The changes are begun, but will not be completed till the recess, as the preferments will occasion more re-elections than they can spare just now in the House of Commons.  Sandys has resigned the exchequer to Mr. Pelham; Sir John Rushout is to be treasurer of the navy; Winnington, paymaster; Harry Fox, lord of the treasury:  Lord Edgcumbe, I believe, lord of the treasury,(883) and Sandys, cofferer and a peer.  I am so scandalized at this, that I will fill up my letter (having told you all the news) with the first fruits of my indignation.

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS
ON ITS RECEIVING A NEW PEER,

THou senseless Hall, whose injudicious space,
Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race,
Where kings and clowns, th’ ambitious and the mean,
Compose th’ inactive soporific scene,

Unfold thy doors!-and a promotion see
That must amaze even prostituted thee! 
Shall not thy sons, incurious though they are,
Raise their dull lids, and meditate a stare? 
Thy sons, who sleep in monumental state,
To show the spot where their great fathers sate. 
Ambition first, and specious warlike worth,
Call’d our old peers and brave patricians forth;
And subject provinces produced to fame
Their lords with scarce a less than regal name. 
Then blinded monarchs, flattery’s fondled race,
Their favourite minions stamp’d with titled grace,
And bade the tools of power succeed to Virtue’s place,
Hence Spensers, Gavestons, by crimes grown great,
Vaulted into degraded Honour’s seat: 
Hence dainty Villiers sits in high debate,
Where manly Beauchamps, Talbots, Cecils sate
Hence Wentworth,(884) perjured patriot, burst each tie,
Profaned each oath, and gave his life the lie: 
Renounced whate’er he sacred held and dear,
Renounced his country’s cause, and sank into a Peer. 
Some have bought ermine, venal Honour’s veil,
When set by bankrupt Majesty to sale
Or drew Nobility’s coarse ductile thread
>From some distinguished harlot’s titled bed. 
Not thus ennobled Samuel!-no worth
from his mud the sluggish reptile forth;
No parts to flatter, and no grace to please,
With scarce an insect’s impotence to tease,
He struts a Peer-though proved too dull to stay,
Whence (885) even poor Gybbons is not brush’d away.

Adieu!  I am just going to Leicester House, where the Princess sees company to-day and to-morrow, from seven to nine, on her lying-in.  I mention this per amor del Signor Marchese Cosimo Riccardi.(886)

(880) One of the most celebrated pictures of Correggio, with the Madonna and Child, saints, and angels, in a convent at Parma.

(881) Captain Ross and Lord Charles Hay.-E.

(882) “Lord Chesterfield’s performance,” says Mr. Yorke, “was much cried up; but few of his admirers could distinguish the faults of his eloquence from its beauties.”  MS. Part.  Journal.-E.