his going abroad, but I find that it will be a very difficult point to carry even with himself.  His affairs are so extensive, that as yet he will not hear of leaving them.  Then the exclusion of correspondence by the war with France would be another great objection with him to going thither; and to send him to Naples by sea, if we could persuade him would hardly be advisable in the heat of such hostilities.  I think by this account you will judge perfectly of your brother’s situation:  you may depend upon it, it is not desperate, and yet it is what makes me very unhappy.  Dr. Pringle says, that in his life he never knew a person for whom so many people were concerned.  I go to him again to-morrow.

The war is reckoned inevitable, nay begun, though France does not proceed to a formal declaration, but contents herself with Monsieur Rouill`e’s conditional declaration.  All intercourse is stopped.  We, who two months ago were in terrors about a war on the continent, are now more frightened about having it at home.  Hessians and Dutch are said to be, and, I believe, are sent for.  I have known the time when we were much less prepared and much less alarmed.  Lord Ravensworth moved yesterday to send par pr`eference for Hanoverians, but nobody seconded him.  The opposition cavil, but are not strong enough to be said to oppose.  This is exactly our situation.

I must beg, my dear sir, that you will do a little for my sake, what I know and hear you have already done from natural goodness.  Mr. Dick, the consul at Leghorn, is particularly attached to my old and great friend Lady Harry Beauclerc, whom you have often heard me mention; she was Miss Lovelace:  it will please me vastly if you will throw in a few civilities more at my request.

Adieu!  Pray for your brother:  I need not say talk him over and over with Dr. Cocchl, and hope the best of the war.

307 Letter 173 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Arlington Street, Feb. 12, 1756.

I will not write to my Lady Ailesbury to-night, nor pretend to answer the prettiest letter in the world, when I am out of spirits.  I am very unhappy about poor Mr. Mann, who I fear is in a deep consumption:  the doctors do not give him over, and the symptoms are certainly a little mended this week; but you know how fallacious that distemper is, and how unwise it would be to trust to it!  As he is at Richmond, I pass a great deal of my time out of town to be near him, and so may have missed some news; but I will tell you all I know.

The House of Commons is dwindled into a very dialogue between Pitt and Fox-one even begins to want Admiral Vernon again for variety.  Sometimes it is a little piquant; in which though Pitt has attacked, Fox has generally had the better.  These three or four last days we have been solely upon the Pennsylvanian regiment, bickering, and but once dividing, 165 to 57.  We are got but past the first reading yet.  We want the French to put a little vivacity into