At last we have got some light into our Mediterranean affair, for there is no calling it a victory.  Villettes has sent a courier, by which it seems we sunk one great Spanish ship; the rest escaped, and the French fled shamefully; that was, I suppose, designedly, and artfully.  We can’t account for Lestock’s not coming up with his seventeen ships, and we have no mind to like it, which will not amaze you.  We flatter ourselves that, as this was only the first day, we shall get some more creditable history of some succeeding day.

The French are going to besiege Mons:  I wish all the war may take that turn; I don’t desire to see England the theatre of it.  We talk no more of its becoming so, nor of the plot, than of the gunpowder-treason.  Party is very silent; I believe, because the Jacobites have better hopes than from parliamentary divisions,-those in the ministry run very high, and, I think, near some crisis.

I have enclosed a proposal from my bookseller to the undertaker of the Museum Florentinum, or the concerners of it, as the paper called them; but it was expressed in such wonderfully-battered English, that it was impossible for Dodsley or me to be sure of the meaning of it.  He is a fashionable author, and though that is no sign of perspicuity, I hope, more intelligible.  Adieu!

(910) “The pious motto,” says Mr. P. Yorke, “upon the medal struck by Queen Elizabeth after the defeat of the Armada, may, with as much propriety, be applied to this event-"Flavit ventO, et dissipati sunt;’ for, as Bishop Burnet somewhere observes, ’our preservation at this juncture was one of those providential events, for which we have much to answer."’ MS. Parl.  Journal.-E.

365 Letter 134 To Sir Horace Mann.  London, March 22, 1744.

I am .sorry this letter must date the era of a new correspondence, the topic of which must be blood!  Yesterday, came advice from Mr. Thompson,(911) that Monsieur Amelot had sent for him and given him notice to be gone, for a declaration of war with England was to be published in two days.  Politically, I don’t think it so bad; for the very name of war, though in effect, on foot before,, must make our governors take more precautions; and the French declaring it will range the people more on our side than on the Jacobite:  besides, the latter will have their communication with France cut off.  But, my dear child, what lives, what misfortunes, must and may follow all this!  As a man, I feel my humanity more touched than my spirit-I feel myself more an universal man than an Englishman!  We have already lost seven millions of money and thirty thousand men in the Spanish war-and all the fruit of all this blood and treasure is the glory of having Admiral Vernon’s head on alehouse signs! for my part, I would not purchase another Duke of Marlborough at the expense of one life.  How I should be shocked, were I a hero, when I looked on my own laurelled head on a medal, the reverse of which would be widows and orphans.  How many such will our patriots have made!