(601) Walpole, in his Memoires, says, that “he dictated an encomium on his officers, and expired."-D.

(602) Elizabeth Gumley, wife of William Pulteny, Earl of Bath.

(603) Pannoni’s coffeehouse of the Florentine nobility, not famous for their courage of late.

271 Letter 146 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Arlington Street, August 28, 1755.

Our piratic laurels, with which the French have so much reproached us, have been exceedingly pruned!  Braddock is defeated and killed, by a handful of Indians and by the baseness of his own troops, who sacrificed him and his gallant officers.  Indeed, there is some suspicion that cowardice was not the motive, but resentment at having been draughted from Irish regiments.  Were such a desertion universal, could one but commend@it’@ Could one blame men who should refuse to be knocked on the head for sixpence a day, and for the advantage and dignity of a few ambitious?  But in this case one pities the brave young @officers, who cannot so easily disfranchise themselves from the prejudices of glory!  Our disappointment is greater than our loss; six-and-twenty officers are killed, who, I suppose, have not left a vast many fatherless and widowless, as an old woman told me to-day with great tribulation.  The ministry have a much more serious affair on their hands-Lord Lincoln and Lord Anson have had a dreadful quarrel!  Coquus teterrima belli causa!  When Lord Mountford shot himself, Lord Lincoln said, “Well, I am very sorry for poor Mountford! but it is the part of a wise man to make the best of every misfortune-I shall now have the best cook in England.”  This was uttered before Lord Anson.  Joras,(604)—­ who is a man of extreme punctilio, as cooks and officers ought to be, would not be hired till he knew whether this Lord Mountford would retain him.  When it was decided that he would not, Lord Lincoln proposed to hire Joras.  Anson had already engaged him.  Such a breach of friendship was soon followed by an expostulation (there was jealousy of the Duke of Newcastle’s favour already under the coals):  in short the nephew earl called the favourite earl such gross names, that it was well they were ministers! otherwise, as Mincing says, “I vow, I believe they must have fit.”  The public, that is half-a-dozen toad-eaters, have great hopes that the present unfavourable posture of affairs in America will tend to cement this breach, and that we shall all unite hand and heart against the common enemy.

I returned the night before last from my peregrination.  It is very unlucky for me that no crown of martyrdom is entailed on zeal for antiquities; I should be a rubric martyr of the first class.  After visiting the new salt-water baths at Harwich, (which, next to horse-racing, grows the most fashionable resource for people who want to get out of town, and who love the country and retirement!) I went to see Orford castle, and Lord Hertford’s at Sudborn.  The one