you what will happen.(726) Whatever happens on such an emergency, with the Parliament so near, with no time for considering measures, with so bad a past, and so much worse a future, there certainly is no duration or good in prospect.  Unless the King of Prussia will take our affairs at home as well as abroad to nurse, I see no possible recovery for us-and you may believe, when a doctor like him is necessary, I should be full as willing to die of the distemper.

Well! and so you think we are undone!—­not at all; if folly and extravagance are symptoms of nation’s being at the height of their glory, as after-observers pretend that they are forerunners Of its ruin, we never were in a more flourishing situation.  My Lord Rockingham and my nephew Lord Orford have made a match of five hundred pounds, between five turkeys and five geese, to run from Norwich to London.  Don’t you believe in the transmigration of souls?  And are not you convinced that this race is between Marquis Sardanapalus and Earl Heliogabalus?  And don’t you pity the poor Asiatics and Italians who comforted themselves on their resurrection with being geese and turkeys?

Here’s another symptom of our glory!  The Irish Speaker, Mr. Ponsonby,(727) has been reposing himself at Newmarket.  George Selwyn, seeing him toss about bank-bills at the hazard-table, said, “How easily the Speaker passes the money-bills!”

You, who live at Florence among vulgar vices and tame slavery, will stare at these accounts.  Pray be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre.  In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery ]Intrigue best together.  Ask me which of these governments I prefer—­oh! the last—­only I fear it is the least durable.

I have not yet thanked you for your letter of September 18th, with the accounts of the Genoese treaty and of the Pretender’s quarrel with the Pope—­it is a squabble worthy a Stuart.  Were he here, as absolute as any Stuart ever wished to be, who knows with all his bigotry but he might favour us with a reformation and the downfall of the mass?  The ambition of making a Duke of York vice-chancellor of holy church would be as good a reason for breaking with holy church, as Harry the Eighth’s was for quarrelling with it, because it would not excuse him from going to bed to his sister, after it had given him leave.

I wish I could tell you that your brother mends! indeed I don’t think he does; nor do I know what to say to him; I have exhausted both arguments and entreaties, and yet if I thought either would avail, would gladly recommence them.  Adieu!

(718) This was the battle of Lowositz, gained by the King of Prussia over the Austrians, commanded by Marshal Brown, on the first of October, 1756.-D.

(719) Brother of the Earl Marshal.