I am glad the Chuteheds are as idle as I am for then you will believe it is nothing but idleness.  I don’t know that it is absolutely so; I rather flatter myself that it is want of materials that has made me silent, I fear, above these five weeks.  Literally nothing has happened but the treachery at Bergen-Op-zoom,(1394) and of that all the world knows at least as much as I do.  The Duke is coming home, and both armies are going into quarters, at least for the present:  the French, I suppose, will be in motion again with the first frosts.  Holland seems gone!-How long England will remain after it, Providence and the French must determine!  This is too ample a subject to write but little upon, and too obvious to require much.

The Chuteheds have been extremely good, and visited and stayed with me at Twickenham-I am sorry I must, at your expense, be happy.  If I were to say all I think of Mr. Chute’s immense honesty, his sense, his wit, his knowledge, and his humanity, you would think I was writing a dedication.  I am happy in him:  I don’t make up to him for you, for he loves nothing a quarter so well; but I try to make him regret you less-do you forgive me?  Now I am commending your friends, I reproach myself with never having told you how much I love your brother Gal.(1395) you yourself have not more constant good-humour-indeed he has not such trials with illness as you have, you patient soul! but he is like you, and much to my fancy.  Now I live a good deal at Twickenham, I see more of him, and like to see more of him:  you know I don’t throw my liking about the street.

Your Opera must be fine, and that at Naples glorious:  they say we are to have one, but I doubt it.  Lady Middlesex is breeding-the child will be well-born; the Sackville is the worst blood it is supposed to swell with.  Lord Holderness has lost his son.  Lady Charlotte Finch, when she saw company on her lying-in, had two toilets spread in her bedchamber with her own and Mr. Finch’s dressing plate.  This was certainly a stroke of vulgarity, that my Lady Pomfret copied from some festino in Italy.

Lord Bath and his Countess and his son(1396) have been making a tour:  at Lord Leicester’s(1397) they forgot to give any thing to the servants that showed the house; upon recollection-and deliberation, they sent back a man and horse six miles with-half a crown!  What loads of money they are saving for the French!

Adieu! my dear child-perhaps you don’t know that I , “cast many a Southern look"(1398) towards Florence-I think within this half-year I have thought more of making you a visit, than in any half-year since I left you.  I don’t know whether the difficulties will ever be surmounted, but you cannot imagine how few they are:  I scarce think they are in the plural number.

(1394) In the letter to Sir Thomas Robinson of the 7th of November, Sir Everard Fawkener says, “The capture of Bergen-op-zoom is a subject to make one mad, if any thing had been done; but the ordinary forms of duty, which never fail in times of the greatest security, were now, in this critical time, neglected in the most scandalous manner.”  Hence it was surmised that the place was surrendered through treachery.  See Coxe’s Pelham, vol. i. p. 361.-E.