I shall do little more to-day than answer your last letter of the 2d of this month; there is no kind of news.  My chief reason for writing to you is to notify a visit that you will have at Florence this summer from Mr. Conway, who is forced to go to his regiment at Minorca, but is determined to reckon Italy within his quarters.  You know how, particularly he is my friend; I need not recommend him to you; but you will see something very different from the staring boys that come in flocks to you new, once a year, like woodcocks.  Mr. Conway is deservedly reckoned one of the first and most rising young men in England.  He has distinguished himself in the greatest style both in the army and in Parliament.  This is for you. for the Florentine ladies, there is still the finest person and the handsomest face I ever saw—­no, I cannot say that all this will be quite for them; he will not think any of them so handsome as my Lady Aylesbury.

It is impossible to answer you why my Lord Orford would not marry Miss Nicholl.  I don’t believe there was any particular reason or attachment any where else; but unfortunately for himself and for us, he is totally insensible to his situation, and talks of selling Houghton with a coolness that wants nothing but being intended for philosophy to be the greatest that ever was.  Mind, it is a virtue that I envy more than I honour.

I am going into Warwickshire to Lord Hertford, and set out this evening, and have so many things to do that you must excuse me, for I neither know what I write, nor have time to write more.  Adieu!

110 Letter 46 To George Montagu, Esq.  Daventry, July 22, 1751.

You will wonder in what part of the county of Twicks lies this Daventry.  It happens to be in Northamptonshire.  My letter will scarce set out till I get to London, but I choose to give it its present date lest you should admire, that Mr. Usher of the exchequer, the lord treasurer of pen, ink, and paper, should write with such coarse materials.  I am on my way from Ragley,(260) and if ever the waters subside and my ark rests upon dry land again, I think of stepping over to TOnghes:  but your journey has filled my postchaise’s head with such terrible ideas of your roads, that I think I shall let it have done raining for a month or six weeks, which it has not done for as much time past, before I begin to grease my wheels again, and lay in a provision of French books, and tea, and blunderbusses, for my journey.

Before I tell you a word of Ragley, you must hear how busy I have been upon Grammont.  You know I have long had a purpose of a new edition, with notes, and cuts of the principal beauties and heroes, if I could meet with their portraits.  I have made out all the people at all remarkable except my Lord Janet, whom I cannot divine unless he be Thanet.  Well, but what will entertain you is, that I have discovered the philosophe Whitnell; and what do you think his real name was?  Only ’Whetenhall!