I beg you Will nurse yourself up to great strength; consider w what German generals and English commodores you are again going to have to govern!  On my side, not a Pretender

shall land, nor rebellion be committed, but you shall have timely notice.  Adieu!

(580) A Florentine, but minister of France to the Great Duke.

(581) At Mr. Chute’s seat of the Vine, in Hampshire, is a chapel built by Lord Sandys of the Vine, lord chamberlain to Henry viii.  In the painted glass windows, which were taken at Boulogne in that reign, are portraits of Francis 1. his Queen, and sister.

260 Letter 139 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, July 17, 1755.

To be sure, war is a dreadful calamity, etc.!  But then it is a very comfortable commodity for writing letters and writing history; and as one did not contribute to make it, why there is no harm in being a little amused with looking on; and if one can but keep the Pretender on t’other side Derby, and keep Arlington Street and Strawberry Hill from being carried to Paris, I know nobody that would do more to promote peace, or that will bear the want of it, with a better grace than myself.  If I don’t send you an actual declaration of war in this letter, at least you perceive I am the harbinger of it.  An account arrived yesterday morning that Boscawen had missed the French fleet, who are got into Cape Breton; but two of his captains(582) attacked three of their squadron and have taken two, with scarce any loss.  This is the third time one of the French captains has been taken by Boscawen.

Mr. Conway is arrived from Ireland, where the triumphant party are what parties in that situation generally are, unreasonable and presumptuous.  They will come into no terms without a stipulation that the Primate(583) shall not be in the Regency.  This is a bitter pill to digest, but must not it be swallowed?  Have we heads to manage a French war and an Irish civil war too?

There are little domestic news.  If you insist upon some, why, I believe I could persuade somebody or other to hang themselves; but that is scarce an article uncommon enough to send cross the sea.  For example, the rich * * * * whose brother died of the smallpox a year ago, and left him four hundred thousand Pounds, had a fit of the gout last week, and shot himself.  I only begin to be afraid that it should grow as necessary to shoot one’s self here, as it is to go into the army in France.  Sir Robert Browne has lost his last daughter, to whom he could have given eight thousand pounds a-year.  When I tell these riches and n)adnesses to Mr. Muntz, he stares so, that I sometimes fear he thinks I mean to impose on him.  It is cruel to a person who collects the follies of the age for the information of posterity to have one’s veracity doubted; it is the truth of them that makes them worth notice.  Charles Townshend marries the great dowager Dalkeith;(583