My private satisfaction in my nephew of Orford is very great indeed; he has an equal temper of reason and goodness that is most engaging.  His mother professes to like him as much as every body else does, but is so much a woman that she will not hurt him at all the less.  So far from contributing to retrieve his affairs, she talks to him of nothing but mob stories of his grandfather’s having laid up—­the Lord knows where!—­three hundred thousand pounds for him; and of carrying him with her to Italy, that he may converse with sensible people!  In looking over her husband’s papers, among many of her intercepted billets-doux, I was much entertained with one, which was curious for the whole orthography, and signed Stitara:  if Mr. Shirley was to answer it in the same romantic tone, I am persuaded he would subscribe himself the dying Hornadatus.  The other learned Italian Countess(244) is disposing of her fourth daughter, the fair Lady Juliana, to Penn, the wealthy sovereign of Pennsylvania;(245) but the nuptials are adjourned till he recovers of a wound in his thigh, which he got by his pistol going off as he was overturned in his post-chaise.  Lady Caroline Fox has a legacy of five- thousand pounds from Lord Shelburne,(246) a distant relation, who never saw her but once, and that three weeks before his death.  Two years ago Mr. Fox got the ten thousand pound prize.

May 1, 1751.

I find I must send away my letter this week, and reserve the history of the Regency for another post.  The bill was to have been brought into the House of lords to-day, but Sherlock, the Bishop of London, has raised difficulties against the limitation of the future Regent’s authority, which he asserts to be repugnant to the spirit of our Constitution.  Lord Talbot had already determined to oppose it; and the Pitts and Lyttelton’s, who are grown very mutinous on the Newcastle’s not choosing Pitt for his colleague, have talked loudly against it without doors.  The preparatory steps to this great event I will tell you.  The old Monarch grandchildizes exceedingly:  the Princess, who is certainly a wise woman, and who, in a course of very difficult situations, has never made an enemy nor had a detractor, has got great sway there.  The Pelhams, taking advantage of this new partiality, of the universal dread of the Duke, and of the necessity of his being administrator of Hanover, prevailed to have the Princess Regent, but with a council of nine of the chief great officers, to be continued in their posts till the majority, which is fixed for eighteen; nothing to be transacted without the assent of the greater number; and the Parliament that shall find itself existing at the King’s death to subsist till the minority ceases:  such restrictions must be almost as unwelcome to the Princess as the whole regulation is to the Duke.  Judge of his resentment:  he does not conceal it.  The divisions in the ministry are neither closed nor come to a decision.