We are likely at last to have no opera next year:  Handel has had a palsy, and can’t compose; and the Duke of Dorset has set himself strenuously to oppose it, as Lord Middlesex is the impresario, and must ruin the house of Sackville by a course of these follies.  Besides what he will lose this year, he has not paid his share to the losses of the last; and yet is singly undertaking another for next season, with
the almost certainty of losing
between four or five thousand pounds, to which the
deficiencies of the opera generally amount now.  The
Duke of Dorset has desired the King
not to subscribe; but Lord Middlesex is so obstinate, that this will probably only make him lose a
thousand pounds more.

The Freemasons are in so low repute now in England, that one has scarce heard the proceedings at Vienna against them mentioned.  I believe nothing but a persecution could bring them into vogue again here.  You know, as great as our follies are, we even grow tired of them, and are always changing.

(809) Physician of Bedlam-

“Those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down."-E.

(810) He afterwards came to England, where he suffered much from poverty and destitution, and was finally arrested by his creditors and confined in the King,’s Bench prison.  He was released from thence under the Insolvent Act, having registered the kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.  Shortly after this event he died, December 11, 1756, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne’s, Soho, where Horace Walpole erected a marble slab to his memory.  He was an adventurer, whose name was Theodore Anthony, Baron Newhoff, and was born at Metz, in 1686.  Walpole, who had seen him, describes him as “a comely, middle-sized man, very reserved, and affecting much dignity,"-D.

(811) The secretaries of state and lord treasurer carry their papers in a green velvet bag.

(812) Stosch used to pretend to send over an exact journal of the life of the Pretender and his sons, though he had been sent out of Rome at the Pretender’s request, and must have
                          had very bad, or no intelligence, of
what passed in that family.

(813) The admiral had recently said, in the House of Commons, that “there was not, on this side Hell, a nation so burthened with taxes as England."-E.

322 Letter 106 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, May 12, 1743.

It is a fortnight since I got any of your letters, but I will expect two at once.  I don’t tell you by way of news, because you will have had expresses, but I must talk of the great Austrian victory!(814) We have not heard the exact particulars yet, nor whether it was Kevenhuller or lobkowitz who beat the Bavarians; but their general, Minucci, is prisoner.  At first, they said Seckendorffe was too; I am glad he is not:  poor man, he has suffered enough by the house of Austria!  But my joy is beyond the common, for I flatter myself this victory will save us one:  we talk of nothing, but its producing a peace, and then one’s friends will return.