I feel excessively for you, my dear child, on the loss of Mr. Chute!—­so sensible and so good-natured a man would be a loss to any body; but to you, who are so meek and helpless, it is irreparable! who will dry you when you are very wet brown-paper?(1054) Though I laugh, you know how much I pity you:  you will want somebody to talk over English letters, and to conjecture with ),on; in short, I feel your distress in all its lights.

The citadel of Tournay is gone;(1055) our affairs go ill.  Charles of Lorrain(1056) has lost a great battle grossly!  He was constantly drunk, and had no kind of intelligence.  Now he acts from his own head, his head turns out a very bad one.  I don’t know, indeed, what they can say in defence of the great general to whom we have just given the garter, the Duke of Saxe Weissenfels; he is not of so serene a house but that he might have known something of the motions of the Prussians.  Last night we heard that the Hungarian insurgents had cut to pieces two Prussian regiments.  The King of Prussia and Prince Charles are so near, that we every day expect news of another battle.  We don’t know yet what is to be the next step in Flanders.  Lord Cobham has got Churchill’S(1057) regiment, and Lord Dunmore his government of Plymouth.  At the Prince’s court there is a great revolution; he, or rather Lord Granville, or perhaps the Princess, (who, I firmly believe, by all her quiet sense, will turn out a Caroline,) have at last got rid of Lady Archibald,(1058) who was strongly attached to the coalition.  They have civilly asked her, and Crossly forced her to ask civilly to go away, which she has done, with a pension of twelve hundred a-year.  Lady Middlesex,(1059) is mistress of the robes:  she lives with them perpetually, and sits up till five in the morning at their suppers.  Don’t mistake!-not for her person, which is wondrous plain and little:  the town says it is for her friend Miss Granville, one of the maids of honour; but at least yet, that is only scandal.  She is a fair, red-haired girl, scarce pretty; daughter of the poet, Lord Lansdown.(1060) Lady Berkeley is lady of the bedchamber, and Miss Lawson maid of honour.  Miss Neville, a charming beauty, and daughter of the pretty, unfortunate Lady Abergavenny,(1061) is named for the next vacancy.

I was scarcely settled in my joy for the Spaniards having taken the opposite route to Tuscany, when I heard of Mr. Chute’s leaving you.  I long to have no reason to be uneasy about you.  I am obliged to you for the gesse figures, and beg you will send me the bill in your first letter.  Rysbrach has perfectly mended the Ganymede and the model, which to me seemed irrecoverably smashed.

I have just been giving a recommendatory letter for you to Mr. Hobart; he is a particular friend of mine, but is Norfolk, and in the world; so you will be civil to him.  He is of the Damon-kind, and not one of whom you will make a Chute. madame Suares may make something of him.  Adieu!