As my Lady Ailesbury is so taken up with turnpike-hills, Popish recusants, and Irish politics, and you are the only idle person in the family (for Missy I find is engaged too), I must return to correspond with you.  But my letters will not be quite so lively as they have been:  the Opposition, like schoolboys, don’t know how to settle to their books again after the holidays.  We have not had a division:  nay, not a debate.  Those that like it, are amusing themselves with the Appleby election.  Now and then we draggle on a little militia.  The recess has not produced even a pamphlet.  In short, there are none but great outlines of politics:  a memorial in French Billingsgate has been transmitted hither which has been answered very laconically.  More agreeable is the guarantee signed with Prussia:  M. Michel(653) is as fashionable as ever General Wall was.  The Duke of Cumberland has kept his bed with a sore leg, but is better.  Oh!  I forgot, Sir Harry Erskine is dismissed from the army, and if you will suffer so low a pun, as upon his face, is a rubric martyr for his country:  bad as it Is, this is the best bon-mot I have to send you:  Ireland, which one did not suspect, is become the staple of wit, and, I find, coins bons-mots for our greatest men.  I might not send you Mr. Fox’s repartee, for I never heard it, nor has any body here:  as you have, pray send it me.  Charles Townshend t’other night hearing somebody say, that my Lady Falmouth, who had a great many diamonds on, had a Very fine stomach, replied, “By God! my lord has a better.”  You will be entertained with the riot Charles makes in the sober house of Argyle:  t’other night, on the Duchess’s bawling to my Lady Suffolk,(654) he in the very same tone cried out, “Large stewing Oysters!” When he takes such liberties with his new parent, you may judge how little decency he observes with his wife:  last week at dinner at Lord Strafford’s, on my Lady Dalkeith’s mentioning some dish that she loved, he replied before all the servants, “Yes, my Lady Dalkeith, you love it better than any thing but one!”

We were to have had a masquerade to-night, but the Bishops, who you know have always persisted in God’s hating dominos, have made an earthquake point of it, and postponed it till after the fast.

Your brother has got a sixth infanta; at the christening night, Mr. Trail had got through two prayers before any body found out that the child was not brought down stairs.  You see pauvret`e how little I have to say.  Do accept the enclosed World(655) in part of payment for the remainder of a letter.  I must conclude with telling you, that though I know her but little, I admire my Lady Kildare as much as you do.  She has writ volumes to Lady Caroline Fox in praise of you and your Countess:  you are a good soul!  I can’t say so much for lady Ailesbury.  As to Missy, I am afraid I must resign my claim:  I never was very proper to contest with an Hibernian hero; and I don’t know how, but I think my merit does not improve.  Adieu!