as I love you, I never found all those charms in you that he does!  I own this to you out of pure honesty, that you may love him as much as he deserves.  I don’t know how he will succeed here, but to me he has more wit than any body I know:  he is altered, and I think, broken:  Whitehed is grown leaner considerably, and is a very pretty gentleman.(1293) He did not reply to me as the Turcotti(1294) did bonnement to you when you told her she was a little thinner:  do you remember how she puffed and chuckled, and said, “And indeed I think you are too.”  Mr. Whitehed was not so sensible of the blessing of decrease, as to conclude that it would be acceptable news even to shadows:  he thinks me plumped out.  I would fain have enticed them down hither, and promised we would live just as if we were at the King’s Arms in via di Santo Spirito:(1295) but they were obliged to go chez eux, not pour se d`ecrasser, but pour se crasser.  I shall introduce them a tutte le mie conoscenze, and shall try to make questo paese as agreeable to them as possible; except in one point, for I have sworn never to tell Mr. Chute a word of news, for then he will be writing it to you, and I shall have nothing to say.  This is a lucky resolution for you, my dear child, for between two friends one generally hears nothing; the one concludes that the other has told all.

I have had two or three letters from you since I wrote.  The young Pretender is generally believed to have got off the 18th of last month:  if he were not, with the zeal of the Chutes, I believe they would be impatient to send a limb to Cardinal Acquaviva and Monsignor Piccolomini.  I quite gain a winter with them, having had no expectation of them till spring’.  Adieu!

(1292) John Chute and Francis Whitehed had been several years in Italy, chiefly at Florence.

(1293) Gray, in a letter to Mr. Chute, written at this time, thus describes Mr. Whithead: 

“He is a fine young personage in a coat all over spangles, just come over from the tour in Europe to take possession and be married.  I desire my hearty congratulations to him, and say I wish him more spangles, and more estates, and more wives.”  Works, vol. iii. p. 20.-E.

(1294) A fine singer.

(1295) Mr. Mann hired a large palace of the Manetti family at Florence in via di Santo Spirito:  foreign ministers in Italy affix large shields with the arms of their sovereign over their door.

507 Letter 220 To the Hon. H. S. Conway.  Windsor still, Oct. 3, 1746.

My dear Harry, You ask me if I have really grown a philosopher.  Really I believe not:  for I shall refer you to my practice rather than to my doctrine, and have really acquired what they only pretended to seek, content.  So far, indeed I was a philosopher even when I lived in town, for then I was content too; and all the difference I can conceive between those two opposite doctors was, that Aristippus loved London, and Diogenes Windsor; and if your master