309 Letter 97
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Feb. 13, 1743.

Ceretesi tells me that Madame Galli is dead:  I have had two letters from you this week; but the last mentions only the death of old Strozzi.  I am quite sorry for Madame Galli, because I proposed seeing her again, on my return to Florence, which I have firmly in my intention:  I hope it will be a little before Ceretesi’s, for he seems to be planted here.  I don’t conceive who -waters him!  Here are two noble Venetians that have carried him about lately to Oxford and Blenheim:  I am literally waiting for him now, to introduce him to Lady Brown’s sunday night; it is the great mart for all travelling and travelled calves-pho! here he is.

Monday morning.-Here is your brother:  he tells me you never hear from me; how can that be?  I receive yours, and you generally mention having got one of mine, though long after the time you should.  I never miss above one post, and that but very seldom.  I am longer receiving yours, though you have never missed; but then-I frequently receive two at once.  I am delighted with Goldsworthy’s mystery about King Theodore!  If you will promise me not to tell him, I will tell you@a secret, which is, that if that person is not King Theodore, I assure you it is not Sir Robert Walpole.

I have nothing to tell you but that Lord Effingham Howard(775) is dead, and Lord Litchfield(776) at the point of death; he was struck with a palsy last Thursday.  Adieu!

(775) Francis, first Earl of Effingham, and seventh Lord Howard of Effingham.  He died February 12, 1743.-D.

(776) George Henry Lee, second Earl of Lichfield.  He died February 15, 1743.-D.

309 Letter 98 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Feb. 24, 1743.

I write to you in the greatest hurry in the world, but write I will.  Besides, I must wish you joy; you are warriors; nay, conquerors;(777) two things quite novel in this war, for hitherto it has been armies without fighting, and deaths without killing.  We talk of this battle as of a comet; “Have you heard of the battle?” it Is so strange a thing, that numbers imagine you may go (ind see it at Charing Cross.  Indeed, our officers, who are going to Flanders, don’t quite like it; they are afraid it should grow the fashion to fight, and that a pair of colours should be no longer a sinecure.  I am quite unhappy about poor Mr. Chute:  besides, it is cruel to find that abstinence is not a drug.  If mortification ever ceases to be a medicine, or virtue to be a passport to carnivals in the other world, who will be a self-tormentor any longer-not, my child, that I am one; but, tell me, is he quite recovered?

I thank you for King Theodore’s declaration,(778) and wish Him success with all my soul.  I hate the Genoese; they make a commonwealth the most devilish of all tyrannies!

We have every now and then motions for disbanding Hessians and Hanoverians, alias mercenaries; but they come to nothing.  To-day the party have declared that they have done for this session; so you will hear little more but of fine equipages for Flanders:  our troops are actually marched, and the officers begin to follow them-1 hopes they know whither!  You know in the last war in Spain, Lord Peterborough rode galloping about to inquire for his army.