A thousand loves to the Chutes.  Does my sovereign lady yet remember me, or has she lost with her eyes all thought of m!  Adieu!

P.S.  Princess Louisa goes soon to her young Denmark:  and Princess Emily, it is now said, will have the man of Lubeck.  If he had missed the crown of Sweden, he was to have taken Princess Caroline, because, in his private capacity, he was not a competent match for the now-first daughter of England.  He is extremely handsome; it is fifteen years since Princess Emily was so.

(841) William-Matthias, third Earl of Stafford.  He died in 1751 without issue.-E.

335 letter 115 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, July 31, 1743.

If I went by my last week’s reason for not writing to you, I should miss this post too, for I have no more to tell you than I had then; but at that rate, there would be great vacuums in our correspondence.  I am still here, waiting for the Dominichin and the rest of the things.  I have incredibly trouble about them, for they arrived just as the quarantine was established.  Then they found out that the Pembroke had left the fleet so long before the infection in Sicily began, and had not touched at any port there, that the admiralty absolved it.  Then the things were brought up; then they were sent back to be aired; and still I am not to have them in a week.  I tremble for the pictures; for they are to be aired at the rough discretion of a master of a hoy, for nobody I could send would be suffered to go aboard.  The city is outrageous; for you know, to merchants there is no plague so dreadful as a stoppage of their trade.  The regency are so temporizing and timid, especially in this inter-ministerium, that I am in great apprehensions of our having the plague an island, so many ports, no power absolute or active enough to establish the necessary precautions, and all are necessary!  And now it is on the continent too!  While confined to Sicily there were hopes:  but I scarce conceive that it will stop in two or three villages in Calabria.  My dear child, Heaven preserve you from it!  I am in the utmost pain on its being so near you.  What will you do! whither will you go, if it reaches Tuscany?  Never think of staying in Florence:  shall I get you permission to retire out of that State, in case of danger? but sure you would not hesitate on such a crisis!

We have no news from the army:  the minister there communicates nothing to those here.  No answer comes about the Treasury.  All is suspense:  and clouds of breaches ready to burst. now strange is this jumble!  France with an unsettled ministry; England with an unsettled one; a victory just gained over them, yet no war ensuing, or declared from either side; our minister still at Paris, as if to settle an amicable intelligence of the losses on both sides!  I think there was Only wanting for Mr. Thompson to notify to them in form our victory over them, and for Bussy(843) to have civil letters of congratulation-’tis so well-bred an age!