In spite of being sorry, as I certainly ought to be, when your letters are short, I feel quite glad; I rejoice that I am not much in your debt, when I have not wherewithal to pay.  Nothing happens worth telling you:  we have had some long days in the House, but unentertaining; Mr. Pitt has got the gout in his oratory, I mean in his head, and does not come out:  we are sunk quite into argument—­but you know, when any thing is as it should be, it is not worth talking of.  The plate-tax has made some noise; the ministry carried one question on it but by nine.  The Duke of Newcastle, who reserves all his heroism for the war, grew frightened, and would have given up the tax; but Mr. Fox bolstered up his courage and mustered their forces, and by that and softening the tax till it was scarce worth retaining, they carried the next question by an hundred.  The day before yesterday the King notified the invasion to both Houses, and his having sent for Hessians.  There were some dislikes expressed to the latter; but, in general, fear preponderated so much that the cry was for Hanoverians too.  Lord George Sackville, in a very artful speech, a little maliciously even proposed them and noblemen’s regiments:  which the Duke had rejected.  Lord Ravensworth, in the other House, moved in form for Hanoverians; the Duke of Newcastle desired a few days to consider it, and they are to go upon it in the Lords to-morrow.  The militia, which had been dropped for next year, is sprouted up again out of all this, and comes on to-day.  But we should not be English, if we did not become still more intent on a very trifle:  we are.  A new road through Paddington(665) has been proposed to avoid the stones:  the Duke of Bedford, who is never ’In town in summer, objects to the dust it will make behind Bedford House, and to some buildings proposed, though, if he was in town, he is too short-sighted to see the prospect.  The Duke of Grafton heads the other side:  this is carried! you can imagine it—–­you could compose the difference! you, grand corrupter, you who can bribe pomp and patriotism, virtue and a Speaker,(666) you that have pursued uprightness even to the last foot of land on the globe, and have disarmed Whiggism almost on the banks of its own Boyne--don’t you return hither, we shall have you attempt to debauch even Mr. Onslow, who has preserved his chastity, while all the band of chosen youths, while every Pultney, Pitt, and Lyttelton have fallen around him.  I could not help laughing at the picture of Malone bribed out of his virtue and mobbed into it again!

Now I am in a serious strain, I will finish my letter with the only other serious history I know.  My Lady Lincoln has given a prodigious assembly to show the Exchequer house.(667) She sent to the porter to send cards to all she visited:  he replied, he could easily do that, for his lady visited nobody but Lady Jane Scott.  As she has really neglected every body, many refusals were returned.  The