If I was writing to any body but you, who know me so well, I should be afraid this would be taken for pique and pride, and be construed into my thinking all ministers inferior to my father but, my dear Harry, you know it was never my foible to think over-abundantly well of him.  Why I think as I do of the great geniuses, answer for me, Admiral Matthews, great British Neptune, bouncing in the Mediterranean, while the Brest squadron is riding in the English Channel, and an invasion from Dunkirk every moment threatening your coasts:  against which you send for six thousand Dutch troops, while you have twenty thousand of your own in Flanders, which not being of any use, you send these very six thousand Dutch to them, with above half of the few of your own remaining in England; a third part of which half of which few you countermand, because you are again alarmed with the invasion, and yet let the six Dutch go, who came for no other end but to protect you.  And that our naval discretion may go hand-in-hand with our military, we find we have no force at home; we send for fifteen ships from the Mediterranean to guard our coasts, and demand twenty from the Dutch.  The first fifteen will be here, perhaps in three months.  Of the twenty Dutch, they excuse all but six, of which six they send all but four; and your own small domestic fleet, five are going to the West Indies and twenty a hunting for some Spanish ships that are coming from the Indies.  Don’t it put you in mind of a trick that is done by calculation:  Think of a number:  halve it-double it-and ten-subtract twenty-add half the first number-take away all you added:  now, what remains?

That you may think I employ my time as idly as the great men I have been talking of, you must be informed that every night constantly I go to Ranelagh; which has totally beat Vauxhall.  Nobody goes any where else-every body goes there.  My Lord Chesterfield is so fond of it, that he says he has ordered all his letters to be directed thither.  If you had never seen it, I would make you a most pompous description of it, and tell you how the floor is all of beaten princes-you can’t set your foot without treading on a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cumberland.  The company is universal:  there is from his Grace of Grafton down to Children out of the Foundling Hospital-from my Lady Townshend to the kitten—­from my Lord Sandys to your humble cousin and sincere friend.

(943) Now first printed.

(944) Dr. Henry Bland, head-master, and from 1732 to his death, in 1746, provost of Eton College.  In No. 628 of the Spectator is a Latin version by him of Cato’s soliloquy.-E.

(945) This is nonsense@H.  W.

377 Letter 142
To Sir Horace Mann. 
London, June 29, 1744.