Our Parliament meets in a fortnight; if no French come, our campaign there will be warm; nay, and uncommon, the opposition will be chiefly composed of men in place.  You know we always refine; it used to be an imputation on our senators, that they opposed to get places.  They now oppose to get better places!  We are a comical nation (I Speak with all due regard to our gravity!)-It were a pity we should be destroyed, if it were only for the sake of posterity; we shall not be half so droll, if we are either a province to France, or under an absolute prince of our own.

I am sorry you are losing my Lord Cork; you must balance the loss with that of Miss Pitt,(627) who is a dangerous inmate.  You ask me if I have seen Lord Northumberland’s Triumph of Bacchus;(628) I have not:  you know I never approved the thought of those copies and have adjourned my curiosity till the gallery is thrown open with the first masquerade.  Adieu! my dear Sir.

(627) Elizabeth Pitt, sister of Lord Chatham@ She had been maid of honour to Augusta Princess of Wales; then lived openly with Lord Talbot as his mistress; went to Italy, turned Catholic, and married; came back, wrote against her brother, and a trifling pamphlet recommending magazines of corn, and called herself Clara Villiers Pitt.

(628) Hugh, Earl and afterwards Duke of Northumberland, bespoke at a great price five copies of capital pictures in Italy, by Mentz, Pompeo, Battoni, etc. for his gallery at Northumberland House.

286 Letter 157 To Richard Bentley, Esq.  Strawberry Hill, October 31, 1755.

As the invasion is not ready, we are forced to take up with a victory.  An account came yesterday, that General Johnson(629) had defeated the French near the lake St. Sacrement, had killed one thousand, and taken the lieutenant-general who commanded them prisoner! his name is Dieskau, a Saxon, an esteemed `el`eve of Marshal Saxe.  By the printed account, which I enclose, Johnson showed great generalship and bravery.  As the whole business was done by irregulars, it does not lessen the faults of Braddock, and the panic of his troops.  If I were so disposed, I could conceive that there are heroes in the world who are not quite pleased with this extra-martinette success(630)—­but we won’t blame those Alexanders, till they have beaten the French in Kent!  You know it will be time enough to abuse them, when they have done all the service they can!  The other enclosed paper is another World,(631) by my Lord Chesterfield; not so pretty, I think, as the last; yet it has merit.  While England and France are at war, and Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt going to war, his lordship is coolly amusing himself at picquet at Bath with a Moravian baron, who would be in prison, if his creditors did not occasionally release him to play with and cheat my Lord Chesterfield, as the only chance they have for recovering their- money!

We expect the Parliament to be thronged., and great animosities.  I will not send you one of the eggs that are laid; for so many political ones have been addled of late years, that I believe all the state game-cocks in the world are impotent.