti.  Did I never mention the Bettina, the first dancer.  It seems she was kept by a Neapolitan prince, who is extremely jealous of her thither.  About a fortnight ago, she fell ill, upon which her Neapolitan footman made off immediately.  She dances again, but is very weak, and thinks herself poisoned.

Adieu! my dear child; tell me you are well, easy, and in spirits:  kiss the Chutes for me, and believe me, etc

(581) This alludes to an account given by Sir Horace Mann, in one of his letters, of the change he had observed in the manner of many of the Florentines towards himself since Sir Robert Walpole’s retirement from office, upon the supposition entertained by them that he was intimately connected with the fallen minister@D.