I beg you will tell my Lady Ailesbury, that I am sorry she could not discover any wit in Mrs. Hussey’s making a sept-leva.  I know I never was so vain of any wit in my life as winning a thousand leva and two five hundred levas.

You would laugh if you saw in the midst of what trumpery I am writing.  Two porters have just brought home my purchases from Mrs. Kennon the midwife’s sale:  Brobdignag combs, old broken pots, pans, and pipkins, a lantern of scraped oyster-shells, scimitars, Turkish pipes, Chinese baskets, etc. etc.  My servants think my head is turned:  I hope not:  it is all to be called the personal estate and moveables of my great-great-grandmother, and to be reposited at Strawberry.  I believe you think my letter as strange a miscellany as my purchases.

P. S. I forgot, that I was outbid for Oliver Cromwell’s nightcap.

(659) John, second Earl of Ashburnham.  On the 28th of June he married Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Ambrose Crawley, Esq.-E.

309 Letter 174 To Sir Horace Mann.  Arlington Street, Feb. 23, 1756.

I can tell you with as much truth as pleasure that your brother assuredly mends, and that his physician, Dr. Pringle, who is the Duke’s has told his Royal Highness, who expresses great concern, that he now will live.  He goes out to take the air every day, that is not very bad:  Mr. Chute and I went to see him yesterday, and saw a real and satisfactory alteration.  I don’t say this to flatter you; on the contrary, I must bid you, my dear child, not to be too sanguine, for Dr. Cocchi will tell you that there is nothing more fallacious than a consumptive case; don’t mistake me, it is not a consumption, though it is a consumptive disposition.  His spirits are evidently better.

You will have heard, before you receive this, that the King of France and Madame Pompadour are gone into devotion.  Some say, that D’Argenson, finding how much her inclination for peace with us fell in with the Monarch’s humanity, (and winch indeed is the only rational account one can give of their inactivity,) employed the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault and the Confessor to threaten the most Christian King with an earthquake if he did not communicate at Easter; and that his Majesty accordingly made over his mistress to his wife, by appointing the former dame du palais:  others, who refine more, pretend that Madame Pompadour, perceiving how much the King’s disposition veered to devotion, artfully took the turn of humouring it, desired to be only his soul’s concubine, and actually sent to ask pardon of her husband, and to offer to return to him, from which he begged to be excused-the point in dispute is whether she has or has not left off rouge.  In our present hostile state we cannot arrive at any certainty on this important question; though our fate seems to depend on it!

We have had nothing in Parliament but most tedious and long debates on a West Indian regiment, to be partly composed of Swiss and Germans settled in Pennsylvania, with some Dutch officers.  The opposition neither increase in numbers or eloquence; the want of the former seems to have damped the fire of the latter. the reigning fashion is expectation of an invasion; I can’t say I am fashionable; nor do I expect the earthquake, though they say it is landed at Dover.