You have heard of the nomination of my friend and relation, Lord Hertford,(555) to the embassy of Paris:  you will by this time have learned or perceived, that he is not likely to go thither.  They have sent demands too haughty to be admitted, and we are preparing a fleet to tell them we think so.  In short, the prospect is very warlike.  The ministry are so desirous of avoiding it, that they make no preparations on land—­will that prevent it?—­Their partisans d-n the plantations, and ask if we are to involve ourselves in a war for them?  Will that question weigh with planters and West Indians?  I do not love to put our trust in a fleet only:  however, we do not touch upon the Pretender; the late rebellion suppressed is a comfortable ingredient, at least, in a new war.  You know I call this the age of abortions:  who knows but the egg of this war may be addled?

Elections, very warm in their progress, very insignificant in their consequence, very tedious in their attendance, employ the Parliament solely.  The King wants to go abroad, and consequently to have the Houses prorogued:  the Oxfordshire election says no to him:  the war says no to him:  the town say we shall sit till June.  Balls, masquerades, and diversions don’t trouble their heads about the Parliament or the war:  the righteous, who hate pleasures and love prophecies, (the most unpleasant things in the world, except their completion,) are finding out parallels between London and Nineveh, and other goodly cities of old, who went to operas and ridottos when the French were at their gates—­yet, if Arlington Street were ten times more like to the most fashionable street in Tyre or Sidon, it should not alarm me:  I took all my fears out in the rebellion:  I was frightened enough then; I will never have another panic.  I would not indeed be so pedantic as to sit in St. James’s market in an armed chair to receive the French, because the Roman consuls received the Gauls in the forum.  They shall be in Southwark before I pack up a single miniature.

The Duke of Dorset goes no more to Ireland:  Lord Hartington is to be sent thither with the olive branch.  Lord Rochford is groom of the stole; Lord Poulet has resigned the bedchamber on that preference, and my nephew and Lord Essex are to be lords of the bedchamber.  It is supposed that the Duke of Rutland will be master of the horse, and the Dorset again lord steward.  But all this will come to you as very antique news, if a whisper that your brother has heard to-day be true, of your having taken a trip to Rome.  If you are there when you receive this, pray make my Lady Pomfret’s(556) compliments to the statues in the Capitol, and inform them that she has purchased her late lord’s collection of statues, and presented them to the University of Oxford.  The present Earl, her son, is grown a speaker in the House of Lords, and makes comparisons between Julius Caesar and the watchmen of Bristol, in the same style as he compared himself to Cerberus, who, when he had one head cut off three others sprang up in its room.  I shall go to-morrow to Dr. Mead’s sale, and ruin myself in bronzes and vases—­but I will not give them to the University of Oxford.  Adieu! my dear Sir Knight.